Are People Really So Stupid?

[TheRugbyValkyrie]

Well, my flabber, is well and truly, ghosted!
I was reading through the leaflet, left by the bin men, on Friday. It detail collection dates and a list of what can and cannot be recycled.
At the bottom of the list it says "disposable nappies must be placed in the grey lidded household waste bin."
It goes on to say that over 1,500 nappies A DAY have be removed by hand in the recycling centres
Who are these people that put soiled nappies into the recycling bin??
Even if you don't know if disposables can be recycled, surely the presence of wee and poo would give you the answer 🤢

I imagine people get desperate if their rubbish is taken once a fortnight but their recycling taken weekly.
It's terrible behaviour of course but I've seen ppl moaning about how they can't possibly have soiled nappies lying around for two weeks (if you genuinely can't then use reusable ones, is my view- there are some where the inner liner bit is disposable although compostable, so still convenient but takes up less bin space than a whole nappy). Or take them to the tip yourself.

I've pulled the occasional nappy out our recycling tub, the kids like helping me out stuff in the bin and mistakes are made. If you forget to check before it goes out I can definitely see how it happens.

I don't think it happens because people are stupid. I think they just don't care.

Doesn’t excuse it but in our area general waste is only collected once every 4 weeks, there are a lot of over flowing bins around including recycling ones that clearly don’t have recyclables in them as a result of this.

I think they just don't care.
Sadly I think this is true.
I work with someone who would rather make an extra trip to the tip with a black bag of mixed rubbish than have the “bother” of sorting their recycling.
I’m the only person in my office who washes plastic tubs before they go in and I am continually fishing soiled stuff out to wash it up so it doesn’t contaminate the whole bin.
I can well believe that people will just shove stuff in the next collection bin and not give it another thought.

our council has a weekly nappy collection so you have special different coloured bags and the collect them every week as our normal bins are fortnightly. makes such a difference espcially when i had 3 kids under 4 all of whom were in nappies at some point during the day and night.

People don't care, they think 'I pay my council tax' (or whatever) 'why should I do this'

This is an international problem....
I have been heard to muse loudly (inner yard - sound travels really well) on this topic and on the inability of people to cut up carton boxes and so filling a complete recycling bin.
The more grey waste there is (i. e. waste not gone into recycling) the higher the cost for all inhabitants.

I don’t imagine they’re stupid or lacking in care.

I had 3 under 3 all in nappies, it took me months of contacting the council to get a larger bin to fit the nappies. Only after several inspections where they noted I was recycling everything possible was I granted the big bin.
If your bin is full and you’ve no means of getting to the tip then where are you going to put the nappies?

See also signs in public toilets telling you not to flush nappies. I get why people might think it's ok to flush tampons (although you shouldn't) but nappies are huge.

yup my flats' recycling bin last time contained bags of dog poo, polystyrene, coat hangers, and glass (should be in a different bin). I assume it was too much work to walk the extra 4 metres to the general waste bins. Bins are emptied weekly and weren't full. Some people just don't care.

Tinsel did you look into reusable nappies? With the compostable liners as in my post? Even just for the day with pampers etc at night. 3 under 3 must've been tough but you'd have spent an absolute fortune using disposables for all of them!

Didn’t have a spare second to be laundering nappies as well as all the clothes, etc.

A multiple birth wasn’t part of the plan.

I think some people are naive and over-optimistic, rather than stupid per se. They think that nappies should be recyclable, cos, well, they're plastic aren't they. So they chuck them in with the other random assortment of various plastic items. The problem is systemic, as well as educational. Recycling plastic is way too complicated from the waste separation plant point of view. So many different types of plastic on the market, waste plants can't keep up, nevermind householders. We just need to reclaim the waste energy by incineration and be done with it. Plastic is so abundant it's not even economically worthwhile recycling... it's a waste product from the petroleum industry. Scandinavian systems are very modern, high tech and low polluting. Then have recycling for glass and metal which are easy to harvest. And deposits on bottles that can be refilled like milk and pop. Discounts for things like taking your own flask to the coffee shop and tupperware tubs to the butchers.

If the council are too stupid to be able to arrange adequate bin collections, there's not much hope for the people at their mercy. Which sounds terribly over-dramatic I know, my view is coloured by the way my council does whatever it wants with no consideration at all for us mere mortals. I am careful about recycling myself, but I can't get worked up about people who are doing their best but who are hamstrung by their council's determination to collect as little waste as possible.

Why not just provide a collection service for nappies, dog poo and so on for an extra monthly charge?

We have 10 trolley type bins for the whole building, 9 recycling, 1 rubbish. Guess which one is full on day 4 after emptying? Of course it isn't ok to chuck nappies into the recycling, but it is preferable to leaving them by the roadside.

Was all set to answer yes to thread title without reading, but...

About every 6 weeks or so, the main rubbish collection just bypasses our entire estate, leaving us with the black bins for another fortnight. The dump only opens 2 days a week. The rubbish needs to go somewhere.

On a similar vein to other posters, I've moved to a 3rd area recently, my parents live in a forth. All have totally separate rules on what can go into what range of receptacles. Then you get the near identical packaging where only one can be recycled, but all the labelling says both can (but it depends on your area).
Then there's the occasional expose about councils who pass all their separated rubbish to a company - who dump it all back together in a container and ship it to the Philippines.

I don’t think people would ever do it knowingly - maybe they just got momentarily distracted and made a mistake.

We asked for a bigger bin as I was pregnant and our bin only gets emptied every 2 weeks so was already full every time. The council said the baby was a lifestyle choice so we couldn't have a bigger bin.

We tried reusables with our older child but no nurseries around here would accept them so we're sticking with disposables for this baby. Aldi and Lidl's own brand are very affordable.