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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To not wash out recyclable containers??

251 replies

DisgruntledGoat · 06/09/2016 11:44

I think it's totally unnecessary to blast containers with water that are going to be cleaned and recycled anyway. My DH sometimes puts them through the dishwasher which drives me nuts. They flip the right way up and fill with dirty water and when you pull the rack out they spill water everywhere covering the clean stuff with the dirty water that's trapped inside. Plus you wouldn't wash out non recyclables to put them in the general bin?! AIBU or does anyone else put dirty recyclables straight into their recycling bins?

OP posts:
flupcake · 08/09/2016 12:20

Maryann - oh that's gross!

I agree with you, the job must be hard enough already. I appreciate the fact that anyone is willing to take my rubbish away at all!

The other thing that I don't understand is people who put all their rubbish in their wheely bins without bagging it up....

TurquoiseDress · 08/09/2016 12:29

I always give things a quick rinse- esp the milk cartons & plastic fish containers- as otherwise it all gets a bit stinky!

Surely it does't hurt to give them a quick rinse?

terrifyingtoes · 08/09/2016 12:48

Of course rinse it!

Our local council introduced a 'golden ticket' initiative in our area.

Pop a ticket with your name & number into your recycling bag & be entered into a draw to win £500 + money for a local charity.

They stipulate that all items must be washed & dried. ( must admit drying it all is a bit far!! )

So maybe some folk need to be persuaded with financial rewards to do it properly. whether anyone actually ever wins anything , hmm, not sure!

flupcake · 08/09/2016 13:23

I am not a bin man. I've never had a tag of shame.
So basically you are too good to deal with your own rubbish?

WaitrosePigeon · 08/09/2016 13:26

I deal with the rubbish as far as it all goes in the correct and appropriate bin for what it is. I just don't wash containers out.

I don't think I'm too good to wash it out, I just don't want to, so I don't.

Wellywife · 08/09/2016 14:38

The other thing that I don't understand is people who put all their rubbish in their wheely bins without bagging it up....

We're not allowed to use bags for the paper bin, cans/glass/plastics bin nor the green bin. Just they grey rubbish bin.

flupcake · 08/09/2016 17:18

Yes sorry that's what I meant, not the recycling, the grey bin (ours is black) for general waste. I once had upstairs neighbours who just chucked everything in loose - it was so gross when you opened the bin up.

WaitrosePigeon - you made a comment that you weren't a bin man, therefore you shouldn't wash the containers out. Even though people on here have said that it makes their job much more unpleasant if you don't? It sounds to me like you think you are too good to do it.

I think the local authorities need to be much more coordinated about what can and can't be recycled - it's so different across the country it's very confusing. Also more transparency about what is actually happening to the recycling, and they should refuse to take the recycling if its not been cleaned. The problem is that people would then just flytip it - (judging from my local area where people seem to think every street corner is some sort of local waste dump).

WaitrosePigeon · 08/09/2016 17:41

I personally don't feel like I'm too good to do it - I just don't want to so I don't.

Kangamum · 08/09/2016 17:43

Our council also asks us to put in clean, dry recyclables. I admit the drying part is a PITA, but I do it.

My DH does my head in, just this morning I've fished a butter container out of the top of the general waste bin, so basically I think if I don't do it, him and the kids just lob it in the normal bin because they are lazy. I do get on at them though.

But then threads like this make me think if any of my neighbours aren't bothering to wash them and then all the bins get emptied into the same truck, what's the point as surely it's all contaminated?

Barksdale · 08/09/2016 22:05

But then threads like this make me think if any of my neighbours aren't bothering to wash them and then all the bins get emptied into the same truck, what's the point as surely it's all contaminated?

Please don't think like that. Society would truly go down the pan if everyone stopped giving a shit. Those that are proud of their own laziness are the type who will crow about it on a public forum because they like the attention.

There are many quiet citizens, conscientiously doing things properly, but they wouldn't be on here boasting about it. I'd hazard a guess that the majority do it properly, either because they've been brought up to be considerate to others, or they personally know someone who has a shit job and they wouldn't want to make someone's job even shitter.

It's the minority who think they're too good to rinse out a yoghurt pot and that "but I don't WANT to" is a good enough reason not to.

I never particularly "want" to wipe my own arse, so god knows what state their knickers are in. Unless of course the butler does it or something.

WaitrosePigeon · 08/09/2016 22:20

My knickers look great Grin

SukeyTakeItOffAgain · 08/09/2016 22:46

No one else thinks you're funny.

WaitrosePigeon · 08/09/2016 22:49

Me? Funny about what?

DixieNormas · 08/09/2016 22:54

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

KittensDoNotLikeFluffyBlankets · 08/09/2016 23:05

Pop glass stuff in dishwasher, rinse out plastics/cartons. I put anything that has contained raw meat/fish in the real bin though.

Don't get too get worked up about it as I know there is a social enterprise locally that separates stuff, met the founder at an event and got chatting about it. They employ people who struggle to get work otherwise and pay a reasonable rate for the area.

Think it's more important to try to refuse, reduce, repair, reuse than recycle. A lot of recycling is not that efficient.

KittensDoNotLikeFluffyBlankets · 08/09/2016 23:08

But where I live you can fairly easily get a three bed house with garden for 100k or less, one bed flats start at £50k. So reasonable rate here isn't much above minimum wage. Suspect it doesn't work like that in a lot of places.

Nanny0gg · 08/09/2016 23:37

If the lefty tossers that run our local council want rubbish sorted for recycling then they can bloody well do it themselves. Otherwise they can go fuck themselves. Hard.

Our council is Conservative. We still have to wash the recycling.

Actually, it amazes me the number of different sorting methods different councils have. We can chuck paper and plastic in the same bag, other councils make you separate it. Strange.

camelfinger · 09/09/2016 02:45

I had all sorts of guilt today about the vast quantities of recycling that I've just put in the wheelie bin without rinsing (not because of laziness but because of the mistaken belief that it wasn't necessary). Yesterday we finished a peanut butter jar. We left it to soak overnight, gave it a few shakes and assessed the situation this morning. Still dirty. Neat freak DH clearly couldn't cope with having a soiled jar kicking about on the counter so by the time I got up it was in the recycling bin. Retrieved it - added soap and hot water and shook again to no avail. To assuage my guilt I used a spatula and sponge and after some elbow grease it was sparkling. Proudly put it in recycling bin. So I guess the whole process took about 5 minutes, plus overnight soaking, plus soap and hot water. I'll do this again in future, although it's not a quick rinse as has been suggested.

EnquiringMingeWantsToKnow · 09/09/2016 06:59

Do you not have a dishwasher camel?

MissMargie · 09/09/2016 07:12

I am 65 so for 45 years of married life I have sent a weekly load to the landfill.
Prob 30 million households all over Britain have done the same week in week out.
Future generations will not believe it - terrible really.

dementedma · 09/09/2016 10:07

Didn't read this properly and wondered what a dishwasher camel was! Grin I don't have a dishwasher or a camel but still rinse my recycling.

NotCitrus · 09/09/2016 14:32

nanny0gg It depends on what sort of separation is going to happen later, and who they are selling the stuff to. Some MRFs (materials reclamation facilities...) use machinery to separate stuff - plastics float, paper and card get soggy and sink, or they can centrifuge stuff to separate it. Cheaper but produces less pure streams of stuff for recycling. Or get someone to do it by hand - costly but effective and you may be able to get more money for the results. Or not.

Recycling plants will have contracts with councils to buy however many tonnes of stuff, and can only expand slowly. In the industry you can choose your Mail-style headline - either how terrible it is that recyclate is being sold by councils and just stored instead of recycled for ages, or how terrible it is that a new recycling plant has been built but can't get enough recyclate to feed into it. Then the recycled stuff needs to be sold - if there isn't a market for brown glass (the only colour you can make with contaminated green/clear glass), then it can only be used for industrial filtering, so no point in separating it carefully.

As kittens says, reducing and reusing are much more important. I'd love to see more standardization of containers (maybe a levy on fancy shapes like Coke bottles?) so that you could take them back to more suppliers.

Purplebluebird · 09/09/2016 14:33

I rinse it but don't clean it with soap.

blueshoes · 09/09/2016 14:38

Some posters mentioned about drying being a faff.

I just drain the water, shake out as much over the sink and air dry them. It does mean that at any one point in time there could be recyclables drying at the side of my kitchen sink but then presto, it is dry a few hours later, I collect them and proudly deposit in my recycling bin.

My recycling bin is pristine!

Bountybarsyuk · 09/09/2016 14:55

I did not know you had to thoroughly wash recycling, I presumed it was like glass which was washed anyway.

Now I know, but it will affect how much I recycle. We recycle hugely at the moment as our large green bin takes pretty much anything except glass. It's more than the non-recycled rubbish. Most will still be fine to go in there, but I'm not scrubbing out tins at all unless the top is completely off (ours are still a bit sharp often) or if they are dirty, like yesterday I 'rinsed' out a baked bean tin that had been left a few hours, and it wasn't clean at all so I chucked it.

I do agree that some things require a quick rinse, but I use the dishwasher, so am specifically washing up recycling and using cleaning products now, which I'm sure does slightly defeat the point. I am also not going to wash out meat trays/plastic, as it is not advised to do this as it spreads bacteria round your sink!

So, it's been a useful thread, but I will be more ruthless about what gets recycled from now on, for my own hygiene and time reasons.