To think pont blank refusing to recycle is anti-social?

[WinterSnow]

Went to stay with MIL last w/e and she has told me they won't recycle as they pay their taxes and don't want to be told what to do with their rubbish they are paying to have collected. Earlier this week I saw similar comments on the Daily Mail website (ahem, just browsing ...) in regard to an article saying people should be recycling food waste. Is it me or is a bit anti-social to point blank refuse to recycle your waste?

[GinOnTwoWheels]

People seem to forget its Reduce, reuse, then recycle. There's no point putting effort into recycling when the vast amounts of overpackaging and junk mail is still allowed.

I do recycle, but it really annoys me that there's all this focus on household recycling when big business is allowed to be so unnecessarily wasteful.

If councils/government etc were serious about saving the planet, the ridiculous wastefulness that is junk mail and overpackaging (Boots Gift sets for example) would be banned. Virgin Media send me a big fat marketing envelope every month that I do not want and cannot do anything to stop (they address it to 'The Occupier' to get round data protection/mailing preference service rules).

I also feel a bit about using the precious resourse that is clean drinking water to wash my rubbish. Why can't it be washed when they process it? Surely they need to remove labels from cans/bottles etc and this will get rid of any trace food bits. I don't spend anytime at all with my head in my bin, so I don't care if it smells bad.

[ShowMeTheYoni]

I have a food caddy in the kitchen and a bin for the contents of it outside. Our food is collected weekly. Our general waste, evey two weeks and garden waste and actual recycling every two weeks. We recycle so much that our general waste bin(a small wheelie bin) only ever gets half full every two weeks. Our big wheelie bin (recycling)is where everything else goes, from bottles, to tins, deodorant cans, cardboard and so on. It is easy. What I struggle with is remembering which bin to put out when!!

[givemeaboost]

I recycle everything, have 7 recycle boxes that go out fortnightly but will not recycle food waste, tried it when they first started it, lasted 2 weeks but couldnt bear the smell, the cleaning out of the caddy, the kids would mess about with the outside food bin, which is nasty and unhygeinic and it would get maggots and flies, all in all it was just nasty so i stopped and will never be persuaded to try again! I dont know how people cope with fortnightly bin colections though, theres me and 3 kids and a pet and we luckily have 2 wheelie bins(had 2 in nappies back a few yrs, have kept it since) but dont know if we'd fit it all in 1 bin for 2 weeks

[Crinkle77]

No I just think it's lazy. It's not that difficult or time consuming.

[WinterWinds]

We are only allowed to put food waste in the bio-degradable bags or loose, if we wrap in newspaper or it wont be collected.

Also if those bags get wet then they start to go slimy and because the food bin isn't airtight water also gets in alongside the flies, thus releasing a smell....it really not nice.
Even with the caddy thing that stays in the kitchen. I was getting flies laying eggs in the air vent thing at the top because they were attracted to the smell......No thanks not for me!!

Food gets double wrapped and placed in my household bin.

[fuzzpig]

Arf at recycling old threads :o

FWIW I hardly have to recycle anything now, we just save all our boxes and donate it all to DD's school for junk modelling! :o

I would really like food waste collected here though.

[sashh]

Bloody hell my council are good.

I had a food caddy already but just used it for veg to compost, the kitchen caddy gets emptied every day or so.

The food bin outside is foxproof and quite well sealed. Never had a problem with smell unless you actually open it. We have two wheelie bins, one for all other recycling, one for things that can't be.

We can put food in packets/bags in the recycling, nice if something has gone off before opening.

All three are emptied on a Friday, I don't even need to put the bins out, as long as the gate is unlocked.

[Scholes34]

Recycling is good. Reducing waste and re-using is even better.

If people put more effort into reducing the amount of waste they produce, we'd be in a better place. I'm amazed at how much waste people can produce that a two week collection isn't sufficient. You can wrap smelly food waste in newspaper before putting it in the wheelie bin if odours are a problem. We have our food/compost wheelie bin cleaned once a month for £3. It's £3 well-spent.

Why do Tesco need to wrap my six cans of baked beans in plastic? Surely their tills are sophisticated enough to be able to apply a reduction to six cans of baked beans without wrapping them in plastic.

Can anyone tell me where you can get the starch-based bags? I'd love some for my food waste caddy.

[WinterWinds]

If I didn't recycle my household bins would be overflowing. Currently have 3 different bins and a dinky food bin.

I actually have 2 bins of each colour so storing 6 fecking wheelie bins is a pain. I will fill both dry recycling bins every fortnight (as this also includes cardboard) and I refuse point blank to do food waste.

Those bins are supposed to be airtight but the flys still manage to get in and it ends up full of maggots and also the fact It stinks to high heaven and I wont have it in my garden.

I don't really find it a problem recycling but then again i wont wash it out before putting it out, the council don't pay my water bill so If they want me to recycle the can friggin wash it.

[EuroShaggleton]

My parents have to separate recyclables into separate bins - glass, plastic, paper, etc. Then one recycling lorry comes along and they are all chucked in. Yet the bins will not be collected if the rubbish is not correctly sorted. It's bonkers.

I also think that by pressuring consumers, the pressure is on the wrong point. They should be taxing the supermarkets who overpackage everything massively. Consumers don't have much choice to buy this stuff because they are all as bad as one another.

[Tortington]

yabu for clicking on daily mail website and generating money for them via advertising revenue, they are vile and obscene and make their money off vile politics, spouted off the backs of dead children.

climate change may or may not be true - i can't tell you how much i don't really care, however it IS sensible to recycle

but all this GREEN has got to be profitable. I think a study was done about the amount of energy that goes to recycle and whether it actually offsets the product being recycled.

never the less - it seems sensible to me to re-use things

some councils committment to it are better than others

the wheels were stolen off my wheelie bin - this is a new thing, usually it just gets nicked - which is odd, becuase the council replace it for free - which i know is not the case in other councils.

but it takes ages to come.

and all the fucking rules

and all the fucking washing of recepticles

i am really not that dedicated. And ( i found out recently) my council has an appaulling recycling record

why?

becuase if there is one dirty thing - they chuck the lot as 'contaminated'

so even if i do wash the shit out of my things - if someone doesn't on the bin round that day - it gets chucked - can that be right?

well according to a councillor it is


its sensible, but whilst we are all busy saving the planet - other fuckers are doing it for profit - so you're probably actually not making a shit load of difference

[ImTooHecsyForYourParty]

Beaten.

[andubelievedthat]

Germany>big on recycling ,very, ! put 1 thing in wrong bin and the fine is masssssive, and every bin is checked ,every time.

[BeatenByAnEgg]

Recycling old threads - how very environmentally conscious

[BoneyBackJefferson]

iscream
"that contribute to climate change"

So by recycling I am preventing something that the scientific community is still arguing about.

More people would recycle if the council if they (the householder) didn't spend so much time separating the the rubbish only to have it thrown in the back of the same bin wagon.

[Dawndonna]

I recycle. I will not however recycle food waste until we go back to weekly collections. We tried it, and the smell outside the back door, after nearly two weeks in hot sun is all pervasive, and it seeps into the house. No options to move bins further away. As I said, weekly collection and I'm happy to give it a go.

[Cakebitch]

I ran a business until recently. The council could not have been less interested in us recycling our rubbish. .(appoximately one large skip of bottles a week, and the same of cardboard) The same council that insists that householders do it.

[tonyhawken]

I have been very good at recycling - and this includes food waste. The problem is I have almost run out of the starch degradeable bags and have asked the council for more. They have listed a number of stores where I can buy some - none of these are near me. I also fail to see why I should have to pay for them. If the council wants me to continue recycling food waste I rhink they should send me some more of these bags. They have also suggested that I line my small bin with newspaper. But, I have pointed out to them that this will leak, and I am not prepared to keep cleaning up the mess. I have told them that when I run out of these bags, ny food waste will be going with my general non-recyclable rubbish and into the wheely bin.

[Tee2072]

I have no problem with being thought anti-social.

I have a problem with a corrupt system that doesn't actually help all that much.

[startail]

My problem with recycling is you have to wash it out. In the case of mayonnaise and similarly oily things this requires hot water. I spend too much on oil already
Also our, intelligent, council take bottles, cans and green waste, but not plastic. We live in the sticks 90 % of us have room for a compost bin, many of us have room very sizeable compost heaps. I have a bin full of plastic bottles and a garage full of cardboard boxes waiting to go to the tip.
Please council take these things out of my life.

[iscream]

A UK site about it.
www.recycling-guide.org.uk/facts.html

This is from my provinces Blue Box site


Why should I recycle?

The concept is simple: recycling turns products that would otherwise become waste into new products or resources. Garbage is a huge problem in our consumer society, and reducing the mountains of waste that go to landfill addresses this continuing threat to our health and the environment ? and the critical shortage of landfill space. In just six years, we?ve diverted 5,300,000 tonnes of waste from landfill sites ? that?s the equivalent of 3,595,230 pickup trucks or three rows of pickup trucks stretching end to end from Vancouver, B.C. to St. John?s, Newfoundland. Recycling ensures useful materials aren?t wasted, and reduces the related consumption of raw materials and energy in manufacturing ? glass, for example, takes up to 4000 years to decompose in a landfill site, but can be recycled indefinitely. When you take your blue box to the curb, you?re also helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change, and protecting our natural resources from depletion. But you?re not only doing the right thing for our environment ? you?re also doing the right thing for the economy. In addition to creating jobs, recycling creates a profitable market for recycled materials, an increasingly important commodity in today?s marketplace.

[RobF]

I think council tax is ridiculous, but I still recycle.

[redwineformethanks]

I'd be interested to know more about what happens to the goods I conscientiously recycle in various bins each week. I like the idea but am confused by the thought that various local authorities deal with recycling differently which makes me wonder if it all goes to landfill anyway

[Scuttlebutter]

Recycling is one of those things that sounds very green but is very dependent on the materials concerned, how it's collected and then how it's processed as to how green it is in reality. For example, our local Council offers a weekly food waste collection, but unfortunately the waste collected is then transported by road over a distance of around 60 miles to be composted. I refuse to believe that is an environmentally responsible way to deal with the food waste. On the other hand, it makes perfect sense to recycle aluminium cans because of their high net worth reflecting the embedded energy costs. So, like many environmental issues, it is far more complex and subtle than a recycling=good/not recycling =evil planet killer.

[northerngirl41]

I refuse to recycle because I know for a fact that we're told to recycle different things from my mum and dad just up the road (they are in a flat, we're in a house) and that the same bin lorry collects it. I consider it to be very much like the community iron recycling which went on during the war, supposedly to build tanks etc. Most of it went to landfill anyway but it was a really good PR campaign.

I too believe there are much worse things you can do than not recycle - having daily newspapers, a big car, taking long haul flights, not using green electricity and actually having children is about the most environmentally damaging thing you can do in life, but I'm guessing since you're on Mumsnet, you did that one?