Bit sick of recycling piling up in the house

[soupfiend]

The house is filled with cardboard, theres some in the conservatory, some in the utility room and then a big pile in the hallway on the side table meaning I cant reach the side lamp and everything keeps tumbling and slipping off (because the card isnt dead square) creating a mess

It stresses me out quite honestly

The 'cardboard bag' is full and doesnt get emptied very frequently so I have to hoard this stuff inside and its really annoying.

Then we have two little bins in the kitchen to put other recycling into which get taken out to the big bin from time to time, I just feel like Im living surrounded by rubbish

@soupfiend Have you actually checked on your council website whether they do wheely bins for cardboard and paper?

I would be very surprised if they don't. You may have to pay extra on your council tax for it, but it is worth every penny.

We have 4 bins - grey for general household waste, green for garden waste, blue for paper and cardboard and brown for tins, glass and hard plastic packaging. We manage to fill the brown and blue bins in between collections. We don't even half fill our grey waste bin though.

Yes as Ive already said, no bins for cardboard, no extra bags possible.
Im not sure why people think I havent checked this!

I deal with a lot of houses of HMO in a neighbouring council as well and despite the set up of the homes, you cant order extra bins there either, so its not just my local council where this is difficult

It does build up at this time of year, I’m doing a dump run tomorrow morning to get rid of loads of cardboard etc. luckily I can just turn up and the council recycling centre is 10 minutes away from the house otherwise it becomes a real chore.

I take a carrier bag out daily to dispose of any rubbish in a public bin.

Oh, case in point, for some reason quite a large catalogue has come through the letterbox earlier, 226 pages, to advertise 'your local pharmacy'!!

And OH has created a carrier bag full of card from his medication this morning, he collected it yesterday and now the boxes need chucking after he puts the pills in the dosset box.

Its breeding around me!

This is surely an issue for all residents where you live @soupfiend
Can everyone lobby the council to provide wheelie bins?

It is really windy today where I live. If there were the bags we used to have outside, the place would be littered with everyone's rubbish.

Yes a lot of rubbish blows around this road unfortunately its really windy where we live.

Im not sure what people think of it, but I know on cardboard day there are tons and tons of extra bits of card that come out and therefore other people must also be storing this inside, perhaps it doesnt bother them, bit I find it causes a lot of clutter and mess in the house.

@soupfiend Why are you generating so much cardboard?

You could take it to your local allotments, as cardboard can go in compost bins. And as people have already mentioned, it can be used to improve the soil.

If your recycling bins/bags are full I'd just put it in the regular bin.

Because everything is in cardboard? Toothpaste, medication, prescription creams, cereal, mince pies, cat litter bags, cat food boxes, Amazon deliveries, small bits of furniture, pizza box, takeaways, lasagne sheets, toothbrush heads, makeup, toilet rolls, kitchen roll.....

I've just been handed a work piece of equipment and that has cardboard protectors inside the box plus cardboard wrapped around the plug

We have recycling bags too and generally it’s fine, the packaging you mention (mince pie box, toothpaste box) don’t take up any space and can always be squeezed in. Mine only get full when we have had some big one-off deliveries, like when buying furniture for the house. Surely it doesn’t overflow year round?

Can you buy your own wheelie bin/ dustbin to at least store it outside the house? The council won't collect it (unless you're lucky) but it would get it out of the way.

If you can book the dump online, can you make advance bookings for the weekend so at least you know you can get rid of it?

I feel your pain though. Our council only provide one wheelie bin for recycling, though it is collected weekly. My dc constantly buy drinks in cans and plastic bottles (irritates me a lot but it's their money) and my DH works at home and orders a lot to the house. Together with all our other recycling, our bin is pretty much always full. We often take extra cardboard to the dump. It's only about 10 minute drive but we no longer have a booking system and often end up queueing there for 20 to 30 minutes at weekends. 😠

I've been trying to burn some of ours. Dh has been to the tip.

@soupfiend i can fully empathise with your cardboard woes.

we used to have the flimsy bags that always blew away - lots round here just started using reusable bags etc.

then we had the small boxes with lids on (lids always blew away then).

now we have giant wheelie bins and I’m so happy.

we only get it emptied once a month and it’s big enough for us now.

I used to take the cardboard all flatpacked and leave it in car boot and drop some off everywhere I could. paper and thin card was in a separate bag so I could pop it in waste bins etc easier.

Have to book where i am. Have done since covid. You can't just turn up. Even having booked you often still have to queue!

It’s the same where I live, one fairly small bag for paper and card recycling and they won’t take any extra. It’s full but manageable normally, I stand on the boxes that dog food, cereal, crisps etc come in but it’s impossible if I have made a big purchase, like the flat pack garden table I got in the summer. I can’t understand why it’s hard to pick up an extra large box and fling it in the lorry, it’s not the same as black sacks full of dirty nappies. Surely we should be encouraged to recycle rather than encouraged to put recyclables in the general waste bin 🤷🏻‍♀️

@Jostuki
I take a carrier bag out daily to dispose of any rubbish in a public bin.
these bins are not for household rubbish, our LA has put slots on them to reduce the amount of household waste being shoved in.
Cardboard is good for composting for any gardeners, our community garden uses; cardboard, straw, garden waste and feeds with worms; produces excellent soil improver.

We have all Wheely bins.
Red for cans, glass and plastic
Beige for paper
Green for food/garden
Tiny grey one for general.

If you put the wrong thing in any they won't empty them. So you can't put cardboard in the grey bin!

It doers overflow year round yes

The issue with the tip is that we can only go on weekends due to work and last weekend for example we were away from home, so thats another weekend we cant do it. This weekend we have things to do that dont slot around a dump run so we'll try to get into the local bins but thats only any good if they're not full up, if they are full up back it comes again and we're out getting shopping this weekend so need the boot free for that

And because we dont have huge amounts of time, most of the things we get are ordered on Amazon, rather than bought at shops (cheaper too) and obviously everything gets put ina box

Its not the card itself its the fact that its emptied so infrequently and often the bin men forget the bags for some reason. I think its ok if you have a shed or garage but we dont.

That's nits that they provide a smaller thing to store recycling in than waste. They're meant to be encouraging recycling!

Also a bag is so obviously impractical given the weather in the UK with the endless wind. Bonkers.

Our council provides a bin just like the waste bin, and will give you a second recycling bin if you request one.

Perhaps petition the Council to change their waste collection policies to something more sensible and realistic? I'm sure other residents must be equally frustrated by such nonsense.

Our wheely (aka wheezy) bin is jam packed after two weeks so much so we have a box to put out on Monday too. Christmas isn’t helping but cardboard is ubiquitous

Ah yes, you're absolutely right. Because of your working hours, and because you have things to do at the weekend, your local Council should absolutely change the way they manage recycling across the Borough.

Seriously, if your sack is the size of the one a PP posted, and it's emptied at least monthly, then really you should be able to fit all your cardboard in as long as you're folding it down appropriately. If you're an excessive waste generator, then I'm afraid you'll just need to make the time to go to a recycling centre/tip.

Excessive waste @mrsm43s because a small bag is full once per month?

It's not the OP's fault that companies send everything wrapped in endless amounts of cardboard packaging.

People have many reasons for ordering things online: disabilities, limited time to go to shops. It also depends on the number of people in the household. Some people can very easy to end up with enough recycling to fill a wheely bin per week if you don't go to physical shops, without any "excess consumption" and obviously there are more deliveries at this time of year because it is Christmas.

Councils should be encouraging recycling, not making it more difficult by limiting the amount of capacity to less than that available for landfill waste, surely.

As we can see from this thread alone, councils take very different approaches and that is hardly fair. There shouldn't be a postcode lottery on cardboard disposal!