To be sick of recycling?

[LordBrightside]

Honestly, we have 7 separate bins and it's impossible to keep track of what is getting collected when. I'm sick of it.

[eltsihT]

I am in east Ayrshire if you have a smart phone you can download the reycling Calender to your phone and it reminds you to put the bin, took a few click to di

[PoppieD]

Ah LordBrightside the grey bin of doom for the kitchen! I've taken mine outside now, even the wee one as it was too much of temptation for the dog- after our recent Ayrshire weather mine has no doubt spirited itself off to Oz as definetly no longer outside!

[ShesGotLionsInHerHeart]

What pisses me off is that the council, in their wisdom, haven't scheduled a paper or plastic pick-up until the end of January. So all of the Christmas wrapping paper etc is sitting in my bloody kitchen as the bins were all full by Boxing Day.

Every bloody year! Why they can't plan better I do not know.

[StarlingMurmuration]

In fact, I forgot the garden waste bin, so that makes six different ones. the worst thing is that some of them aren't even bins, they're horrible plasticy woven sacks.

Black bin - general waste
Big green bin - garden waste
Green mini-bins - food waste
Black box - paper, metal and glass (except we have two black boxes, so we put paper in one, metal and glass in the other)
Blue plastic sack - cardboard
White plastic sack - plastic bottles etc

Like previous poster, we have one normal bin and one recycling bin in the kitchen, and poor DP has to sort the recycling outside. And god forbid the lid of your general waste bin is so full that it's open even by half an inch! Then they refuse to empty it at all. The will take massive piles of cardboard even when not it in the appropriate plastic sack though.

[StarlingMurmuration]

Where I currently live, we have five different bins but at least they're all collected on the same day. Annoyingly, I've seen the bin men bung all our carefully sorted recycling into the same receptacle in the recycling lorry, so I don't know why we bother. We've moving counties soon, and the new county used to just have one recycling bin and one general waste, I'm hoping that's still the case now. I'm much more enthusiastic about recycling when it takes less effort.

[AntiHop]

YABVVVU and so is ABetaDad1

Local councils simply don't have enough money to provide the services they need to. This has been bad under the coalition government and even worse under this government as they have cut the funding so much that local authorities will have to cut even essential services, even if they raise the council tax to the maximum they are allowed. So they are keeping costs down by getting home owners to sort their own recycling. This seems better than keeping costs down by cutting child protection services doesn't it?
If you want to read more about it: www.theguardian.com/society/2015/nov/25/local-government-councils-funding-gap-critical-budget-cuts-social-care-spending-review

Also we all have a duty to this planet. Like saucy I used to live in a place where I had to take the recycling round the corner to a communal bin. My flatmates at the time were so lazy that they refused to do it and I used to fish they recycling out of our bin to take it to the communal bin. I hate the idea of something going to landfill when it can be recycled. Throwing away and wasting as much as we do now as a country is unsustainable and contributing to climate change.

[LordBrightside]

Make it 8! Turns out we are supposed to do a different collection for nappies too, but have never bothered. We just put them in nappy bags and in the regular bin.

The council's preference is for us to keep them all in a separate bag and put that out for collection.

No.

[knobblyknee]

Its annoying but its easier never to mix it than for someone to sort it. Would you want to risk putting your hands into god knows what?

[ABetaDad1]

"Alternatively, wait and see what everyone else puts out first."

Brown garden waste
Green - all recyclable material
Black - everything I cant be bothered to sort into the other two.

[sleeplessinmybedroom]

I was just thinking 7 is excessive when I realised we have 6. We only have a bin for food waste, the rest is different coloured bags.

General rubbish-only allowed 2 black bags a fortnight
Nappies
Paper and card
Glass and metal
Food waste
Garden waste that you have to pay for

[MetalMidget]

We have five - black wheelie bin (general waste), green wheelie bin (garden and food waste), red crate (tins, glass, plastic and cardboard) and two bags (cardboard and plastic only).

The crate and the bags are the most annoying as there's no lids on the crates, and the bags have slightly rubbish Velcro - when it's windy, we end up lots of litter all over the place (not from us, I'm pleased to say - not because we're massively pious or owt, but because we normally wake up on collection day and go, "SHIT! IT'S THE RECYCLING THIS WEEK!", whereas our more organised neighbours get theirs out the night before.

[Potatoface2]

i dont mind the recycling too much...its the constant telling my family what goes in what bin...and taking stuff out of the wrong bin putting it in the right bin....they cant seem to be able to put plastic in a plastics bin and cardboard in a cardboard bin...does my head in

[Chattymummyhere]

I hate it and we have 4.

Black - rubbish
Green - recycling
Brown - garden
Grey - food

The black and green are always full way before collection, lids have to be shut all the way now, no extras next to the bin. I don't use the brown bin at all but the council won't take it away. The food bin amuses me though as we raw feed our pets and they decided they don't like pigs heads anymore.

[hufflebottom]

We have one bin. We're in a flat. But I do recycle my glass and plastic as there's big bins near my work.

My mum has 4 and a bag.
Small green bin-food
Green tub-glass
Black bin-cardboard and plastic
Green bin-general
Blue bag-paper

If she wanted she could get a brown bin for garden waste.
We used to take the glass, paper and cardboard up to the recycling banks at the top of her road when me and db were kids. It was one of jobs for pocket money.

[pandaskitchen]

Lord feel your pain here too- we are in a similar position
Black Bin - general rubbish
Brown Bin - Garden
Blue Bin- Bottles and Cans
Pink Bag - Plastic
Blue Bag- Newspaper
Green Bag- Cardboard & Newspaper
Grey Bin- Food Waste
White Bags- Textiles and Leather Good

again no room in the kitchen, so everything is wet and outside.

I understand why we have to do it, & i'm both morally and ethically in favour but it is a right royal pain in the arse.

[mareseatoatsanddoeseatoats]

we have 7

garden waste
food waste
plastic
glass
tins
paper/card
normal rubbish - in black sacks, no wheely bins and a rural area so great for foxes. We have bought a wheely bin which we keep the bags in, then we have to get them back out on bin day to put by the kerb. We try to only have one bag a week but we are going to fortnightly as of this week so not sure we'll manage it.

[insan1tyscartching]

We have three a general waste,recycling and garden waste. We can put food waste in with garden waste but because it's only collected from March to October it's not something I think to do tbh.

[EponasWildDaughter]

We have 5. South Warwickshire.

Big black bin for general, big brown for garden waste, they're fine.
Then poxy storage box size red bins for cardboard and the same size in blue for glass/metal.

(5th is a tiny brown bin for food waste, but hardly anyone uses this)

Bin men are quite sniffy about taking any bits which wouldn't quite balance on top or squash down quite small enough to fit in the storage size boxes. Stuff often just gets left on the floor. If it's so bloody essential that the right thing is in the right box and that everything that can be recycled IS recycled - why is it ok for them to leave some of it on the drive just because it wouldn't quite fit in their stupid little box!? It means that either it then gets hurled into the (wrong) general bin by me in a fit of pique, or adds even more to what we have to fit in the recycling for the next week. Arrggghh.

[Laidbackorlazy]

I wouldn't worry LordB, in a few more years almost all services will be run by the private sector or volunteers and be infinitely better and more efficient. Our council is currently turning all the libraries into gyms and handing park management over to volunteer groups. Great stuff.

[TheCarpenter]

I don't actually mind the 7 bins, it's that the plastic one is so small and that I don't like cat litter sitting in the general bin for 3 weeks.

[WeAllHaveWings]

when I was reading this I just knew you were going to say East Ayrshire.

The smaller grey bin is your indoor food bin (which you then put in your outside food bin when full).

Its really simple it's (for us) starting this week:

Tuesday: Green bin
Friday: Red box / Food bin
Tuesday: Blue bin / Black Box
Friday: Red box / Food bin
Tuesday: No collection
Friday: Red box / Food bin
Tuesday: Green Bin/Black box
Friday: Red box / Food bin
Tuesday: No collection
Friday: Red box / Food bin
Tuesday: Blue Bin / Black Box
Friday: Red box / Food bin
Tuesday: Green bin
Friday: Red box / Food bin
Tuesday: Black box
Friday: Red box / Food bin
Tuesday: No Collection
Friday: Red box / Food bin
Tuesday: Green Bin / Blue Bin/ Black box
Friday: Red box / Food bin
Tuesday: No collection
Friday: Red box / Food bin
Tuesday: Brown bin / Black box
Friday: Red box / Food bin


Alternatively, wait and see what everyone else puts out first.

My mum is in North Ayrshire and its much better as they put paper, plastics, bottles and cans in the big blue bin and food in their garden bin (I think) so that gets rid of 4 of the extra bins we have.

the best of it is you see all the big recycling trucks leaving the recycling centre in Kilmarnock East Ayrshire driving down the A71 to Irvine (North Ayrshire) (hopefully not to the landfill after all our careful sorting) and masses of the plastics fly out the back of the lorries littering the sides of the dual carriageway.

[LordBrightside]

"Council tax makes up a very small fraction of local authority costs"

Most of the rest of it comes from block grants from central government which comes from.....tax.

Local authorities are dreadful at using resources properly.

[Laidbackorlazy]

Do you think your council tax actually pays for all the rubbish collection & disposal? Council tax makes up a very small fraction of local authority costs.
I get that 7 bins is annoying, we have 4, which is fine.

[Walkingintheraindrops]

I hate recycling. They need draconian laws for people like me who won't recycle a thing unless forced and I'm always stressed about it! Will they miss a collection did the wrong bin go out, oh no bin is full one week in (fortnightly collection) it's a nightmare. And I only have 3 bins!