To stop recycling plastic bottles and cardboard.

[BornToBeRiled]

I genuinely am not sure. My house feels a mess at the moment, and is getting me down. The pile of cardboard and milk bottles gets out of control, but we can only get to the waste centre at weekends, because they close at five. I have recycled faithfully for years, but I've had enough. I try to avoid over buying of packaging but can't avoid it all. WWYD?

Don't you have kerbside recycling where you live?

Do you not have a recycling wheelie bin where you are?

Can you not store them outside somewhere?

For bottles and cans only.

Where do you store the recycling? Could you keep it outside in a bin or shed or somewhere?

I thought most places had kerbside collections now?

Don't you have a garden?

I am in the same boat except our cardboard is collected every fortnight but we have to take the bottles to the tip and we don't have wheelie bins here. I grin and bear it but I have been tempted to chuck it into my normal waste but I just can't bring myself to!

I have bought another bin for recycling to help contain it but it is soon overflowing so unless you have outdoor space (ours is limited) then I'm not sure what the answer is.

I did try outside but it all got so wet, and then had to be trailed through the house.

I dont recycle bottles and cans for the same reason. We do have kerbside recycling, but it only comes once every two weeks.

We don't have anywhere at all out the front for the boxes to go, our house is not that big and there is no space inside, and we already have to carry the normal waste and the recycling box of cardboard through the house every week. It would be do able, but it would be a huge pain in the arse, we would have to pay for more boxes from the council, and we would have to stack it all up in the garden because there is no more space in the little mini shed thing where our rubbish goes at the moment. It's just not going to happen.

I don't recycle mine either, we were given bags to store them in for recycling but I've nowhere to put them. If I put them outside the whole thing is a waterlogged sodden mess full of spiders.

I have asked for a seperate recycling bin (As i pay top band of council tax i didn't think that this was above and beyond the realms of possibility.) but no.

I would feel really awful, but am so fed up of the piles in my kitchen.

If its for bottle and cans only then i would bin it then maybe your council will get their finger out and start recycling , what about a plastic box with a lid and just store it outside , ? we have lots of bins and boxes for recyling where i am but it still can build up , our kerbside comes weekly and they take paper glass etc and the waste and cardboard bin get emptied fortnightly , but it doesnt really build up ,

I feel a bit like this with our tetra paks (fruit juice and long life milk cartons). I started saving them when the eco-centre in the local High Street was collecting them, but they got overwhelmed and stopped collecting them, so now it's a car journey to the tip. I'm not convinced what I'm saving by recycling them isn't cancelled out by having to make trips to the tip when I wouldn't otherwise be going
It's a shame there's not more collection points at local supermarkets or the High Street.

I will happily recycle whatever the council collects, bottles, tins and newspapers atm only. The rest goes in with the general household waste.

It's a shame but YANBU.
We have an issue with recycling too. We have no outside space so the numerous boxes and heavy duty bags handed out by the council are next to useless- we'd need an extra room in the house just to keep them and we're already in a one bedroom house!
FWIW we do recycle but only because I'm not working at the moment and can pop down to the recycling bank when the pile in the kitchen gets too much. Gets me out the house! When/if I go back to work it may be a different story.

I sympathise. I our region of Scotland, each household has 4 wheelie-bins, a thin, half volume one for landfill (collected every 2 weeks), and 3 normal-sized wheelie-bins for paper/card (every 4 weeks), cans/plastic (every 4 weeks) and food& garden (every 2 weeks).

I have a half-acre garden (rural, so not unusual to have large gardens), and can hide the bloody things behind a hedge, but the village/town houses with less space look a mess with bins everywhere and often left in the street for days at a time blocking pavements, and it's a right PITA to remember which bin to put out, and when. No bin will be emptied if the lid is even 1/2 cm open, no extra bags will be lifted. You can't buy extra bins, or extra collections.

There is no glass collection, so on a weekly basis, we have to drive around 5 miles to the dump (or 6 miles to the supermarket), sorry recycling centre with the glass and with the plastic, cans and paper and card as the bins for monthly collection are full in about 10 days.
My kitchen and utility room are typically full of empty cartons etc soaking/drying (it has to be washed!), or waiting to be sorted..... I hate washing it all, PITA and bugs the hell out of me.

There is absolutely no capacity in the land-fill bins to put in ANYTHING such as glass (which our council refuse to recycle), as we have a baby + 5 other people in the household.

We get the same allocation of recycle bins as 1 or 2 person house-holds, and that appears to be what the council have based the collection needs of the "average family" on. Everyone I know with more than 1 child seems to do the same - take car boots full of recycling with them to the supermarket as the do not have room in their recycle bins.

The obvious answer here would be fortnightly collections, not monthly. We have noticed an increase in "fly-tipping" in fields/gateways/rural roadsides, since the new 4-bin-scheme was put in place about 18 months ago.

I get heartily sick of it all, and am envious of my mums region of Scotland, where everything goes in one bin (there are bottle/can banks in every village), and the binmen will lift extra bags. It is all sent to a central mechanical sorting centre and the residue goes to a power plant. None to Landfill.

Bet you could buy a large extra wheelie bin, ?270litre?, store it outside with cardboard in it, and the bottles bagged up, maybe inside with the cupboard.
Just a storage problem, really, isn't?

Now listen. This is AIBU. Where are my YANBU and YABU's? You have all discussed the issue nicely, but I wanted to count them!

YANBU to feel narked, but your are probably BU to stop recycling.

No. Black bag waste goes in the wheelie outside.

I wouldn't worry too much about recycling cardboard. It is low grade stuff already, short fibres that have been recycled previously and v bulky compared to it's worth.

If you give up recycling cardboard and just recycle milk bottles you could do it with less space and less frequent trips to the tip. Especially if you cut them up so they stack inside themselves.

If you have a garden you could get a composter. A black Tardis thing - most councils sell them cheap. They take veg and fruit peelings etc.. and garden waste, but also brown cardboard, egg boxes, the inside of loo rolls - it all mashes down into compost.

AVIATRIX, A high temp incineration plant (much higher temps than normal incinerators) will not vent toxic ash/gasses, if working and maintained properly, there should be no Dioxins etc.
Leaching of all sorts of toxins from landfill a real problem, on balance the worst of the two options (Landfill or incinerator/powerplant),...... we have to do SOMETHING with the waste we create, there isn't an option with no possible risks.

yabu
but I do sympathise.
luckily our council collects 'mixed recycling' in white bags weekly and it takes almost all recycables, except for aluminium.