To ask how you sort your recycling

[Figmentofmyimagination]

Where we live you can just drop it all in a big orange bin, and I often eg stuff lids or paper cartons into tins or drop the day's recycling into the bin in one of those biodegradable supermarket bags. I rinse it out usually. But I heard Gillian Reynolds recently on the radio talking about how eg I should be removing coloured lids from milk bottles etc. How does recycling work? Is it really all sorted by hand on a conveyor belt? Wondering whether I should make an effort to sort it better before binning it and whether if I don't, what happens to my recycling.

If you stuff paper into plastic cartons someone has to go and remove it, or it will just automatically go to the tip. Of course things need to be separated out.

All seperate- Cardboard, paper, foil, glass (washed lids off), tins (washed), plastics- yoghurt pots and butter (washed), milk (washed lids off). material.

I guess that's right. I feel a bit foolish now. Tbh I imagined something a bit more high tech going on with it but I don't know why I should!

Here you can put cans and plastic in together,
glass has a separate box,
paper and card has a stupid bag,
food waste goes in one of those green biodegradable bags in a caddy, for those with large gardens there a green wheelie bin for garden waste and according to the leaflet they'll take a white bag full of clothes/bedding but reality is they seem to assume it's a bin bag and stick a 'this should be in your general waste bin, please remove it from the street' sticker on it.

If you're putting it in bags, it'll go to the tip. Has to be loose in the bin.

Ours is sorted at the kerb, so for recycling we put out a food waste bin, a crate for cardboard, plastic bottles (no lids) and tins, and a crate for paper and glass.

For mixed recycling it is easier for the workers to separate if it's reasonably clean and dry.

It depends on the recycling centre. We are allowed to leave lids on bottles and cartons here, it says so in our "what can I recycle?" leaflets.

Ours goes into a big wheelie bin all together. Glass has to be taken to a bottle bank but other than that it's a jumble in the big bin.

Ours all goes into one big bin, no sorting required. We have one large under the counter pull out bin in our kitchen that we chose to form into 3 Lift out bins. One is for non recyclables (mainly food waste, plastic bottle lids and unrecyclabe food) one recycling bin and the section at the back is for glass.
Pretty easy, just make sure everything is rinsed out. We don’t line the recycling or glass bins.

ours is separated into
glass and paper.
metal and plastic,
card
food

I dither about things like pringle tubs.
should I remove the metal base?
and wine bottles, I remove the metal from the bottom of the screw cap

pure class in my house!

Ours all goes in the same bin, but loose, rinsed and dry (council recently had campaign about this). I might collect paper/card in a cereal box for ease but figured it's all the same. We collect milk bottle tops separately anyway to send elsewhere.

We sort ours at home and have separate boxes for kerbside collection. One box for metal, plastic and tetrapaks - we rinse it all and crush it is much as possible. One box for glass - all rinsed and metal lids put in metal recycling. One box for paper/card - all squashed as much as possible but if I have a large box (eg large empty washing powder carton) input the smaller paper waste inside it. Food waste goes in thick paper bags in the separate caddy.

We sort as we go so it takes no time at all - containers rinsed as used and put bedside the sink and dropped in appropriate box outside that evening or as we leave for work in the morning. Paper goes in a basket by the front door until collection morning so it doesn’t get soaking wet.

Different councils have different systems- i work in the industry and if your takes everything in one bin then it will go to a MRF and be sorted using machinery and sometimes woth a final picking belt where people remove any remaining unrecyclables. Bottle tops arent a prob but stuffing things inside each other could be. All depends on what their system for separation is.

Terrible fat finger spelling !!

Mixed collection here too. We are advised to leave lids on eg milk bottles (after rinsing and perhaps squashing them) - better that the bin contents stay clean and dry and not get dripped on by dregs from rinsing. Can I get that message across to my husband ?!??

I just chuck it all in. It's a communal bin anyway so there's little point sorting my stuff out for it to be contaminated by the other users.

Different councils use different technology so have different requirements. Some places still insist you cut the windows out of envelopes!

I didn't know about shoving paper in plastic bottles though. I was always told "reduce, reuse, recycle". By squashing bottles down or ramming things in them, I'm reducing the volume of waste?

By the way, recycling tip here, NEVER tip milk down the sink so that you can wash the carton out for recycling. Milk entering the water stream does more damage than recycling of the carton prevents. It's illegal for businesses to pour milk away and in my view it should be illegal for householders to do so.

I think this is where we have a major problem in this country.

Recycling should be much more uniform, perhaps with a town/country flat/house distinction if necessary. Then government could much more easily conduct big campaigns about it (what can and can't be recycled and how) and when you are out and about you'd be aware of how rubbish should be treated.

I squash coke & milk bottles flat & then put the lid back on them - it keeps them flat then & stops them expanding & taking up room.

All our recycling goes in the the one bin so it's a case of quick rinse & then chuck it in. About 1 week in I have to get in & have a jump up & down and that'll give me enough room to get through the second week.....

NEVER tip milk down the sink

Never heard that one. Where do you pour it?

. I was always told "reduce, reuse, recycle". By squashing bottles down or ramming things in them, I'm reducing the volume of waste?

It’s not about reducing volume of waste it’s reduce the amount of waste you create/stuff you use. Squashing bottles down is fine but not stuffing a different material inside....

NEVER tip milk down the sink

I’ve never heard of this either, but tbh I rarely tip any milk away except for a drizzle at the bottom of my cereal bowl. We only order as much from the milkman as we need so none gets wasted.

Here we have loads of recycling and have to pay for the bags in which to put it. We have blue bags for milk cartons, plastic bottles and cans/tins/sheba trays . We have a green wheelie bin for fruit, veg and small garden waste, but you need a green bag to go in it, and black wheelie bins for general waste. We have pretty pink bags for what are called 'soft' plastics (including yoghurt pots, lurpak cartons, etc), and a big yellow bin for paper and cardboard.

I save the tops of the milk/juice cartons for someone dh works with who passes them on to her local scouts.

On top of this, we pay for the weight of rubbish thrown out, so are charged for the black bins and the green bin by weight. The blue and pink bags are quite cheap per roll, and the paper and cardboard isn't charged for. However, in Belgium when you rent, the landlord pays the local tax on the house, so we are not paying for that as well as per kg for the rubbish.

I rinse everything. We have to separate plastic and tins into one, glass into another and paper/cardboard into a third. In Wales the bin men sort the recycling by hand into a large truck. They return anything to your bin that isn't recyclable. You need to sort and separate.

Our council used to have a separate system with a different box for paper and card/plastics/glass/metal but they found that people either weren't using the system or weren't sorting things properly.

When they did a survey they found that a lot of people were willing to recycle but either didn't have the time to sort through everything and put it in the right boxes or just didn't have the space for the 4 large plastic boxes in their back yard/garden. Also - because everything had separate boxes - whilst most people would regularly fill the paper and cardboard/plastics boxes some people were maybe only putting a couple of tins or jars in the metal/glass boxes every week and didn't feel it was worth making the effort to sort them so were just chucking them in the normal bin collection instead.

From this they went from a separate box system to having one big wheely bin for all recycling except glass (that has it's own box for H&S in case things break) and they found that recycling rates shot up as the system now made it just as easy to recycle as it was to chuck it in the regular bin.

So now I just have two bins in my kitchen - a large one for recycling and a smaller one for general waste/food (we live in a terrace and don't have a food collection and no garden to put a composter or else we'd recycle those too). Any glass ends up on the sideboard next to the back door so that when anyone goes outside - to put stuff in the big bin or if DD is going out to play - they just take the odd few glass jars/bottles to drop into the recycling box.