I don’t want to wash up chicken packets and jars of mayonnaise!!

[ChristmasBaby2026]

My council like many have recently changed our recycling. We now have:

• a bin for paper and card
• a bin for “mixed recycling”
• the food bin
• the black bin
• the garden bin (which I have to pay extra for 😡)

The only substantial change other than the number of bins to put things in is they will now collect glass whereas we previously had to go to the bottle bank.

But it now means they are now only collecting our black bin once every THREE weeks (and currently not for 4 because the new system has stupidly started on a recycling week).

How are families supposed to only have rubbish collected once every three weeks? There is simply no way.

I do recycle but I have always drawn the line at washing up gross things like packets of mince and jars of mayonnaise. But apparently the council have decided people have nothing better to do. I wouldn’t resent it so much if I thought it was actually making a difference but my landfill mayonnaise jar is not the main problem here!

I actually really like the food waste bin. Have had that for years and stops your regular bin getting juicy.

What I object to is having that alongside 4 other bins.

What is wrong with one for rubbish, one for recycling? Or better yet, one for everything and it gets sorted out elsewhere!

So, you never to any hand washing up? Do you not have stuff that shouldn't be put in the dishwasher?
I just rinse out tins, jars and meat trays at the end of a washing up session, so it doesn't use up any extra water.

I even managed to do this last year when we had a hosepipe ban for several months.

I recycle everything and still have to take black bags to the dump

Some people don’t have the space for all these different bloody bins either. I have a small kitchen and we remodelled in 2024 to accommodate an integrated bin that fit with the recycling arrangements at the time. I am now a bin short with nowhere to put it. As a poster upthread said, it also looks extremely unsightly on the streets.

We're doomed as a species. We have become so lazy and feckless about the state of the planet that we can't be arsed to take 20 seconds to wash a jar.

No wonder massive companies get away with polluting so much when people at home give zero shits if it means being mildly inconvenienced.

Nor me. Better things to do.

I have to admit it’s a HUGE pain in the arse and I miss the days of just putting stuff in a single bin. IMO this is where some genius AI recycling sorting machine could massively improve all our lives. Imagine if it just all got reliably sorted at the dump? I prefer the Spanish system of a communal rubbish collection point on each road too that’s emptied every day. Then you could just lob a bag in last thing at night or in your way to work each morning.

The box outside the back door HAS A LID ON IT. It's the old cans/bottles bin now we have a wheelie bin for those. The lid clips shut.
Paper recycling is in a different room - key rooms have two bins. Dining room has the paper recycling, kitchen has the grey waste bin and the food waste caddy.
Our kitchen is so small we can't have the fridge in it, but we still manage. We managed when we had toddlers and DD was into eating gravel.

I leave items that had sticky stuff in them like yogurt or baked beans in the sink, they get filled and rinsed with water used for other purposes (eg when I wash my hands or an apple or whatever).
Recycling uses much less water than producing new materials, so even if you use a lot of water cleaning a jar of mayonnaise, the overall process still uses a lot less water than producing new glass. I understand your point about the water bill though, which is precisely why I use waste water to wash very dirty items.

Not so great for the houses/flats that are next to the bins

Yes correct. Plus the water/soap/effort used to do it would cancel out the 'environmentally friendly' impact if the smear of mayo was left in the jar.

Do not sweat it and just get it done.
Welcome to the 3 week bin club. It is not a nice place to be, but there are plenty of us here.
You should all rinse your recycables, by the way. There are people working in the place they send the recycling. Just think of them.

Ours are exactly the same. It works fine, everything that goes into recycling is washed as I hate manky bins! It’s no extra work really.

Same. Sorting out recycling items into separate bins is good enough 😀

Lots of flats have communal bins.

Probably like most people, I use a rubber scrapper to get the food out of jars first. This goes in the food waste.

And then you will complain when they put up the council tax to cover the extra cleaning.

You are being ridiculous, lazy and petty. It doesn't take long to rinse stuff out at the end of a washing up session.

You can put jars in dishwasher but need to laboriously peel off sticky labels first or they can disintegrate in d/w.

I’d imagine infinitely better than the situation as it is now.

We don't have a large kitchen, and have these stackable bins for our recycling as they have a small footprint.

www.amazon.co.uk/Prosperplast-Sortibox-Separation-System-charcoal/dp/B07RSYRH4T

@DiscoBeatI use whatever has been used for something else so I don’t use new cling film/bags/tin foil but something that has been used for something else and will be thrown away. I keep packaging from any deliveries, did hotel quarantine in a couple of countries during covid and kept the large number of plastic bags all our supplies arrived in daily to use as bin bags for several months. The average UK household uses a fraction of the plastic consumed in some countries, try going to a convenience store in Japan and see what plastic consumption is like.

It would be quicker to rinse them than to remove the labels.

Yes and saves effort too. I am going to get one of those fancy scrapers! Tahini jars are the worst, I usually have to give them a couple of runs through the dishwasher as that stuff sticks like glue.

A lot of people on here seem upset at the thought of rinsing meat wrappers in the kitchen sink, but surely they wash their sinks every day?

Well aren't you a rebel ?🙄

I'd like to eat all the food in a jar if I had such a device to remove every scrap! Sun pat peanut butter plastic jars for example- does the device you speak of easily clean this out? If so please send me a link I want one! So the leftover van go in my tum!😀