Yet more rules

[victor]

We have a green bin for paper ,cardoard ,tins, plastic bottles.
Bread ,veg bags go to the supermarket.
Glass we have to take to the communal skips on the sea front

[miasmum]

Ok so we have a brown bin for garden waste, we pay separately for that £52 per year. That gets emptied fortnightly and I am not supposed to put my guinea pig waste in there, but I pay for it so I put what I like in it, within reason obviously but guinea pig waste is vegetarian and compostable.

We have a black bin with a blue lid that is for plastics, glass cardboard and paper and we can put electrical waste, eg batteries and small electrical items, in a separate bag but tied to the handles of that bin.

We have a black bin for everything else

There is also a small brown bin for food waste, but I dont use that as we have a waste disposal unit

[cromwell]

We have a brown bin for garden waste, another brown bin for recycling(paper, cardboard, bottles, plastic) and a green bin for household waste. We bag all the household waste both not the others. A few years ago we used to have a small green bin with a net over it for bottles, but they stopped that.

[jenniren]

We have a green bin for garden waste, costs £48 per year and is collected fortnightly on a different day to the rest.
A big red bag for papers and cardboard plus a blue bin for recyclables like glass, hard plastic and cans. These are collected together fortnightly.
The black bin for normal household rubbish is also collected fortnightly, alternate weeks to the recycling.
We also have a small brown food bin which is collected every week. Ours is rarely full, we don't waste much, so it's only veg peelings, banana skins and so on.

We can't really complain as it's just the two of us so none of our bins are ever completely full, not sure it works so well for families.

[Workingman]

Can you imagine the carnage if different places followed the bin "rules" but with road signs!

[cromwell]

Can you imagine the carnage if different places followed the bin "rules" but with road signs!

With devolution, this is already happening, with blanket 20mph zones in Wales and barmy roundabouts elsewhere.

[JoM]

Six of us replying, so far, and six different systems up and down the country!

Does anybody else see the problem here?

Why oh why can't we all have one simple standard system with the minimum number of receptacles - one for "waste" and one for recyclables with communal collection points for glass and paper products, inc cardboard?

When we moved to this house we moved from Cannock Council to South Staffs. Same company emptying the bins, same bin men and sometimes we’d get a bin lorry with Cannock’s logo etc on it. Still do.

At our old address we were able to recycle vegetable peelings in the garden waste bin, we moved two miles away and our new council didn’t allow that.

Wasn’t it announced recently that collections are going to become more standard throughout the country, and I think it was said that most councils will have to collect food waste too.

[JoM]

This is what I was thinking of
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-67176392

[meriad]

We've been able to recycle food waste for absolute years. Must say, from that point of view Guildford is great as they take everything in one bin (card, paper, recyclable plastic, tins). We can also add (bagged up separately) batteries, textiles, small electricals every week if needed. Food waste is collected every week, with general waste and recycling collected on alternate weeks. Garden waste (which is paid for separately) is collected same week as general waste.

Where Guildford council fails BIG TIME, is that too much ends up in landfill

[Workingman]

I am a bit confused... I know it's easy, but please hear me out.

I can remember a time when we did not have a bin in the kitchen. Food scraps and leftovers were wrapped in newspaper and taken to the dustbin. So were peelings, trimmings from mum's work at the sewing machine, newspapers, old dishcloths, cereal boxes, bones and meat scraps, the contents of the vacuum bag... Most things went in "the bin". Old clothes, shoes, bedding, coats amd soft furnishings went to the rag-'n-bone man. That was our method of sorting waste.

Now, if I go to any large supermarket, B&M or Home Bargains, I can get a dedicated swing-lid kitchen bin and bags, but what goes in it? With all the sorting of this, that and the other mine is virtually redundant. Cooked food has to be bagged and put in the black bin (general waste) so do raw peelings unless you have a garden waste bin; card, paper, tins and plastics go in the green bin (recycled). Glass goes to the communal bins, which are everywhere, as do small electricals and shoes and clothes.

My kitchen bin now only usually gets the vac emptied into it, and even that goes in the big black bin, everything else has its own waste stream.

Tinkers now call regularly to take away old washing machines, fridges, microwaves and those sorts of things. Ours even has a mobile number on the side of his Tranny so that you can ring up to let him know what's left out.