Vocal Voices

The Times reports that Kirklees District Council (does that cover you, Crommers?) has introduced draconian new recycling regulations that has led to around 1,300 bins actually being confiscated by Council officials due to "misuse". Huddersfield has been mooted as a flash point.

Angry residents have resorted to blockading rubbish lorries, and it's reported one of the "bin inspectors" delving into the contents of recycling bins roadside actually finished up with a yellow warning sticker slapped on their forehead!

You do wonder where it's all going to end, don't you?

Recycling is a mess.... no consistency, even in neighbouring boroughs.

Kirklees follows Leeds MDC in that it has two bins - green and black - and you can opt-in for a brown bin for garden waste. The rules for what can go where are also identical.... but that's where it stops.

Kirklees has sorting centres - auto and hand - and still uses landfill. The sorting is tedious and expensive and it only takes a few items to contaminate a whole lorry, so it all goes to expensive landfill. Leeds took a different approach and does not now use landfill at all - zero.

The green bins are auto sorted in a brand-new facility where the odd bits of film, black food trays, nappies etc. are sent to the incinerator line. The remainder is then 'clean' enough to be properly recycled.

The black bins are also sorted, but this time as much of the recyclable stuff as possible is removed before the rest goes for incineration.

The incinerators produce electricity and hot water for district heating (once the infrastructure for that is in place). The exhaust gasses are scrubbed and the 'ash' is used for road / path hardcore or building blocks.

Brown bin waste is turned into mulch or compost for our parks and gardens.

The system was costly to set up, but it works and is supposed to be one of the blueprints for how larger conurbations work in the future.

No Os, I'm in Wakefield MDC. I suppose councils have to encourage recycling but employing people as bin snoopers is never going to be popular.
Eventually one of them will end up in a bin, for sure.

What you can and can't put in your bins (directions change annually and we can now recycle much less than we did a couple of years ago) and what the tip will or won't charge you for here is a minefield.

Here in Staffordshire we're now charged for taking certain things to the tip at a cost of £3 per bag (the size of which they state as being 76cmx96cm).

The fella who installed our fence last week took 20 bags of rubble which we had from a job last year as he has a trade pass for that but he couldn't take the 7 bags of turf we have from recently widening the borders because that's potentially chargeable to him (as it could be to us) and we couldn't determine whether, on looking in the bags, they'd class it as lawn turf or edging turf. The difference being that lawn turf is £3 per bag, edging turf is FREE.

We have four bins.
Blue for paper and cardboard.
Green for food waste and garden waste-no soil.
Brown bin for plastic bottles and trays and cans and other metal objects.
Black bin for anything else.
We take plastic bags to Asda for recycling.
Can take anything to the re-cycling centre free of charge in a car. This is checked as you enter the site. Well organised with staff to help to unload if necessary.