To tell you that if you don't wash your recycling...

[MrsColon]

...before you put it in the recycling bin, it won't get recycled?

If you don't rinse out cans, containers, bottles etc. they will be rejected and go into landfill.

Not enough emphasis is placed on this in recycling campaigns, and in my experience, the majority of people just don't realise this.

I do give mine a QUICK rinse - I'm on a water meter, but I always worry about washing plastic containers raw meat has been in because of splashes. I remove the wrapper from tins. The recycling rules are getting more and more confusing where I live tbh.

My water hill is high enough without having to add this on top of it.

Use the water from the washing up bowl after you’ve finished washing up or even your bath water or rain water.

Some of these excuses are just pathetic.
Some people sound very entitled.

Unfortunately we are plagued by ignorance and laziness

@Purpleberet

Do people really put recycling in their bin without washing? Their bins must stink

It's just so skanky.

Also, I only realised last year that the film on plastic packaging can't be recycled. The type that's on packets of ham or breasts of chicken.

@Jellykat

Weekly -1 box for glass 1 box for paper 1 big sealable bag for cardboard 1 big sealable bag for tins and cartons 1 food waste bin Non recyclable - collected every 3 weeks and only one bin bag allowed per week.

Mine are alternate weeks: recycling/garden one week, rubbish the next.

You can have your wheelie bins overflowing here, and can have extra black bags too. I'm continually astounded because where I used to live if your rubbish bin didn't have its lid down you were in big trouble!

Some of these excuses are just pathetic. Some people sound very entitled.

Unfortunately we are plagued by ignorance and laziness

I agree with both of these ^^ statements.

Very interesting. I have a friend who has just done a PhD on whether it's better for the climate to rinse recyling , or just stick it in the recycling. She concluded that it was WORSE for the climate to waste water on rinsing plastic items, tins etc. before recyclinig. I don't think she factored in the fact that it might get thrown into landfill. She even went to the recycling plant and there was no mention of it being washed/thrown away!!

Harrison our recycling is collected weekly at 6 a.m, if you put it out the night before and its not clean, the wildlife will happily spread it down the road, and you'll have to pick the whole lot up.
No overflowing bin bags or wheelie bins allowed here, the extra will not be taken!
If theres anything in any box or bag that there shouldnt be, you get a huge 'contaminated' label attached to the container and it wont be emptied.. everyone manages though

Is this adding to fat bergs in the sewers?

I've known this for years, can't remember what age I was when I found out, but it's been a very long time.

I made sure my DDs know it too.

Recycling has always been badly organised guess work. Conflicting information, changing information, reading codes on plastics. I used to not recycle anything that I was concerned might be “wrong”. Now I recycle this kind of stuff because recycling is picked up every week and the rest isn’t.

I was told to rinse things, but apparently this isn't good enough. Things have to be washed with detergent like dishes. This just isn't realistic for many people and causes much more water usage - people say 'do it when you wash your dishes' but I don't do the dishes every day so that's not feasible either.

@MrsColon

...before you put it in the recycling bin, it won't get recycled?

If you don't rinse out cans, containers, bottles etc. they will be rejected and go into landfill.

Not enough emphasis is placed on this in recycling campaigns, and in my experience, the majority of people just don't realise this.

i dont suppose its that much hassle to wash them out, if you do your dishes first, then wash the few bits you have for recycling. not that i have ever done it, in fact although we have recycling collections every week, i know for a fact that none of our stuff ever gets recycled at all, it all goes off to landfill it amuses me (unless its windy) when you see all the different bags and boxes out ready for collection then the faff around with the different wagons, i just strug my shoulders and carry on as normal - everything in the wheelie bin!

Always wash recycling out before putting it in the bin. Makes me mad when I see unwashed stuff in my recycling bin!

"Use the water from the washing up bowl after you’ve finished washing up or even your bath water or rain water."

Nope. I don't have a bath. When I washed up manually I only did when I had a full sink and now I have a machine anyway. I'm not going to collect rain water on my tiny balcony as that would attract animals.

I wash plastics and glass. Isn't everyone on a water meter as per a PP? It's not exactly an expensive commodity!

Don't eat pizza so not an issue. I wouldn't put a filthy bit of cardboard in the recycling.

"Isn't everyone on a water meter as per a PP?"

I don't think so in the UK. Lots of families would pay more on a meter, wouldn't they?

I do rinse stuff out but checking my council website it all needs to be completely clean and dry with lids on, all bottles and tins/cans need to be flattened, which I thought was odd really so do I sit and clean shampoo bottles and then leave them to dry? I always just give them a rinse and Chuck em in 😫

As a child my granny used to tell me that spiders checked people's ( old style glass ) milk bottles on the doorstep and looked for the ones that weren't properly clean so they knew which houses to go and live in!

It completely confused me. We can only put certain recycling in our recycling bin (I'm not completely sure what can and can't go in tbh). We cant use black bags in the bin, but we can leave black bags by the side for collection. We can put extra recycling out with our general waste but that can only be paper-based items, and some stuff can't go in the recycling bin but will be recycled out of the general waste bin.

No wonder people can't be bothered with it all.

I once saw a documentary years ago about a recycling facility in Eastern Europe where UK recycling went to be sorted. It made me feel sickened as to what the workers had to deal with.
I simply do not understand how people can be so blasé regarding where it goes.
Surely the penny has to drop at some point as to what human being has to handle your rancid mingling pizza box that you couldn’t be arsed to clean out.

Minging! Obviously pizza boxes aren’t mingling? 🤗

My local council sent out a letter last year saying just to recycle it even pizza boxes. No washing was mentioned.
They dont take glass though so I have to make a trip every few weeks to the nearest glass bin which moves around a lot.

I always wash everything that goes in the recycling.
If space, then cans and bottles go in the dishwasher. Otherwise, they get washed by hand