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!

The waste needs to be sorted. This is done by machines and manually, so cleaning containers helps protect the machinery from getting clogged, and saves workers from having to deal with rotting / mouldy remnants.

Not washing your containers adds cost due to extra machinery maintenance and additional PPE requirements.

I always wash anything I put in my bins as I respect the gentlemen who empty them they are humans not robots. How would YOU like to empty stinking bins all day?

I have a pair of rubber washing up gloves for washing up less pleasant recycling to handle.

I also have a pair for cleaning bathrooms/ toilets.

This is a minor issue in the great scheme of things… recycling more helps to reduce the costs of waste management and helps to keep council tax rates lower!

This is to standardise collection of recycling across the UK. Think of the people hand sorting waste, they have enough to contend with without handling your 5 day old chicken packet; the least you can do is give it a quick rinse.

Businesses now pay towards the recycling of household packaging, to the tune of £7 billion last year. This is being used to invest in recycling infrastructure and new technology. There are huge leaps being made but cameras still find it difficult to identify the difference between the black conveyer belt and black plastic (for example), hence the need for hand sorting and therefore for the consumer to clean the packaging.

In Scotland we pay water up front, with council tax, So i am running water willy nilly 😀

I'm with you. Damned if I'm washing out tins of dog food.

@Devilsmommy by doing that you can contaminate the whole lorry of recycling, meaning more goes to landfill, as they can’t recycle filthy stuff.
Just put it in the bin if you aren’t prepared to wash it, and stop wasting everybody else’s efforts.

I always swirl tins and jars with a bit of milk or water to get all the product out anyway, so giving them a final rinse is no big shakes - I often put them in the dishwasher anyway. And I don't want a smelly bin, so I rinse meat packs.

Now, admittedly, we don't have any children/elderly in nappies/incontinence pads, and I use a period cup, but we have a 25 litre kitchen bin and it's never more than half full. And that's on a busy week.

We do keep a bag in the kitchen and take all of our crisp packets and soft plastics to the supermarket to recycle. I think they take up a lot more space in the bin than you think.

We have a small black bin that was never more than half full when it was emptied fortnightly.

Don't get me started on having to pay for the garden waste bin! The one bit that they can actually recycle and reuse or re-sell!

Gosh there are some pampered princesses!

The world is burning and you don’t want to wash mayo jars! It’s a swill under a hot tap. You seriously can’t do that?

The rest of us have been doing this for ages and it is not a big deal.

I always have washed meat trays and bottles/jars. It reduces the stink of your recycling bin to detract rats if you keep them outside and stops your home stinking if your bins are in. I wash out sauce bottles too for the plastics bin.

I have always been happy to wash jars etc ready for recycling. I am not sure what the problem is.

"saves workers from having to deal with rotting / mouldy remnants."
That's why I wash items.

There's a famous scene in Mad Men where they go for a picnic in a park and when they're done they just lift up their blanket and leave all the rubbish on the grass, get in the car, and drive off. It's meant to demonstrate how ludicrous an attitude we had to litter and how little social responsibility there was in the 60s.

I feel the same reading this thread, honestly. Mega depressing.

Family of 5, 2 children still in nighttime nappies. We both work. Been doing 3 weekly collections for years. Manage no bother. Recycling bin fills up but the rest is fine, even if we accidentally miss a week.

We rinse everything and have for years. Was a pain when our council stopped letting us combine paper/card with other mixed recycling cos it meant an extra bin. We also have to take bottles to the bottle bank.

In addition we do food waste (which will massively reduce your black bin) and soft plastics (which we take to the supermarket).

Yes it's a pain, yes more needs to be done about the waste generated by manufacturers. But yes you should still do it and yes it is manageable.

My pet peeve is watching highly intelligent and well educated people at work chuck whatever they like into the recycling bins at work. So lazy and arrogant!

Why would you wash a jar of mayo , surely wait until it's empty! I've recycling over 50 years,it's second nature. There's no way I could put dog food tins in the bin without washing,it would stink..

There are absolutely ways to do this for free especially where we live. A water butt connected to your guttering using second hand materials is a great way for example if you have an outdoor space. Or do what i do and leave it to the side, finish washing the dishes you're going to wash anyway and use the water leftover. They just need to be reasonably clean not completely sterile! It doesn't take a crazy amount of water.

If people have paved over their gardens, they should pay a premium, as it's so damaging to the environment.
Garden waste should be free, because it's the least polluting waste.

Jesus I’m lazy as they come but I still
rinse out my bloody recycling. How completely scummy not to.

I dont think about it, I just do it. It would be gross not to.

Why? Ever heard of the phrase ‘pick your battles’? You’re just creating extra work for minimum wage workers, you’re not protesting or doing anything heroic

This. The laziness/entitlement combo from some people on here is astonishing.

I'm shocked at the amount of people who don't rinse out jars and tins for recycling. I read that this can cause whole batches to become contaminated.

Jars are especially easy. Small squirt of washing up liquid, a couple of inches of warm water, lid on, give it a shake and rinse. If it needs more than that, just pop it in the dishwasher along with plastic packaging like hummus pots or ready meal trays. Just among the gaps between crockery. Plastic often comes out mis-shapen, but doesn't matter. I just put it in the recycling bin when I unload the dishwasher.

Really easy and no extra work or cost as the dishwasher is running anyway.

Because it isn't. How exhausting life must be for you if rinsing out a jar is a PITA. It takes mere seconds.

Why would the council make a request like this if they don't need people to rinse their recycling?

It is so arrogant to think that you are too self important to comply with a polite request.

It's really not hard to wash those things. If you find mince packets that gross then stop eating mince

that's another, very valid, way of looking at it, for sure