Differences in local recycling schemes

[Clip]

Black wheelie for household
Blue wheelie for recycling

green food box.
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Back in 2008, the council realised we had the highest recycling rate in the borough and decided to use us to help promote recycling; to the extent that they commissioned statues of us made out of our own recyclables:

http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/recycling-family-turned-rubbish-sculptures-4825945

that's fantastic Peter.

 

[All Line Rover]

How does everyone dispose of oil - e.g. for tinned fish?

I don't consider it appropriate to pour the oil down the kitchen sink but nor can a tin full of oil be recycled, so I dispose of such tins in general waste. Does any council offer a better option?

 

[DarloRich]

WOW - There is a wide variety of schemes then! I really like the MK scheme and hope they don't go to multiple sacks for waste types. I would prefer to be able to put glass in the pink sacks and do away with the blue bins.

How does everyone dispose of oil - e.g. for tinned fish?

I don't consider it appropriate to pour the oil down the kitchen sink but nor can a tin full of oil be recycled, so I dispose of such tins in general waste. Does any council offer a better option?

I think MK council accepts cooking oil at the tip and I also think it can go in the food waste bin. I know solid fats can. Maybe ring the council and ask for their advice?

 

[Peter Mugridge]

How does everyone dispose of oil - e.g. for tinned fish?

I don't consider it appropriate to pour the oil down the kitchen sink but nor can a tin full of oil be recycled, so I dispose of such tins in general waste. Does any council offer a better option?

We put our used cooking oil - after it has cooled - into old milk bottles; when full these go into the landfill bin ( on council advice ).

The stuff can be recycled into a usable fuel, but only if very large quantities are involved and that would mean the council having to have a lot of space set aside for storage in order to build up enough volume. Even if the whole borough filled up empty milk bottles at the rate we do - assuming we ourselves are average - they'd probably only collect enough to have 3 or 4 collections a year from their site.

This is not viable especially with the current slump in the price of crude oil meaning there is no real saving to be made by recycling cooking oil into fuel - it's quite an intense refining process.

 

[Mojo]

How does everyone dispose of oil - e.g. for tinned fish?

I don't consider it appropriate to pour the oil down the kitchen sink but nor can a tin full of oil be recycled, so I dispose of such tins in general waste. Does any council offer a better option?

The only tinned fish I buy is tuna, of which I buy the "...in spring water" variant, which can be drained down the kitchen sink, and anchovies which come with olive oil, and I make into a salad dressing or pizza topping.

 

[mikeg]

In Nottingham we just have two bins, a green one for incineration and a brown one for recycling (Glass, paper, cardboard and plastic bottles) and our recycling rate is scarcely above a quarter so a pretty poor performance. People like that it's easy to recycle but I bet a lot of it gets spoiled due to the mixed nature of the collection. Also see a lot of recycling bins not collected due to the wrong thing being put in them. Not so bad if it's just a quarter of your recycling but terrible if it's the whole lot. I'd rather have an arrangement whereby different recycling was collected separately - or at least the parts most likely to spoil each other separated out.

At least there's very little use of landfill in Nottingham, the rubbish is burnt to generate steam for a district heating system and will soon generate electricity too when a turbine hall is built at the local incinerator as part of its expansion plans.

 

[reb0118]

Midlothian's scheme:-

https://youtu.be/a01x9PXN5dI

Get it wrong and you can go to prison!

 

[cactustwirly]

Wokingham's recycling is probably the worst on this thread, so here goes:

Black Box: for cardboard, plastic & tin cans

Blue Bag: for landfill

Optional Brown Wheelie Bin(& £60 charge p/a): Garden Waste

All collected at the same time each week

 

[gswindale]

Hi,

Slightly surprised by Wokingham's collection setup as I'd have expected it to be similar to either Bracknell or Reading given the partnership between the three of them with r Edgar's to the civic amenity sites at Long shot Lane and Southmead.

Here in Bracknell we have:
Green Bin for normal waste
Brown Bin for garden waste (£40 charge from March)
Blue Bin for paper/card/tins/plastic bottles.

The Green Bin is collected one week and the others the following week.

 

[High Dyke]

How do binmen tell the different colour wheeliebins apart when collecting on early winter mornings?

With great difficulty... Oddly enough my own district council has Green for garden waste (provided you've paid the fee for the bin), Black for landfill and Grey/Silver for recycling.

When it comes to work then it gets silly... Different locations mean differing suppliers with various degrees of success when getting a bin emptied. One location has two red bins (1 marked General waste, 1 marked Recycling); these are supposed to be emptied alternate weeks, but invariably when the lorry turns up they empty both together regardless. :roll:

 

[Bald Rick]

St Albans has been done above (thanks AM9).

A couple of extras

1) I don't use the kerbside recycling for glass, as SADC don't recycle it as such - it goes off to be crushed up and used as a hard wearing surface course for road resurfacing. Whilst marginally better than landfill, the energy used to make glass from base material is enormous, and I would much rather it was recycled into, err, glass products.

So I take glass up the road to the bottle bank, where it gets collected by a different organisation who do use it to make glass. For those hardcore* recyclists, it is always worth checking out what happens to your recycling.


2) there are few places around town that take the tetra packs. I also put Pringles pots in there (similar construction of packaging). Apparently the aluminium lining is worth the recovery process.


What annoys me, intensely, is going to the recycling facilities and finding that people have left their recycling next to the relevant receptacle because the first bank / slot happens to be full, rather than looking at the next one 2 metres away. Messy gits.

* I also recycle my hardcore. And have been known to 'reclaim' some from the hardcore skip at the tip when the operatives are looking the other way!

 

[DelayRepay]

What annoys me, intensely, is going to the recycling facilities and finding that people have left their recycling next to the relevant receptacle because the first bank / slot happens to be full, rather than looking at the next one 2 metres away. Messy gits.

I am also in St Albans and I completely agree with this. Also annoyed with people who fly tip their general waste/junk at the recycling point. It is not uncommon to see an old Hoover, Microwave or TV dumped next to the bottle bank.

The thing that really annoys me is people who leave bags of second hand goods next to the Oxfam donation point because either it's full or their "donation" is too big to fit. Obviously these goods are useless once it's rained on them but someone still has to pay for them to be disposed off.

I heard the council are re-tendering the recycling services so we may see some changes. For example food waste may be split out from garden waste and collected weekly.

 

[Bald Rick]

I am also in St Albans and I completely agree with this. Also annoyed with people who fly tip their general waste/junk at the recycling point. It is not uncommon to see an old Hoover, Microwave or TV dumped next to the bottle bank.

+1

I saw a sofa at the Morrisons bottle bank once!

 

[WestCoast]

Birmingham:

Black lid - general rubbish. You can get a bigger bin if your household is more than six people

Blue lid - recycling. The main body of the bin is for glass and plastic and there is a separate pod for paper and cardboard. You can request an extra recycling bin if required. Ours is full of cans (soft drinks!) and amazon boxes

Brown lid - garden waste. A recently introduced subscription service which is collected every two weeks. Because it used to be collected for free there's still a lot of flytipping of garden waste


Rubbish is collected weekly whereas recycling and green waste is recycled fortnightly on alternate weeks

I was glad when Birmingham finally got wheelie bins, although the list of acceptable items in the blue recycling bin is smaller than I had in a previous local authority area. Ours has been rejected a few times, I live in a shared flat so it's a bit difficult to control what's going in there.

 

[Senex]

Does anyone else live in an area where the recycling scheme doesn't accept window envelopes, so that you must either put any such envelopes into the general waste or go to the trouble of removing the clear section before putting them out? (Likewise with cardboard packing with adhesive tape on it.)

 

[northwichcat]

Does anyone else live in an area where the recycling scheme doesn't accept window envelopes, so that you must either put any such envelopes into the general waste or go to the trouble of removing the clear section before putting them out? (Likewise with cardboard packing with adhesive tape on it.)

That used to be the case in our area when we have paper only bags but isn't now we have bins for mixed recycling. The paper only bags also had a no glue rule so you had to cut out the part of the strip where the glue was, or if you wanted to recycle catalogues or phone books you had to remove the pages so the binding didn't go in to the bag.

 

[Senex]

That used to be the case in our area when we have paper only bags but isn't now we have bins for mixed recycling. The paper only bags also had a no glue rule so you had to cut out the part of the strip where the glue was, or if you wanted to recycle catalogues or phone books you had to remove the pages so the binding didn't go in to the bag.

That sounds like a real way of discouraging people from re-cycling! We're not quite so bad, but the collectors actually sort through everything at the kerb-side and are very picky about what they will and what they won't accept.

 

[northwichcat]

That sounds like a real way of discouraging people from re-cycling! We're not quite so bad, but the collectors actually sort through everything at the kerb-side and are very picky about what they will and what they won't accept.

Like I said it's what was the case before we got mixed recycling bins. The paper sacks were collected by the now defunct Macclesfield Borough Council and the replacement scheme offered by Cheshire East Council replaced all the recycling sacks and tubs with one bin which accepts more items. Under the old Macclesfield BC scheme we had green boxes for glass and cans and the collectors sorted them in to different glass colours and cans at the kerbside but under the new scheme your bin will be emptied on to the lorry if it's not overflowing and there's no obvious non-recyclable items in it.

 

[WAB]

I'm impressed. What do you do with things like bones and egg shells? Do you do composting or just not eat stuff that produces this waste?

In Enfield, these can be put in food waste as well.

 

[DarloRich]

I'm impressed. What do you do with things like bones and egg shells? Do you do composting or just not eat stuff that produces this waste?

it all goes in our food waste bin. Meat left overs to tea bags and coffee grounds. The council sell it on for compost i guess.

 

[northwichcat]

it all goes in our food waste bin. Meat left overs to tea bags and coffee grounds. The council sell it on for compost i guess.

Presumably if the foxes don't get there first!

 

[DarloRich]

Presumably if the foxes don't get there first!

the little bin stays in the kitchen until the night before collection when you tip it into the big green wheelie bin so they will need to be quick. Not had a problem so far, even if the neighbours cat looks at the bin longingly!

 

[familyguy99]

Here in Oldham we have.

• Grey Bin for Rubbish (fortnightly collection)
  
• Brown Bin for Cans, Glass and plastic bottle only (they don't like it you put any other plastic in bins as binmen wouldn't empty it) - (fortnightly collection)
  
• Blue Bin for paper and Cardboard (fortnightly collection)
  
• Green Bin/Food waste Collection for Garden and food waste which get empty every week.

I wouldn't be surprise if Oldham doesn't got down same rounds as Bury and Rochdale council done and have bins empty every three weeks or do what Tameside Council done and have bin swap where Green bins is now for rubbish and Black bins is for Glass, Cans and Plastic Bottles.

 

[DelayRepay]

That used to be the case in our area when we have paper only bags but isn't now we have bins for mixed recycling. The paper only bags also had a no glue rule so you had to cut out the part of the strip where the glue was, or if you wanted to recycle catalogues or phone books you had to remove the pages so the binding didn't go in to the bag.

Used to be the case here too, but it changed about 18 months ago when we started putting cardboard in the paper box instead of in the green bin.

Where my mum lives in Rotherham, she can't recycle envelopes although she puts her paper and card in the same bag.

It's plastics I find odd - until a year or so ago, we could only recycle bottles. Now we can recycle any plastic packaging at the kerbside, but I know a lot of areas are still restricted to bottles. I'm not sure why a council would want bottles but not want other plastic pots and cartons?

 

[Ploughman]

Here in York the council have doled out various boxes and wheelie bins for recycling as in most other parts of the country.
However does anyone else do personal recycling?

By this I mean that the only material I put out for council treatment is General Rubbish and Plastic.
All the remaining Glass bottles, Steel, Alu, Paper and Cardboard goes towards our group recycling efforts that we have had in place since the early 70's.

As we are registered with the local council our tonnages are included in the council figures so that their figures thus look better.

I say tonnages because that is what we shift. Approx 10t per month and over the years we are in the 20 - 30K tonnes range.

 

[Domh245]

It's plastics I find odd - until a year or so ago, we could only recycle bottles. Now we can recycle any plastic packaging at the kerbside, but I know a lot of areas are still restricted to bottles. I'm not sure why a council would want bottles but not want other plastic pots and cartons?

Because almost every single plastic bottle is made of PET (Polyethylene terephthalate) so if you insist on bottles only, you can minimise the amount of processing that needs to be done after collection (and thus cost!). However with the improvements in automated processing, I imagine that they are now able to sort the plastics by density, allowing for mixed plastics recycling.

 

[Bevan Price]

St. Helens

Brown bin - General waste, collected every 2 weeks.
Green bin - Garden waste, every 2 weeks, but every 4 or 8 weeks in winter.

Weekly collections:
Black box - Cardboard, glass bottles, metal cans.
Blue sack - Paper, now including catalogues, etc.
Pink sack - Plastic bottles (don't use many of these).
Grey box - Food caddy: don't have one myself - any edible waste given to local birds.

Other plastic containers go in general waste, as contractors' recycling equipment can only deal with bottles.

 

[Mojo]

In Enfield, these can be put in food waste as well.

it all goes in our food waste bin. Meat left overs to tea bags and coffee grounds. The council sell it on for compost i guess.

Sorry if it wasn't clear as obviously anyone can put these items in food waste bin. That was a specific question to Peter Mugridge who said he doesn't use the food waste bin.

 

[crehld]

If food waste collection schemes aren't for you then you can also compost bones and the like in special food digesters (basically glorified compost bins which get hotter than your usual compost heap).

 

[DarloRich]

Sorry if it wasn't clear as obviously anyone can put these items in food waste bin. That was a specific question to Peter Mugridge who said he doesn't use the food waste bin.

no worries - I assume he composts them somewhere.