How much rubbish do you generate? How to have less?

[CountessDracula]

I'm doing the rubbish bags tonight.
There are 3 of us + a dog.
We recycle bottles, cans and paper.
Yet we STILL have 5 bags at the end of each week.
What can I do?

I do scrumple up things like milk cartons and plastic bottles v small, fold anything I can etc.

AND I do a trip to the dump with anything else recycleable once a month.

[hmb]

I find that we have far less rubbish when I have the time (and the inclination) to cook from 'scratch'. Not so much packaging, and the left over bits of veggies go on the compost heap in the garden.

We are also helped that we can recycle plastic with our local council pick up....cuts down a lot.

[Slinky]

There are 5 of us + 2 cats and 2 rabbits

Last night, I put out 2 bags, usually it's 3.

I recycle bottles, cans, paper, plastics, cardboard, glass. Don't do composting so veg peelings/scraps are "slap-up" meals for the rabbits

Also I buy all my fruit/veg "loose" so that I don't have all the packaging.

[21stcenturygirl]

Average 3 bags - the recycling lorry only comes every 2 weeks and I can never get the date right. They don't take bottles though.

[kiwisbird]

We have 2 half size bins, one blue for recyc and one grey for normal waste, we also have glass taken in green bin every fortnight
What we did was to have two small bins in the kitchen, one for recyc and one for house waste, this dramtically cut down what we put into household waste and uped the reycling!

[Janh]

CD, I am sadly proud of how little rubbish we generate. 5 of us (6 sometimes) and no messy pets (2 gerbils, one snake).

Recycle - newspapers etc (kerbside collection once a fortnight), all glass (supermarket or recycling point at tip);

most rigid plastic (milk bottles, squash bottles, occasional pop bottles, other foody bottles, various food containers etc), cardboard (all sorts, plus brown envelopes, etc), aluminium cans, batteries - all at recycling point at tip. Don't do tin cans but don't use many.

Compost all kitchen waste.

We have one small dustbin and most weeks don't even fill that. Swank swank.

(Anything even faintly potentially reuseable goes to charity shops, including holey clothes - in bag marked RAGS - and miscellaneous crayons, toy cars, Happy Meals toys etc. They may well throw them away, but I don't have to!)

Also I have some proper shopping bags and only get supermarket carriers when I need to replenish stock for football boots, swimming trips etc.

Lots of etcs there!

[hmb]

We use about a third-half of out wheelie bin a week, for the four of us.

[Posey]

Too much I'm sure, but no real idea as we live in a flat and have a rubbish chute, so can't see a weeks worth all together.
The council are doing more to make recycling easier for people round here so am aiming to do much more than at present.

[Clayhead]

Similar to hmb, between 1/3 and 1/2 a wheelie bin for four of us.

Recycle papers (collected by council), plastic, glass, buy fruit and veg loose, use those strong re-usable plastic bags for shopping or just shove under pram. Also have brown bin for garden waste which costs £15 per year and is collected fortnightly.

Any spare carrier bags I get I take to the local health food shop who then use them for customers.

[stupidgirl]

There are 3 of us, 2 cats and 2 guinea pigs. We have a standard sized bin and put one sack full out most weeks, not all.

What I want to know is why don't we, in this country, recycle juice cartons? Those make up the major part of our rubbish, and I know they recycle them in some countries.

[Janh]

It's because they're plastic-coated and cardboard combined, isn't it? So you can't put them in with the plastic or the cardboard.

[carla]

CD - swap husbands? Seriously tho', DH's so paranoid about it, it's like I'm MAKING rubbish. We take plastic to the recycling place, newspaper, glass etc gets collected from our door -- what more can I do? All the stuff that's able to be made into junk modelling gets taken to nursery. So ... what else??

[Twink]

The 3 of us used to fill around 3/4 to 1/1 of our wheelie bin until I discovered the tip (passed on the school run, but don't start!) take plastic bottles which the recycling collectors don't do. It also means I can recycle allie & tin cans at the same time as although they are collected, we don't have enough space in our recycling baskets.

We now only fill 1/4-1/2 of the bin.

[miranda2]

we found our rubbish virtually halved when we moved house last year, from a full wheelie bin to about half. The differences are that a) there is a kerbside collection of paper, plastic bottles, tins and glass (I used to recycle glass but not the other things), and b) we have a garden with compost bin. Its amazing the difference the compost bin makes - I wouldn't have thought that much went in, but there is so much less in the wheelie bin it obviously eats an awful lot more than I think!

[CountessDracula]

must point out that we don't have wheelie bins so when 1 say 5 bags they are only small brabantia 30l ones.

[sibble]

1 black sack usually for 3 of us plus the cat. We recycle paper, cardboard, glass, plastic. Compost food. Take to nursery any bits kids can use to make things and leaves about 1 sack.
use Ikea bags for groceries - they are great, have had them for about 6 years now.