Nine separate bins? What a load of rubbish

A national system sounds ideal but from what I’ve learnt is that not all parts of the country have the same facilities to be able to recycle. A national colour coding system for bins would be a good idea to start with. And neighbouring authorities should work more closely to share vehicles, resources and infrastructure.

Our local authority provides wheelie bins for green waste (large) and all food waste (small) and one for normal refuse and a box for glass, cans and SOME plastics but not all – the collectors separate it on collection.

For paper, clothing, batteries – we place in a bag (thanks charities, your free bags come in useful :)) or small box

It seems that whilst some councils provide bins/boxes, others save their taxpayers money by collecting recyclable materials but without the expense of providing additional bins/boxes.

Incidentally, our local Tesco gives you Clubcard points for aluminium cans so we separate these out too! Every little helps…

It’s good to recycle, however, I wish more councils explained what happens to the stuff once it’s collected. If it all ends up in a landfill in Lagos then what’s the point?

Also, I almost weep when I see NO recycling facilities at many UK holiday cottages, resorts or hotels. The amount of stuff that ends up in landfill from these places must be staggering.

There is no simple answer.

Some households have plenty of room to store bins in the back garden, but others don’t. Some people meticulously separate their waste whereas others are confused or will not comply. That results in contaminated waste.

We need a national system to help avoid confusion. I have no idea what I can put in bins and boxes if I visit friends and family. The recycling system I am expected to use at home is different from that where I work, less than two miles away!

Because we are supplied with a large black bin for refuse I think we have a tendency to put things in that should be recycled [bottles, textiles] or disposed of more correctly [batteries, electrical things, paint]. There are so few recycling facilities in the area that there is no sensible alternative. The Council also provides a large green bin for paper, card, cans and plastics but the rules are staggeringly complicated [no envelopes, caps off bottles, no hard plastic, no shreddded paper, and so on] so again much recyclable stuff ends up in the black bin. [In our neighbouring council area the black bins are for “green” waste and the green bins are for refuse! – It’s been like that for years but they just won’t change it even though it would be very easy to do so. They say they were the first to introduce recycling bins and the rest of the country is out of step!]. We also have two brown bins for garden waste [when we asked for the second one to cope with the arisings from our large garden it was suggested impolitely that we get a smaller property!] but we have to pay £40 a year each for them for a fortnightly collection so the council can sell the waste to a compost processor. There has been a massive increase in the number of households using the brown bins, because the refuse collectors refuse to empty a black bin with even the slightest whiff of garden material, yet there has been no reduction in charge in line with volume economies nor is any concession available on the purchase of compost which also rises in price year on year despite the increase in supply of compostable material. [My previous council in London offered residents a free compsot day at a local park – bag it up yourself and have as much as you can take]. And before anyone asks, we are not in a position to compost any more than we already do in our own grounds so paying the council to take it away for processing is probably the best environmental solution. I’m not particularly in favour of a uniform national scheme for recycling facilities as each area differs in character but I think there should be standardised colours for receptacles to avoid contamination by occasional users as pointed out above, and an end to the nonsense whereby the packaging tells me it is recyclable but the council doesn’t want it. When I look around the off-licence section of the supermarket I see all these wine bottles from California, Chile, New Zealand and South Africa which we [and some other parts of Europe] have to reprocess. Do containers from those countries go back empty? Can’t we let them have their botles back? And what goes back to China in all the containers they send us? Would they not find a use for some free glass and plastic? Perhaps looking at the overall environmental picture it is better that the container ships go back with lighter loads thus saving carbon fuel [better that they don’t come here in the first place, of course]. And it seems odd that wine from France and Germany is dearer than from Argentina and Australia. Hic!