Vocal Voices

Hi Ria, I read your comments earlier about the effort you go to dispose of your cat food sachets and well done as I always say principles only matter if you stick to them when its inconvenient.

Poor Luke is really struggling these days with the lack of plastic straws. He hates the feel of the metal ones and the paper ones are useless because he sucks so hard. I wouldn't have a problem with this for the greater good, it I didn't wonder what happens to the 100 + lateral flow tests his team produce over a month.

Thoughts?????

MM just looked on E Bay loads of plastic straws and Amazon

Some biogradeable
I'm not so good at recycling just chuck it in the green bin crisp packets and stuff I don't look for places to take them

Thanks Saundra, I'll look there. He can take them out with him then, so when they give him the paper ones we can say no thank you.

Saundra I do my best but I have enough to worry about.

But it does annoy me that people are going to the effort they are and yet single use lateral flows are ignored.

Shell, you can still get plastic straws on eBay. The recycling sheet from the council issued last October advised to only get clear ones not coloured and certainly not black. They are about £3 for 100 so Luke need not suffer the metal, paper or heavy duty plastic ones. We can green bin them here in Leeds along with a lot of other stuff some councils will not take.

The local Co-op takes packets, crisps etc. as well as bread bags and the likes, and also batteries. I am not a big user of such things but I do know the collections are there. Some of the bigger recycling units in shopping area car parks also take small electricals, fabrics (clothes / bedding) and shoes.

It might be worth doing a search for what is available locally as it appears that different places, even ones next door to each other, have different rules and regs.

We only have two bins - green and black - and collections alternate week on week. Brown bins are available at extra charge.

LFTs, disposable masks and gloves as used by the general public are an environmental disaster in the making and recycling info on them is scarce. When I was at hospital just before Christmas I noticed separate bins for the various items alongside the 'sharps' collections.

we have black bins, brown bins, black bins with a blue lid and brown food caddies. I hate the food caddies, we dont produce any food waste because we have a waste disposal, but you can smell them in the summer when people put them out.

I do separate and use my bins properly. But when we left our holiday cottage yesterday, we had landfill, food and paper, plastic, card, cans and bottles. But then we we got round to the bin store you had to sub divide them into paper and card and plastic tins and bottles. It was raining, it was dark and I didn't feel well so they got left in one bag. Make it too complicated people dont bother.

I will let Luke's team know thank you, he really struggles with paper ones.

It is the lateral flow tests that really annoy me. There was a photo of them on Facebook, with the caption, I'm so glad we abandoned plastic straws, thats what made me think

I'm afraid I don't use the food waste caddies either We don't have much food waste anyway - especially since we got a resident Harry I do recycle as much as I can, and wash out what needs washing first.

We don't use landfill here in Gloucester any more, there is a huge new incinerator, outside the city, by the M5. It was hugely controversial locally, but I think it's better than the landfill sites.

We have four bins, blue for paper and cardboard, brown for metal and palstic bottles, green for food and garden waste and black for anything else.
The council issue a rota for the emptying of thedifferent coloured bins.

I use thye plastic bags which are pushed through the letter box from charitis to collect plastic bags and film. When it is full I take it to Tesco
who have a large wire mesh cage for this type of waste plastic. There is also a container for ol;d batteries.

Lateral Flow test kits - indeed, there isn't much advice out there, but Herefordshire says:

How to dispose of LFT kits safely
To dispose of the test kit safely, place all the items from the test and the plastic packaging into a bag and then place in your black general waste bin.
This applies whether the test result is positive or negative.
None of the plastic items or plastic packaging should be put into the green recycling bin or recycling sack. They are not recyclable in your kerbside recycling bin.

https://www.herefordshire.gov.uk/rubbis ... 20negative.

More or less identical wording on the Warwickshire County Council website.

There is a local Eco-Cafe where you can recycle esoteric things like bread wrappers and ink cartridges; Mrs O does use them, but it's a lot of hassle, TBH.

Ossie, that quote is virtually word-for-word what we have in Leeds for households.

Hospitals, clinics, test centres etc have their own, rather strict, systems to follow.

What's a food waste caddy? I have a small container I bought myself from Dunelm in the kitchen for veg peelings, egg shells, etc, but this is emptied into my compost bin in the garden when it is full. We aren't provided with anything by the council for this.

https://www.dunelm.com/product/addis-25 ... t=Bins_BAU

We have a blue lidded bin for paper, card, aerosols, cans....a grey lidded bin for 'the rest', and a green box for glass. Also a green lidded bin for garden refuse for which we pay an extra £35 a year for it to be emptied fortnightly. Each council bin is emptied fortnightly, so there is essentially a weekly collection - the blue bin and the green box one week and the grey bin the next. I wash everything out before putting them in the bin (empty milk bottles, cans of dog food/beans/tomatoes etc) and any food container such as when we get a takeaway is washed and put into the paper bin.