To be horrified at how much waste we produce but think food producers are to blame?

[malificent7]

Dp, dd and I live here ft. Dsd lives here pt. Our bins were collected on Wednesday and already on Sunday the recycling and wheelie bin are full again.
Main culprits are bulky plastic milk containers, things like mushroom cartons, pepsi/ fizzy water bottles..cardboard packaging etc.

However, the council only collect wheelie bins every 3 weeks. I think the reasoning behind this is that peopke will ve forced to recycle more. Great in theory. In practice many things can't be recycled.
Really i think food companies need to think of alternative ways of packaging food...quite what i don't know.

Our non-recyclable waste is collected every three weeks. Mine mainly contains dog poo so I'm not sure how to decrease that, or of a better way of dealing with it?

The bottle return system in Germany and some other European countries is great. Some styles of bottle are just crushed and recycled by the machine but the thicker plastics and glass are reused.

Sorry I know that's not technically what was meant by food waste!

@Lovinghannah

Our non-recyclable waste is collected every three weeks. Mine mainly contains dog poo so I'm not sure how to decrease that, or of a better way of dealing with it?

I'll be honest, I know nothing about dogs. Apparently you can buy home dog waste disposers though (instructions are on the Internet for a homemade version too). No idea if they're any good. www.jugdog.co.uk/dog-poo-bin-in-garden/

We crush, break down or cut everything up, it makes a huge difference in the recycling bin.

I was having a rant today about the devil's material, AKA expanded polystyrene! Why, oh why, can't the companies that make white goods use something else to pack them in? It's not recyclable, is it? We have had to replace kitchen equipment recently and the bloody stuff has driven me mad.

We are all very pleased with ourselves for sorting and recycling, but then what happens to the plastics?

"Greenpeace UK political campaigner Sam Chetan-Welsh said: “The plastic we carefully wash and sort for recycling is being shipped off to other countries where much of it ends up illegally dumped or burned, poisoning local people and polluting oceans and rivers." www.circularonline.co.uk/news/enormous-increase-in-uk-plastic-waste-exports-to-turkey-and-malaysia-greenpeace/
As individuals there is only so much we can do - the supermarkets and food industries will only change if they are forced to by legislation, taxes etc on their plastic use.

I hate it. My rubbish is collected weekly but I don't have an outside bin, we're just expected to keep rubbish bags in our flats and put them out once a week

I've given up my sparkling water habit as it produced 6 or 7 two litre bottles a week. I buy meat in bigger packs the day before bin day and separate into freezer bags, then all the packets go straight outside that evening.

I also cheat and smuggle half a black sack out with me when I go out and shove it in a public bin

We also don't get a recycling collection, at all. Other properties on the road do, but all of my rubbish goes to landfill I hate it.

I've just complained to M & S about the packaging on DS's shirts, two pieces of plastic and a piece of cardboard on each collar as well as other cardboard and plastic clips

I know shirts have always been packed like this but I thought we were trying to reduce

The more consumers change behaviour the more businesses will.

We avoid plastic as much as possible, we rarely buy fizzy pop, if we do its in a can, but only the packs of cans that are wrapped in cardboard. We don’t buy toilet roll wrapped in plastic etc. The only thing we do buy as there doesn’t seem to be an alternative is frozen veg in plastic bags and toothpaste. Everything else is either plastic free, or a refill situation.

Two years ago we decided to really try hard to reduce the amount of packaging we were having.

We dont buy canned or bottle drinks anyway.

But do use a lot of milk etc. We were doing really well, we were taking our own tubs to the meat counter in sainsburys to buy mince and chicken etc, getting unpacked fruit and veg etc. Covid made it harder because meat and fish counters closed and more fruit and veg got wrapped in cellophane.

But actually it is possible to reduce packaging. The more we all choose to buy unwrapped stuff the supermarkets will respond to that demand. The things we did:

I bought eggs from a farm where I could take & reuse my own boxes.

I bought mainly unwrapped fruit & veg although I prioritised British stuff even if it was wrapped.

I bought washing powder in a cardboard box rather than liquid or pods.

I used refillable cleaning products from a local shop.

I used a breadmaker at home to make bread including pizza based.

I stopped buying biscuits and cakes in packets and mainly made them. Flour etc does come in packaging but it's paper and less bulk than pre made cakes. I swapped to block butter instead of spreadable.

The only thing we havent yet done is swapped to a milkman, we are on a waiting list for the local one.

@Binnaggy I don't have a car and it's a long way to walk with a load of recycling. My NDN does semi-regular trips though and offers to take mine when he goes.

It's strange they don't do a recycling collection for us. Other properties on the street have two crates for cardboard and plastic/glass, I really don't see why we can't have those too.

I work for a supermarket which is trying to reduce the plastic packaging for fruit and veg. We don't have plastic bags for loose items, but do sell reusable bags. You would be surprised how many customers complain every day that they've had to put bananas, grapefruits etc on conveyor belt without a plastic bag.

I think you are generating an awful lot of waste for a family of not quite 4. Are you really saying that it only takes you 4 days to fill both your recycling and non-recyclable bins?

How much milk and fizzy drinks do you get through? As others have suggested a soda stream would help, or replace the fizzy with squash that you dilute yourself. Or you could tell the rest of them theres water in the tap! Non recyclable waste from supermarkets is mainly plastic film which takes up hardly any room in the bin. When you say cardboard are you ordering a lot of stuff on-line because cardboard around food around food can also be flattened and not take much room. Mushrooms can be bought loose or the containers can be stacked to save space in your bin. What are the ‘etcs’ they take up the rest of the space in your bins?

I've started buying all my fruit and veg from a local market; much better quality, cheaper and I reuse the same paper bags from week to week so packaging free too.
But other than that YABU - I see my neighbour's bins and simply don't understand how people create so much waste!
I'm diligent about recycling but not particularly thoughtful about what I buy. All that's in our waste bin is tissues, cellophane and sanitary towels and I could easily go three weeks if I had to (ours is fortnightly). Recycling bin does get full, but I could squash it down a lot more. We are a family of four (older teens)

May I suggest a milk man? I’ve used one for 20 years and milk and juice in glass bottles is far superior :)

The CoOp have just launched a plastic recycling scheme so we fill breadbags with all this stuff. When fruit and veg shopping, I look for loose options and cook around those rather than just getting the same things everything. Buy drinks in cans or glass rather than plastic bottles (and if we do have plastic, take the various labels off as these are not usually recyclable. The hardest thing for us to cut back on is all the treat stuff MIL buys as it's invariably multipacks of plastic wrapped biscuits and sweets. We don't use kitchen roll and very rarely use cooking foil or cling film (get through a short roll of each about every 2 years). We are fortunate in that our LA does food waste recycling so as a family of 4, our landfill is around a carrier bag a fortnight. www.coop.co.uk/environment/soft-plastics

My biggest bugbear on a personal level is medical waste. Ds is tube fed and that sadly involves a LOT of plastic. I contacted the council to ask for a second plastic waste recycling bin and was told that this kind of plastic can’t be recycled so we have an extra general waste bin instead! Other than reusing the syringes as much as I can there is nothing I can do to reduce that but surely the companies/recycling facilities should be able to find a way to reduce and recycle more

@Babyroobs

We looked at receiving milk delivered in glass bottles but it worked out to almost double the cost. YANBU.

It won't be affordable for everyone, but if a bin is full of fizzy drink bottles as well then it's easy to see where cuts can be made in order to afford milk delivered.

It sounds like you are going through an awful lot of fizzy drink, and possibly milk. Isn't this very expensive as well as producing lots of waste? You can't blame the supermarkets and manufacturers for you being very high consumers. Either cut down or get a soda stream.

YY to crushing bottles, also cut up or crush cardboard packaging so it takes up less space.

Check what your council accepts for recycling regularly as it does change. Are you sure they don't take plastic from bananas or the sofa? Ours take type 1, 2, 4 or 5 plastics, which accounts for most standard polythene type bags, bread bags (not Warburtons, but any that's soft, not crinkly) as well as mushroom cartons, yogurt pots and a lot else.

Or look at Terracycle, we actually set up a collection point in our garden for a certain type of waste, and now raise about £100 a year for charity just for collecting and parcelling this waste and having it collected, which Terracycle pay for.

On cucumbers, if they're not wrapped in plastic, they only last a couple of days, likewise mushrooms, so you're swapping plastic waste for food waste, so not necessarily any better. I've found that loose mushrooms in the supermarket are usually past their best before you even buy them,

But I do wonder about the poster who has two teen boys but doesn't get through bread before it goes off. Mumsnet led me to believe that the average teen boy ate several loaves of bread a week. But any bread that's being used for toast at least is fine in the freezer, and toast is a good way to use up slightly stale bread (also breadcrumbs for topping, coating or going in food like stuffing or meatballs).

Stand on the milk containers for a start, to flatten them. Creates more room.

I’d love to rate companies according to their waste - step forward Danone, who package their activia yogurts in a completely unnecessary cardboard wrapper. If I do a f2f shop I leave all surplus packaging at the till - harder if it’s an online delivery.