I remember in the Eighties, our council would give us black sacks and the bin men would come round every week with their big vehicle, collecting all the bags of rubbish. I would watch programmes like Blue Peter that mentioned recycling. I liked to recycle - there were recycling plants for aluminium cans, but that was about it. Not all cans were aluminium - you had to test them with a magnet. And you'd get paid for aluminium you took them - so I'd go around collecting cans. We also composted. I hoped that one day, we would recycle more and supermarkets and manufacturers would be more responsible with their carrier bags and packaging. Things changed - you got recycling collection points for more things. The black bags were replaced with wheelie bins. And then, even that changed. My local council / Veolia now give the following: Green wheelie bin For general waste that doesn't fit any of the other categories. Goes to energy plants and landfill mainly. Collected fortnightly, on an "A" week. Purple wheelie bin For recycling. A fair amount of stuff can be accepted in here: They don't accept textiles, clothes, light bulbs, mirrors, flat glass, Pyrex, expanded foam polystyrene, plastic bags, plastic film wrapping or anything meant in other bins. Goes to recycling plants. Collected fortnightly, on a "B" week. Food bin The left bin goes in your kitchen and you line it with a biodegradable plastic bag (I think we have to buy these ourselves now). Once it is full, you tie the bag and place it in the right bin, outside. All food waste can go in here. Including meat. Cooked or uncooked. Goes to a facility for composting. Collected weekly, although I believe the hopper is larger on the "A" week. Paper bin For paper and card. Drinks cartons and items with a glossy or metallic finish aren't accepted. Goes to recycling plants. Collected fortnightly, on a "B" week. Garden waste wheelie bin For trimmings etc. No Japanese Knotweed or Ragwort, apparently! Probably composted. Collected fortnightly, separately from main collections. There is a yearly charge if you want a garden wheelie bin. They also give small plastic bags for battery recycling - any household batteries, basically - not car batteries. We also have household recycling centres (commonly called "the tip"), where they process items. We can take recyclable and non-recyclable items there ourselves, including bulky items like mattresses, sofas and cookers - even asbestos! They will also collect for a small charge. And there's a free collection service for medical waste - for disposing of dressings and needles. Apparently, we can join a recycling club run by the council and get e-mails and tips on recycling, if we want! We had collection points for clothes and textiles provided by the Salvation Army, too - although some of these seem to have disappeared. They are (or were) in car parks and supermarkets. Our household recycling centre accepts household cooking oil, but not commercial. I assume there may be recycling centres that do accept it, perhaps to turn to biodiesel, but I'm not sure. I know the bus company who run our services have some buses running on biodiesel, but I don't believe ours do currently. As you can see, the recycling in my area is pretty good. Whereas we used to have a weekly bin bag collection, it's now fortnightly - but the recycling collection is done in the weeks between, which includes food waste. Unfortunately, not all properties get it - flats may or may not have a communal recycling bin and some other properties are deemed unsuitable for wheelie bins and so have smaller boxes. I have heard, though, that some properties have nothing, which is a shame. I think that the self sorting is a good method, although I have seen rubbish trucks with sorting bins on the sides and the bin men sorting them. I think that's a bit of a shame - I know people who are lazy and say their taxes pay these people to sort their rubbish, they should get a rebate if they sort it themselves. Personally, I think that's a poor attitude - have some pride in your local community and do your bit for the environment! Here are some statistics for you on plastics: All 407 local authorities in the UK offer some form of collection service for plastic bottles with nearly 100% collecting directly from homes. Collections for pots, tubs and trays are increasing with over 60% of local authorities offering a kerbside recycling collection. An estimated 2.5 million tonnes of plastics packaging is used in the UK each year. An estimated 540,000 tonnes of plastic bottles are used by UK households each year – that’s about 33 million bottles every day. Over 316,000 tonnes of plastic bottles were collected for recycling from UK households in 2012 – that’s a recycling rate of 58% and means that: An estimated 7 billion plastic bottles were collected for recycling – that’s 19 million bottles every day. Nearly 5 billion plastic bottles were sent to landfill in 2012 – that’s nearly 14 million plastic bottles every day. Overall this means the average UK household uses over 440 plastic bottles per year, but only recycles just over 250 of them! So... what do you all have for recycling in your area? Do you still have old fashioned bin men and no recycling? Do they sort your rubbish for you? Or do you do the self-sorted thing, like us? Do you think your local authority's recycling scheme is sufficient?
In most parts of Australia we have 3 bins. A red bin for general trash, apartments and flats are only allowed a half sized bin. The apartment building where I used to live was always getting it's bins stolen or filled with someone else's trash :/ Some people went as far as wrapping chains around their bin and locking them during the week.. A Yellow bin for recycling, card board but nothing in a plastic bag ( the garbage man does check, if you do put the wrong thing in there you get a big mean old sticker slapped on your bin telling you off. If you do this too many times I think they terminate your contract).. And a green bin for organic stuff like leaves ect..
Wheelie bin theft is a minor issue here - I guess because everyone gets one free, not many want to steal one. Filling other people's bins is a bigger issue, especially in big blocks of flats. They tend to have those large bins and that's pretty much it. Not much scope for recycling, really. I'm not sure if it happened in every area, but there's an RFID chip (coined "bin bug" by the press) in a lot of wheelie bins. It weighs the bin as it is emptied and transmits the data to the lorry. Unfortunately, many councils kept the chips quiet. It's thought they may be used to charge people who put out more waste. Obviously, there's volume and there's weight, so that's rather unfair - plus it makes the issue of using other people's bins a big problem were such a tax imposed. The government deny this, saying it only identifies a bin to your house (helpful for the theft issue) and they can use it to help the elderly. However, my council state that it's there so that they could potentially reward people for recycling in future. Yeah - by taxing them if they throw a lot out in general waste!
Southern California is three bins. 1. Regular Trash 2. Recycles consisting of Glass, Plastic, Metal and paper. 3. Yard Waste. Meanwhile we still pay the stupid deposit on all liquid drinking containers!
You mean the CA CRV thing? Take your empties to a recycling centre and you get paid! We used to have a similar thing decades ago on soda syphons. If you returned it, you would get money (and the company would wash and reuse it). Alternatively, you could ask them to refill it, which they would do for a discounted price. Effectively, you bought the syphon then bought the drink to go in it. It's interesting to see you both have only three bins. What happens to the recycling, then? Does it get sorted at a plant (into plastics, paper, metals etc.)?
Different here in Victoria. Have one large green wheelie bin for recycle, smaller lighter green bin for regular rubbish/trash, and optional organics bin which is a burgundy one.
Too much headache taking a bag of deposit bottles and cans to a separate location, the gas expense and time not worth it. Decades ago the store you bought the drinks from would recycle and refund the deposit, but that was a health hazard with flys being drawn into the grocery store. The trash plant sorts out all the recycles. The deposit should really be abolished since the trash company profits from selling the deposit AND the material back to different factories.
I think we beat that easily with 7 different bins hahaha ...... Plastic, paper, white glass, brown glass, bio, recycling goods and the bin for everything leftover. And we also got a pretty well working bottle deposit system, up to the point that many poor or homeless people are making a living just by collecting empty bottles on the street, parks, whereever. But every store selling bottled drinks has to take empty bottles back.
We got: - a black wheelie with a blue lid for paper - and one with a green lid for everything biodegradable - and yellow bags to collect the packing material that food comes in, like milk jugs and all the plastic - and then we got a black wheelie with a black lid for everything else - now glass bottles are collected seperatly, there are huge containers placed on strategic locations where you drive to with your car and can throw away all your glass bottles - then there are people that drive around in trucks that collect things made out of metal like a garden door or pipes which people just throw in front of their home at certain days - and then our village has a huge space where you can unload your gardening waste that doesn't fit in the green wheelie, like when you mow the lawn. - furthermore in the next city there is a huge place where you can get rid off of old TV's and old furniture and so on, just throw them into the shipping containers there - additionally most water, beer and soft drink bottles are returnable bottles which means when you buy them each bottle costs an additional 0.25c which you will get back once you return the empty bottle to the super market Waste disposal is serious business in Germany.
These are optional, in case anyone cares. There's usually containers for paper next to the glass ones iirc (at least there used to be, my nearest glass dumps don't have them - no idea if it changed or if it's a local thing or w/ever). Also there's containers for used clothing (which is given to the poor or gets recycled if it's in too bad a shape) "Sperrmüll"? That's meant for everything that's too large to easily transport (e.g. furniture), not just metal. Helpful if you don't have a car, or have a lot to get rid of at once. Oh and then there's also the occasional "tour bus" that lets you drop off hazardous materials - batteries, radiation-based smoke alarms, stuff containing mercury, things like that. Definitely. Sometimes bordering on ridiculous if you ask me. Been like that for a while, too (this spoof is from 1989).
Under my local council (in the UK) we have a brown wheelie bin for organic waste, including garden waste and food waste. A green bin for paper and cardboard. A blue bin for cans, glass bottles/jars and plastic bottles (but not margarine tubs or yogurt pots, they are NOT allowed!). Then we have a dark grey bin for everything else (including the previously mentioned margarine tubs), this is basically the original bin we used to put ALL our waste in before home recycling was introduced.
Hmm, that's interesting - both those items are fine here. http://www.pledge4plastics.co.uk/page/8/facts-stats Apparently only 60% of the UK do non-bottle plastics. That's a shame.
