Been to two holiday cottages this month. Both asked us to separate recycling and put in different bins. Neither actually said what could be recycled.
At home recycling is "everything not food waste or hard plastic", so includes wrappers, plastic tubs, lids, cardboard, paper, all that stuff. It all just goes in one blue bin. Food waste and garden stuff,green bin.Everything else in the black bin. Easy.
No idea whether other authorities take plastics in the same way around the country
Does yours?
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It varies by local authority.
Most I believe, including mine, will now accept.
Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) – water bottles and plastic trays
High Density Polyethylene (HDPE) – milk cartoons and shampoo bottles
Polypropylene (PP) – margarine tubs and ready-meal trays
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If you are not sure what can be recycled it is far better to put a recyclable item into the waste rather than put a non recyclable item into the recycling bin
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>> If you are not sure what can be recycled it is far better to put
>> a recyclable item into the waste rather than put a non recyclable item into the
>> recycling bin
Exactly, throw everything in the bin, and have an enjoyable carefree holiday.
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Our recent experience in holiday cottages is limited to the Western Isles and only two different cottages. The council collect some stuff for recycling but not glass which we take to recycling skips in places around Harris.
At home we have a blue bin for paper, cardboard, plastic, glass and steel/alloy cans etc. Green for garden waste and black for landfill stuff.
Separate caddy for food waste - table scraps, stuff that's 'gone off' etc.
I assume anything in the blue bin that's not recyclable is sorted and sent to landfill, presumably the same elsewhere.
In a holiday place I'd expect the owner to make what can and cannot be recycled clear. Otherwise I guess the tenant could check the council's website.
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There are apparently 39 difference bin recycling regimes around the country
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>> There are apparently 39 difference bin recycling regimes around the country
Is that bad or a reflection of councils doing what suits the locale?
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I'm pretty sure I've read an article whilst I've been away stating that the Government are planning to mandate a standard regime across England (in reasonably short order).
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We have grey bags for landfill rubbish, red for recycling, blue for cardboard, a green bin for glass bottles, a box for paper and a caddy for food waste, and for those who need it a purple sack for soiled waste.
And if you want you can have a brown wheelie bin for garden waste, but that is a paid for service.
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>> I'm pretty sure I've read an article whilst I've been away stating that the Government
>> are planning to mandate a standard regime across England (in reasonably short order).
I've seen/heard that too.
Whether it's even practical, never mind good/desirable, is a different question.
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I think it was worded to make people think its mandatory, from what I've read it's more like a series of suggestions that councils are free to ignore.
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We're changing imminently to a waste collection every other week (with wheelie bins), and recycling (not glass or soft plastic, both of which you have to take somewhere) and food waste every week. And garden waste every week or fortnight (or maybe not at all if you've not paid extra), I can't remember.
Local social meeja is in meltdown :-)
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I understand the intention is to standardise that which is recycled by 2026.
At present different councils operate individual systems - (a) categories of items recycled, (b) separate waste streams, (c) colours of bins, (d) frequency of collection.
Not sure it will really make much difference as most people rarely move from one area to another and need to learn a new set of local rules. Whether legislation will mandate better as well as common recycling I don't know.
Separation of waste into several boxes must be a storage nightmare for some - flat dwellers may not have space for separate containers for food waste, cardboard, glass, plastic, paper etc.
Avoiding waste may be a far better strategy. Most have no clue about different types of plastic packaging - there may be far more benefit in standardising and limiting packaging to that which can easily be recycled.
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A son lives in Texas.
Bin emptying 2 x per week - pile it on the pavement (sorry sidewalk) -they take everything except food.
This is then taken to a unit where there is automated sorting of waste into recycled, buried and incineration.
Great service BUT you would not want to pay the "Council Tax" equivalent. 2 to 3% of the house value at some point roughly 20 years ago.
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>> Great service BUT you would not want to pay the "Council Tax" equivalent. 2 to
>> 3% of the house value at some point roughly 20 years ago.
>>
...just guessing at the historic house valuation, but I don't think mine is much off that range. :-(
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>> ...just guessing at the historic house valuation, but I don't think mine is much off
>> that range. :-(
I'm paying over 3% pa.
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>> I'm paying over 3% pa.
House values have nothing to do with the costs of providing council services - it only enables costs to be shared on the basis that those with nicer houses in an area can or should pay more.
How fair this is can be debated.
However don't be seduced into thinking your local council has much control over how your council tax is spent. It has almost none.
My total council tax is £2800 pa. My local town council gets £180 - about 7%. Police and fire get £450 (16%). The rest goes to South Gloucester Council (77%).
SGC also collect business rates and other government grants. They provide education, vulnerable adult and child care, waste collection, roads etc. Most spend is mandated by central government.
Council tax and the services residents get has very little to do with local democracy - it is largely a function of central government policy. In reality it is little more than a method of raising tax.
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He is almost $30,000, payable before March 1st in full, for his "Council Tax"
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So that’s3% of the house value??
I’m sure he can afford it.
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>> We're changing imminently to a waste collection every other week (with wheelie bins), and recycling
>> (not glass or soft plastic, both of which you have to take somewhere) and food
>> waste every week. And garden waste every week or fortnight (or maybe not at all
>> if you've not paid extra), I can't remember.
>>
>> Local social meeja is in meltdown :-)
>>
All sounds pretty standard. What set up do you have now?
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What Smokie describes is similar to what we have.
Wheely bins alternate by week between blue & green (mixed recycling and garden waste) and black (landfill) with food waste caddy emptied every week. Works fine for us. Immediate wrappings from food could get smelly in the black bin but they're bagged so it's not an issue.
Veg peelings, tea leaves etc go in our own compost so we generate very little food waste.
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We have 3 130 litre? wheelie bins, and a food bin.
Food bin - Weekly
Rubbish - every 2 weeks*
Garden - Every 2 weeks*
Recycling - Every 2 weeks.
*same week. Council sends out a collection diary every 6 months,.
Works well here
Last edited by: Zero on Fri 17 May 24 at 10:16
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>> Works well here
As does our very similar set up. There were all sorts of predictions that fortnightly collections of rubbish would lead to problems with vermin and maggots. I think we had maggots once in something that should have gone in the food waste caddy.
There's a least one story, which may or may not be apocryphal, of a campaigner for weekly collections claiming a permanent infestation of maggots. Upon examination they were a non UK species sold for fishing or some such purpose; silly cow was creating a problem where there was not one.
Oddly, one of my ex-MoJ colleagues, a woman more than one person described as mad as a box of frogs, complained of maggots in her bin - lived near Cambridge. Could she have been the person above?
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In addition to a paper diary my council has an app and sends out text message detailing which bin 24 hours before collection. Mind you my neighbour, a university lecturer regularly gets it wrong.
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>> In addition to a paper diary my council has an app and sends out text
>> message detailing which bin 24 hours before collection. Mind you my neighbour, a university lecturer
>> regularly gets it wrong.
We have a binfluencer. Lady over the way who has whichever bin(s) are to be emptied on Tuesday at the front of her house on Monday morning.
Neighbour who can see my drive but not hers thinks I'm the binfluencer but I'm merely a repeater station!!
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>> Neighbour who can see my drive but not hers thinks I'm the binfluencer but I'm
>> merely a repeater station!!
Ditto, if the cranky woman up the road gets it wrong, we all get it wrong
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>> Mind you my neighbour, a university lecturer
>> regularly gets it wrong.
Those who can do, those who can't teach!
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>> In addition to a paper diary my council has an app
Ours is kind enough to produce a calendar I can hook into my Google calendar. My Alexa then tells me all the daily events in my calendar the night before.
So I get a reminder for which colour bins at 5pm, when we put them out for the next day.
This works especially well when the schedules get jiggered about for bank holidays and so forth.
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"All sounds pretty standard" That's the point I suppose. We have weekly collections of - waste only in blue bags supplied by the council ( - they won't touch any other bags), waste foods in a small box also supplied, and recycled hard plastics in green bags which they also supply. No glass is collected and you can pay £86 for fortnightly garden waste collection in a bin provided by them. There are glass recycling points around and if you don't want to pay for garden waste collection then you take it to one of two tips in the Berkshire area.
The fuss has been mainly over the reduction in frequency of collections of general waste, and also, but less so, less so over having to have wheelie bins. The council are quite right that it's the norm in most other places, there is a lot less general waste and if you recycle properly it will not usually whiff so much as there is no rotten foodstuff in it.
There is a rump of people who will always want to "have their say" on matters, whether they know anything about them or not. There's the annual one about the council no longer cutting some grass verges, and doing less on most, countered by those who agree because they like the "natural" look. There's been arguments over parking costs, which were reviewed last in 2019 (but didn't go up then) and finally rose this year - it was a reasonably sharp rise but people were moaning that a £2 evening parking charge would prevent them from going to one of the £50+ a head restaurants in town. I once got involved trying top persuade them that Armco wasn't required to prevent instant death on a short piece of re-designed road which had resulted in a 6ft drop - on the inside of a slow bend - no deaths, or even minor accidents have happened afaik - and another with a lady who complained she couldn't get her large 4 x 4 through the width restriction (duh why do you think it's there? Go the other way round then!)
Last edited by: smokie on Fri 17 May 24 at 09:02
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Sounds like a fuss over nothing. Wheelie are far bigger than bin bags. Some of ours are collected monthly, never had a problem with the system at all.
Although our garden waste is fortnightly but only 30 quid.
Last edited by: sooty123 on Fri 17 May 24 at 09:38
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"Binfluencer" "Repeater Staions" I'm nicking those terms :))
Its interesting to note the domino effect on bank holiday weeks when you forget and put your bin out. 'One out all out.'
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We have big blue bin, everythif vaguely recyclable goes in this, the county has the highest recycling rate in Wales. It all changes on 3 June, at the cost millions to "Trollyboxes" (or as they have become known "Trolleyb***ks") this was pre-covid plan, which involved building a sorting centre and investing in a fleet (I believe EVs) of trucks. Several English authorities are now changing to a large bin for everything. What a complete load of b*****s.
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One bin for everything (recyclable) is what we have.
It works.
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Four bins. Big green for garden and food. Smaller blue, paper/card, smaller brown glass/plastic/metal, smaller grey npn=recyc.
Blue/green/grey go one week, brown the next. Fill your green up and you're knacked for gardening for 2 weeks. Just changed from weekly as garden season starts !
Bin cleaner comes fortnightly and does green/blue grey. Used to do green,brown.grey but council swappedlue and brown. Blue doesn't need a clean and now brown is empyied on day cleaners don't com. Why swap ?
We wash out all tins, etc and all grey is bagged and sealed before going in the bin but I guess there wii be many who don't and have brown bins stinking of stuff left in cans. Food is put in a kitchen caddy with a compostable bag which is sealed prior to green bin. Most people here leave the bins in the front garden, plenty of room at rear but means shifting one of the cars to get out.
I saw a picture on line of a local street in student land here. I counted47 bins at the road end of the back entry waiting, some knocked over and many with too much in ! Visual pollution !
Ted
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My local Council make a mess of many things pot holes, schools, social care etc etc
BUT the bins are almost 100% week after week.
4 Weekly Cycle
Green Bin - Unrecyclable (AKA RubbishRubbish) every 4 weeks - Mondays including Bank Holidays
Blue Bin - Metal/Plastic etc
Maroon - Paper
Brown Bin - Garden Rubbish - £45 extra for 9 uplifts
2 Weekly
Black Box - Batteries, anything small electrical/electronics, Glass
Weekly
Food
Large Item Pickup e.g old white goods - roughly within 10 days (limit 2 x per year) or 5 Black sacks
Council Tip - Well organized
Make an appointment (30 minute window) Apply on-line. Free for locals (proof of address needed)
Funnily enough as a student 60 years ago I worked for the Council Parks Department and visited the tip 2 or 3 times a day with the tractor & trailer. 2 up - driver and the other standing behind the driver holding on to the cab - little or no Health & Safety then!!
The smell in 1964 is still the same today
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Recycling sites are pretty efficient around here (Contracted out to avoid CC disaster number 38) - why don't LAs have commonality in bin colours across the country....?
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We spent decades in the fumes from a massive brickworks that was eventually closed down because of the pollution, only for it to be replaced by a ruddy great chimney for the waste incinerator being built.
The clay pits are now full of rubbish!
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>> Recycling sites are pretty efficient around here (Contracted out to avoid CC disaster number 38)
>> - why don't LAs have commonality in bin colours across the country....?
What would the gain be?
Liverpool without purple bins is unthinkable!!
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Why can't Liverpool get rid of purple bins?
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>> Why can't Liverpool get rid of purple bins?
They've already lost Klopp!!
It's just a thing up there. The City has purple bins, the posh suburbs on other boroughs do not. My son who's an adoptive Scouser certainly identifies with them.
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An iconic bin. Heard it all now.
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>> An iconic bin. Heard it all now.
A quick Google will tell you they really are; not just my son and his girl.
www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/revealed-liverpool-bins-purple-how-14120628
Last edited by: Bromptonaut on Sun 19 May 24 at 12:57
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Talking of recycling, like I imagine many others, we have about a million pills to take every day. That means we get a million empty blister packs every week.
In my ignorance for years I’ve chucked them into the recycling. I recently discovered they can’t be recycled normally, so I suspect they’ve all gone into landfill and are still there.
Apparently they can be recycled only in a “special machine”, and to get them into that chain they need to be collected separately. The only place near us is Cambridge Superdrug, where I’ve been once in 20 years, so not exactly on my normal routine.
So we’re now saving the damn things in case we ever get to Cambridge.
What do you do with yours, or does your authority make mention of recycling them? Ours doesn’t list them anywhere.
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I'm afraid ours go in the black (landfill) bin.
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Normal black bin, i wasn't aware they could be recycled.
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For some years we've been keeping them for the rare trip to Bracknell, where Superdrug takes them. Our local one doesn't, though I think the Boots in town now does.
Bracknell also has a huge 'Spoons so it's a real treat. :-) It's pretty much the only time the bus passes ever get used too!!
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Recycling on holiday - CGNorwich
