To inwardly rage against people who won't recycle

[siblingrevelry]

My dad told me that his neighbours either side have told him they 'can't be bothered' to recycle as per the new scheme in the area, and will just continue putting everything into their main bin.

It pisses me off that people are seemingly allowed to opt out of this public duty. I am very environmentally aware, although i realise that scraping shit off babie's nappies is a step too far for lots of folks, but why should I and many others bother washing tins, squashing plastic and taking out the recycling when others don't?

I appreciate that the jury is still out on global warming, but there is no denying that the physical space this stuff takes up in landfill affects us all.

Lazy, lazy, lazy!

Now the council have provided a big bin that will take everything (plastic, glass, tetra packs, metal) I do use it and just put the newspapers in the other box. I use it because I don't want the council to have to pay landfill tax. I'm not convinced of the environmental benefits as by the time I have wasted water washing the stuff ( and some things like peanut butter jars have to go in the dishwasher) and the council have paid for another lorry to collect it I don't think they either make any money out of it or save much energy. I hate wheelie bins and tbh if I lived alone I probably would just use the normal rubbish for my stuff.

I'm really not that bothered what other people do with their rubbish. However I am not happy with the waste collections here because they are only fortnightly - one week it's recycling, another it's everything else. Which means that food waste can potentially be sitting around for two weeks, which I don't like at all. No wheelie bins, and nowhere to put them - we just have bags. We can't compost because we don't have gardens. It doesn't work and lots of people I know walk to the nearest public bin and put their food waste in there. Obviously the council have noticed this and have put stickers on the public bins saying that they are not for domestic waste, but they still keep on only collecting our food waste once a fortnight, so I don't know what else they expect people to do.

YANBU.

The refuseniks (see what I did there?) need to see the horror of what landfill sites look and smell like. And to know that we are running out of them. People think there should be a choice whether or not to recycle, but really there is no choice. We are running out of places to put the rubbish, so we need to generate a lot less rubbish, and quickly.

Actually I think packaging should be heavily taxed. Companies would soon find a way to reduce it. In Germany they passed a law saying retailers had to accept back the packaging from goods they sold. To save on recycling, people started unpacking goods and leaving the packaging in the shop as soon as they had bought things. Hey presto, packaging reduced to a minimum.

Yabu, I do not have time or space to collect for recycling.

I recycle plastics, glass and card/paper because it all goes in the same bin but I'm not fanatical about it, I don't mess about washing everything which is to be thrown away and I definitely won't go rummaging down the normal rubbish for an incorrectly disposed of jar or box.

Food rubbish goes in the normal bin. I won't collect rotting food in my kitchen.

My parents are expected to separate things into 5 different boxes which is just impractical and ridiculous. So, they don't. They take the same approach as me.

Recycling is the biggest lie ever told about 'saving the planet'.

Most gets chucked into regular landfil anyway. Or put on boats and shipped to Asia. So that's great for the 'carbon footprint'.

I only do it because it's easy. If it wasn't, I wouldn't bother.

Which is why we should attack the problem at source and reduce the amount of packaging used in the first place. I recycle, but I do resent having to recycle plastic nonsense that ought never to have been used anyway.

Sod washing the cans and bottles for recycling, a waste of water.....

I only recycle out of habit. I wouldn't police those who do not, though. I know that it is a big con. At least when I was at school and they encouraged us to bring in used foil and milk bottle tops, we knew that the proceeds would be going to charity. Recycling isn't a new phenomenon. Big companies and government using climate change and environmental reasons as to why we should do so, is. Not to say all the money that is made in fines and foreign landfill, where a lot of OUR rubbish ends up. YANBU, maybe pious or naive.

I only recycle what goes in the blue bin. We don't have space to have boxes for everything - we live in a tiny third floor flat and neither of us drive, so we can't take anything to the tip which is about two miles away.

If councils provided decent space and bins for recycling, I would do more, but it's just not possible. We don't have the storage and we're not allowed to put stuff by the kerb unless it's bin day.

My stepdaughter seems to have regressed in her ability to use the recycling bin. When she was 7,8,9 etc she knew exactly what went in what bin, how to check for the symbol on the plastic etc. Now she's 14 the recycling system has not changed, but now she either forgets or cba more like and we're constantly reminding her. Or if she does remember she has to check 'is this recycling' and it has to be explained again! DH then asks don't you recycle at home? (She stays with us every fortnight) and she says no which makes me grrrr inside! Understandable if the facilities aren't there but I doubt that is the case where they live.

YANBU. Yes, it can be a pita, but not doing it is just lazy and I don't see how people think it's ok to buy a bottle of coke or whatever, drink it, then chuck it in the bin for landfill.
We have weekly food waste collections and fortnightly for plastic, metal, glass, paper, garden waste and general rubbish. It's a pain as we have 4 different bins for all this but we always fill our wheelie bin so if we didn't recycle it'd be overflowing.
I also worry the collection people judge me for the extra carrier bag full of wine bottles we usually put out with the glass...

we have a bin for normal crap and a bin for plastic,glass and tins (all go in one) tgey are collected on alternate weeks.

to be honest id rather they collected my normal bin every week as i hate the thought of all the yuk festering for a fortnight outside my house, and let me deal with recycling myself, but i unserstand hardly anyone would bother if they had to actually get rid of it off their own back

To people who moan about the number of collections re food waste - STOP wasting food! Or at least think about how much you are wasting instead of expecting the council to get rid of your extravagance.

but food waste is all the inedible bits, bones, skin etc, that's not being wasteful

I do recycle but I understand why others don't. We have a blue box for plastic and tins (no lids or tops or they won't take it), a green bag for gardening waste (but no soil or they won't take it), a blue bag for newspapers, magazines and junk mail (but no envelopes), a clear bag for fabrics and nothing for cardboard (you have to put it in your own clear plastic bag (but not a bin bag or they won't take it) or leave it on the street.) It's a total PITA, all the front yard is taken up by bins and if it rains or blows a gale all the recycling blows all over the street. At least make it easy for people.

I do it because I don't want our bins to not be collected for being incorrectly sorted. However, I'm not convinced of the environmental benefits (e.g. is the energy used cleaning jars in hot water/a dishwasher offset by the energy saved in recycling that glass jar?) or that a helluva lot of it doesn't just end up in landfill anyway.

I would much rather see food packaging heavily taxed/regulated. I wince at how much goes in the bin from many goods I buy (and all brands have similar excess packaging so I can't really vote with my £££).

To people who moan about the number of collections re food waste - STOP wasting food!

So you want us to start eating chicken bones and orange peel and banana skins? That's all our waste is, but there are three grown adults living here and we share our bin with two other flats. The bin gets full and the smell is disgusting when it doesn't get collected for two weeks.

Once the bin is full (normally after a week), everything has to be kept inside and it ssmells vile. It's unhygienic to be living in a house with rotting food.

The kerbsite recycling for us is excellent - they take everything, very limited sorting required, and collect every other day. And my (30-something i.e not elderly) neighbour refuses to do it as it is 'too much of a faff'. I seriously lost respect for her over this. To my mind, it;s as antisocial as not picking up your dogshit..

Aberdeen has started having food waste bins on the main streets, very handy for city centre residents without gardens / compost bins. It bugs me that out of a block of 6 small flats I'm the only one using our bag and box kerbside collection because other people stuff their smelly rubbish (that they can't be bothered disposing of properly) in my black bin when I can leave it for 4-6 weeks without needing collected

If the council made it easier for me to recycle I would.

Currently we are living in a flat in the town centre, we arnt even provided with a bin collection, let alone a recycling collection!

What livinginwonderland and treaclesoda said. We don't waste much food, but we don't eat fish heads, chicken carcasses, orange peel, potato peel etc. And I certainly don't want a rotten fish head hanging around in the kitchen for two weeks. Nor would I want shitty nappies hanging around for two weeks either, which is what would happen if I had younger children. The change to fortnightly collections for general waste is unhygienic.

Shall we send you all the inedible bits then? Because that's about all the food waste we have as well.

I only use a food bin because it the council provides bags at no charge to line it and then those bags go in our brown bin.

Otherwise I would not want rotting food in my house for 2 weeks.

I said stop wasting food - not that there would NEVER be any waste food!
You can double wrap it - you can use things to mask the smells but most of all we can not over buy stuff and end up throwing it out or cook too much and have leftovers that cannot be reused.

Bones and orange peel don't cause really bad smells. Its all the other unnecessary wasted food that is the main problem.

We are always hearing about the amount of food waste these days - someone is doing it!

Caplocks, are you getting shouty davs The supermarkets are the main cause for what ends up on the landfills btw not people throwing away stuff at home.