To tell you this about recycling..it doesn't always go where you think it does.

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So my step dad just got a job on the bin lorries.
He does the general Waste. He was telling us how if they get a call from the recycling round saying their truck is full and due to finishing times they don't have time to go to depot to off load and go out again then the general waste collects the recycling and it all. Goes in landfill.
He said its due to cuts on overtime, meaning they don't have time to back and forth to offload, so their management team has told them to do this and the message comes from higher up.
He said it happens daily to about 9/10 of the recycling

Couldn't happen where I am, recycling is collected weekly on Day A, general refuse three-weekly on Day B.

Ours is general every week. And recycling every 2 but depending what week where in the city. So there's always both going round. Both of ours is a Friday.
So week 1 general week 2 both Inc a desperate glass one.

Example as I said ours is a Fri. I have a relative 4 streets down hers is a Tuesday but the same pattern. Depends where the cut off is.

Don’t we pay lots of other countries to dispose of it?

Whilst I can absolutely believe this happens to some extent, it surely doesn't happen to "9/10" of the recycling. For a start, the normal waste lorry wouldn't be able to cope with then general waste, and the overwhelming majority of the recycling, and the recycling lorry wouldn't be full with 1/10 of the round. The planning of the collection just won't be that far out.

The primary goal of the council waste team is to collect all the rubbish. The majority of the rubbish will be collected correctly, because it's just as easy to collect it correctly as incorrectly.

The important thing is that we all try to use the recycling waste service as much as we can. Assuming it will all be dealt with incorrectly and so not bothering to sort our waste would be lazy and mean recycling definitely ended up in landfill.

Man "just got a job" on the bin lorries in one part of the UK and is now the world expert on what happens to recycling, everywhere.

Don’t we pay lots of other countries to dispose of it?

We used to export some of it, but other countries don't want it anymore, so we're stuck with it, some goes into landfill, others are stored. It's plastics that are the problem which no one wants. There's still a market/demand for glass, metal and paper/card.

At my local tip I've been told to put cardboard in the general waste on more than 1 occasion

A lot of it is just a con anyway. Council's hit their targets by "collecting" goods for recycling, not the actual recycling itself. So they'll "collect" separately, then tick their box, then just dump it.

I remember when our council first started the separate recycling collections. They gave us around 5 containers, for each of plastics, metals, paper, glass, food, which we had to leave out on the designated day. They a big lorry came with five "boxes" on the outside which the bin men emptied our containers into. Then when the boxes were fill, there were hydraulic arms to lift the boxes into the top of the lorry itself. From our upstairs window, it was plain to see that the lorry itself wasn't compartmentalised so all the recycling we'd carefully sorted all got mixed together in the lorry! It was all just to tick their boxes and "smoke and mirror" image.

Jazzy Howard - Yes it does all get emptied in to the same lorry but when it gets to the recycling place that's when it is sorted separately. Watched a programme on it once, very interesting.

When I was a cleaner at one of the big supermarkets they refused to put recycling bins in the canteen on the basis of 'staff won't use it anyway' - the amount of recycling into landfill was shaming.
When we had a 'big visit' I was told to dredge the bins to make up the recycling waste to show we were doing our bit.
I tried to query this I was labelled as uppity and called 'just a bloody cleaner'.

Here our recycling is collected on completely different weeks.

I hate pointless posts like this, it’ll just put people off from bothering (and they may be in a very effective area). If that’s the case in your area you should complain or write to the papers or something not tell everyone they are wasting their time

Many years ago I lived in a large, German city. There were containers for glass behind the flats. We religiously sorted the glass into clear, green and brown as per the slots in the container. However, I happened to see the lorry empty the container into a single skip. I was less than impressed.
Some time previous to that, one of my colleagues told me that paper put in recycling containers was just taken away and incinerated.
I now only have 2 bins at my house, green for garden waste and black for household, although I still take my glass to a local container. I am a bit of a sceptic.

Not where we live. Our local authority are one of the leading recyclers in the country. Even our food waste is used to generate electricity.

This doesn't surprise me in the least. People are very resistant to hearing it though. It's not that people shouldn't bother with recycling, so much as that we all need to wake up to the fact that the dominance in all areas of life of the bottom line means that much of what is done on our behalf isn't necessarily in our best interests. We need to be more cynical about noticing that and calling it out when we see it.

Reduce/reuse is a better approach than recycle anyway but people like to forget that because it actually means changing our consumption habits.

Watching the “hughs war on waste” (I think it was called) show a few weeks back was a real eye opener to how awful recycling actually is in most areas

You assume by putting it in the right bin clean it will get recycled but it seems not

My rubbish and recycling is collected on the same day weekly, generally about an hour apart, so it wouldn't surprise me at all if this happened in my area.

I'm amazed a pp only gets their general rubbish taken once every 3 weeks. Isn't that a health hazard? Especially in this heat.

Asta ours is collected bi-weekly and my bin is never full, we could easily go to a 3/4 week collection.

A lot of stuff we send to be recycled isn’t, it’s often sent abroad. It really isn’t as environmentally friendly as people think. It annoys me when people think it’s ok to just use stufff cos it will be recycled. Recycling is a last resort

Refuse
Reuse
Recycle

CitadelsofScience

But still, wouldn't it be a mouldy maggot ridden sludge in 3 weeks? And wouldn't it attract vermin? Wouldn't it stink? I don't produce tons of rubbish either. Volume wise yes, 3 weeks would be fine but I wouldn't fancy it hanging around next to my house that long. Winter might be ok but in summer, no.

Asta no there wouldn't because all our food waste is recycled and collected weekly. I've never had a maggot in my food waste bin either.

Ah ok, we don't have all these separate bins. There is a plastic box for recycling and the old fashioned drum type bin for general. That's it.

This has been happening for many years and is common knowledge in gov't circles.

I read this recently. I was very careful about recycling and ensuring it was all washed and correctly placed. Now I am not so bothered.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/06/26/revealed-really-goes-recycling-rubbish-behind-scenes/

It could definitely happen like that in our area and I've often wondered whether it does happen. Our collections are alternate weeks for waste and recycling. This week ours was recycling but the next village along (1 mile) was having their waste bins collected.