How do people produce so much rubbish if they recycle? Genuine question.
Because main bin is only emptied every 3 weeks. It's also rather small.
I recycle, but I'm not evangelical about it. I'm not schlepping to places I don't need to go, with empties, just to avoid putting them in the bin. I'm from a place that prides itself on recycling, but I've read a magazine article where recycling from a town very close to this place was found in a rainforest somewhere halfway round the world, so I'm skeptical about any difference I'm making by bothering and unwilling to put too much effort in. If it's not collected by the kerbside recycling, it's going into the main bin.
I'm also not pulling things apart to recycle them. I read in another magazine about someone's dilemma with pulling apart the metal and the plastic from the pump dispenser part of a hand cream bottle and my face did this 🥴 because seriously, who TF has time for that?!
Then there's the days my plastic recycling is full up, partly with a lot of somethings that aren't food canisters or toiletries bottles, but they happen to be made of plastic and they have the plastic recycling symbol on them, so doing my duty as a good citizen I recycle any such items. Only for them to sometimes leave the entire, completely full, tub of plastic recycling because they didn't want these extras. Whenever that happens, do you think I'm loading up my car with this filthy, stinky, bug infested tub of old food containers and miscellaneous plastic debris etc? Reader, I assure you I am not! It's all going in the main bin. Ditto when they decline to take my cardboard, decreeing that there's too much of it, so they didn't take any of it. Into the main bin it goes!
I'm slowly decluttering a lifetime of what has become miscellaneous tatt too, not everything is of a suitable condition to donate, so those have to be binned. Even where it is in good condition, there's also not a huge amount of donations points for every type of item. Life is too short and my time/energy too precious to go driving across town, doing the rounds of multiple charity shops, trying to find one that's accepting donations of what I have. Nope. If I'm not certain it'll be taken by the one I drive past en-route to the supermarket, then depending on what it's made of it's going either into recycling or into the main bin.
I have a kitchen with no space for additional bins, so recycling sits around in the way until it's taken out in the morning. I don't recycle food waste, partly for this reason and partly because I have hardly any, preferring to eat my food than waste it. But also because I find the concept of semi decaying food, just sitting there on my kitchen worktop stinking the kitchen out, to be utterly revolting. As is cleaning the bin it's stored in. No thanks, it goes in the main bin, the mini bin sits abandoned in the yard and I have my worktop space back.
Living several floors up, I'm not carrying that vase of mouldy and half-dead flowers downstairs, out across the drive and into the garden waste recycling bin either, shedding petals and leaves across the floor of my home with each step I take, so I can have the pleasure of cleaning that up upon my return. Nope! I'm walking the few paces from my windowsill to my bin and it's going in there.
If I have something big to get rid of -instead of cramming it into my car, faffing around with the necessary appointment bookings, then driving across town 45min to the tip on the designated day and hoping not to miss this prearranged deadline, there to bust a gut heaving it out of the car and into the relevant big bin. Or paying the council £20 each time for a special item collection to come get it. If I can easily do so, I'll break it up myself instead and put it bit by bit into the main bin, when there's space.
You only need a few deliveries one week to generate enough packaging that needs binning, for the main bin to be rammed full by collection day.
One of my neighbours is 80, has a bad heart and is not dragging multiple bins out to the kerb, everything they have goes into the main bin, no recycling there.
Another neighbour has lost patience and revolted, stopped recycling at all and once their main bin is nearing full, either has a bonfire or puts everything that will physically burn into their wood burner, depending on season.