To ask about your bins?

[Itsjustthesame]

So, like many areas of the country our bin collections are a bit up the wall at the moment. Where I live many of us don’t have wheelie bins but instead just put out the rubbish on bin day.

I’m feeling strangely self conscious as I’ve noticed that we have about double the sacks of anyone else. On a usual week three or four recycling sacks, maybe two food waste and one or two black sacks. (It’s just me and dh)

Everyone else seems to have one of each! (And these are all three bed homes).

So are we either - very greedy, plastic hoarders, something else? Does everyone usually have just a single bag of refuse at the end of each week?

Hi OP- I think it’s the amount of recycling that seems quite a lot for two people.

It is definitely easy to reduce waste and you can do it quite quickly. Initially it can be a pain but eventually it just becomes habit and so you don’t think about.

In my recycling, I used to have a lot of rigid plastic like the tubs that grapes, strawberries, cherry tomatoes etc come in. I found that this really bulked out my rubbish so this might be the same with yours too? I just don’t buy things in those tubs now. I know the shops that have better choices of loose fruit and veg. Same with certain raw meat. The butchers and even the supermarket fish and butcher counters will let me put meat and fish in Tupperwares I bring. My Morrisons has loose eggs so I just bring the same egg carton.

Milk cartons were the same but I cut out dairy a while back and those tetra packs that the nut milk come in (although often not recyclable) can be flattened down.

I really hope this doesn’t sound preachy because I don’t mean it! I wanted to try and single out some of those bulky items that were really increasing the amount of waste I had so you could check if it might be the same things for you.

Fleurchamp’

We live in a conservation area. Even has its own committee to get petitions to fight anything that is “against” the look of the area.

No one has ever suggested not to have wheelie bins.

We have 2 black bins, 1 recycling bin, 5 garden waste bins and a box for papers

We end up using one of the garden bins to store excess rubbish if we go over from week to week.

We make great use of all our bins. Especially at the start of summer

That's an insane amount of rubbish for two people.

What do you mean about 'We get through quite a lot of shower stuff', surely a bottle lasts a few weeks? If you're one of those people I've read about on here who are using a standard bottle of shower gel per person per week, you might want to look at your usage as most of what you use will be uselessly going down the drain. Terrible for the environment, all those plastic bottles, huge waste of resources and money too.

If cardboard rubbish is taking up a lot of room, make sure you're crushing it down and cutting big pieces up.

@haribo - that’s the issue - there’s nowhere for them to “go back to”. As in our front doors are almost directly on the street. And we have no rear access - so they’d be left sort of on the street - though not quite as we have a small amount of space at the front.

Oh, and if wheelie bins are available to you from your council, just fucking get one and sod busybodies on resident's committees with stupid ideas about what is appropriate.

I have just started using Splosh for stuff like shampoo, shower gel, cleaning products which is a refill service but by post, which would immediately help cut down on the plastic in your recycling.

@BarbaraofSeville ok so to break it down a bit (as I’ve just put the bins out).

• general - I cook from scratch pretty much, but everything comes in packaging - even fruit comes in a bloody packet half the time. Add in say sauce bottles, spice bottle. jars, wine bottle, maybe a couple of beer bottles, a juice or two plus say a bottle of lemonade - that’s about two bags.

Shower/cleaning stuff - toothpaste packaging, one shower gel a week (the small ones), a shampoo and conditioner bottle every few weeks, loo roll tubes, empty cleaning products every few weeks.

I wfh so general paper etc (also I wfh so all meals etc are eaten here including the occasional shop bought sandwich).

The bags aren’t huge - I’d say we are talking about 3/4 of a wheelie bin.

I got so caught up in everything else that I forgot to put mine out. My parents had to come and shift some of the rubbish into theirs!

We have FAR more recycling than rubbish. I get the kids to jump on all the boxes to crush it up they love it. Good exercise

I have a can crusher mounted on the wall by the recycling bin and all cans get crushed before recycling. Cardboard packaging get ripped into smaller bits and plastic bottles get flattened. We are a family of 5 adults and without these measures the recycling would be overflowing.
By recycling properly we have also managed to cut our ordinary waste down to about a sack a week. I don’t have food waste as I compost and garden waste goes into separate paper sacks sold via the council and collected on recycling collection day cost £1.20 a sack so cheaper than the £14 pm for a green bin.
Our collections are fortnightly and we have wheely bins.

We have 4 bins here. General waste, recycling, paper and glass, and food/garden waste.

Emptied on a 2 week cycle usually for general, waste but I get it uplifted weekly as medical waste (stoma).

Noticed last week when they came for recycling they fired my general waste in there too! It’s normally a separate lorry that comes for that.

Couldn’t hack just having bags though that’s a bit grim

Am thinking it over more now - add to that tings, egg cartons etc. Gosh I do need to think about how to reduce waste where I can.

We do often just go to recycling centre but it’s shut right now. Oh and we have a dog who also contributes to the bloody amount of rubbish too.

You seriously need to look at what you are buying.
If you are getting through so much shower gel, shampoo and conditioner than you need to look at changing to bars of soap and shampoo.
Buy fruit and veg that is lose. You don’t need to bag a few apples and oranges but if you must you can buy reusable net bags.
Cleaning bottles you can buy refills and reuse the bottles or better yet make your own with stardrops and zflora.
Loo rolls buy the bigger rolls so less cardboard tubes to waste.

It does seem like quite a lot for 2 people. We don't live in the Uk no, so different bin system but black bin equivalent is only collected every 4 weeks. We would usually fill 1/4-1/2 black bin in 4 weeks depending on various factors.

From above you sems to use a lot more 'products' that we would, and therefore more packaging. ie:

Fruit and veg - we very rarely buy from supermarket, get delivered in a crate from local farm, crate from last week returned when new dropped off. So no packaging

Bottles of shower gel etc.- use bar soap and shampoo bars. So no bottles to throw

Cleaning products - we use tablets like these ecotab.de/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIneHP9OvV6AIVh6iaCh078AoKEAAYASAAEgIfrvD_BwE. or large vinegar/bicarb.
All cleaning clothes we use are washable, so just wash when a pile have built up.

Peelings - compost in garden. Food waste in black bin would just be things non compostable like bones, meat, cheese rinds etc

Glass - wash it all out, take to glass recycling bin. Wouldn't just throw this in regular bins outside house.

We get charged per kg of waste here, it really helps people cut down I find.

You could get spices in refill bags and reuse the containers you have.

Most of the things you mention we (also a 2 person household) take several weeks/months to use, so to me it sounds like you're using a lot each time.

Toothpaste should last for weeks, you're supposed to use a pea sized blob each time, not the great stripe shown in the advert for example, so should only feature occasionally in your rubbish. A shower gel every week sounds like a lot.

We don't really drink juice or pop, so don't have any of those. DP has the odd beer from a glass bottle, which for us we have to take to a glass bank rather than being collected from home. I either have a couple of G&Ts using small cans of tonic and obviously the bottle of gin lasts maybe a month, so we just collect up the glass and put it in a supermarket or other recycling bank when we have a bag full and are passing one.

Ours are every other week. (We have bins) they are always full to the brim with some left over. Most are bags of nappies to be honest which can't be squashed down

We have bags no wheelie bin, last week 3 recycling and 2 general waste, we do compost and I had sorted out the understairs cupboard, where I found boxes etc for long past returnable items and DS is still in nappies which adds to the general waste

@Oliversmumsarmy

Sorry, saying conservation area is a bit misleading - we can have them if we can store them out of sight. We can't and therefore we are not allowed them.

@BarbaraofSeville I’m not saying it’s a toothpaste every week - more that collectively over time it all adds up.
the shower gel does go in a week though - and yes I use bar soap... am talking the little Radox things here - not gigantic bottles of bubble bath.
Some other good ideas though - thank you.

Our area doesn't have them because a lot of houses are very old and have no side or rear access, we do so we've bought a wheelie bin and keep it in the back garden, the bin men won't empty it but it's somewhere to keep the bags until bin day

If you're going to buy plastic bottles can you buy one big bottle rather than 3/4 littler ones?

Sod that, I'd just get a Wheely bin. I'm also filling any plastic bottles up with plastic. When properly filled (and they hold a lot of plastic) they're as tough as a brick. I've been using the filled bottles to line the bottom of big planters in the garden for drainage. They can also be wrapped and used as a border fence in the garden.

Busy work in other words

OP you have to put glass in the normal rubbish? Your area doesn't have separate glass bin for recycling?? No bottle banks at the supermarket where you do your weekly shop?

yes it’s a problem - we do have a “shed” where we store until bin day but it’s pretty grim. Also means you’re up at the crack of dawn to make sure the bins go out as you can’t do it the night before.
That would drive me nuts, crack of dawn my behind, id be that one person who waits till just before bed around 1am and sneak it out lol

@BMW6 here all recycling plastic, paper and glass go in one bin. I’ve lived in other boroughs where it’s separated but here it’s literally - black bin, all recycling, food/garden waste.