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!

Bit ironic to accuse others of laziness when you ... have a dishwasher....

This is a good point. I guess we all need to become better jar scrapers.

Most supermarkets have a used battery bin in their store. Or they do in South Wales

Fun fact if anyone makes it this far in the thread: black plastic can't usually be recycled as the belts of the machines are black so they can't be detected.

but my landfill mayonnaise jar is not the main problem here!

Then what is?

We have green-general waste, purple-glass, brown-food, black-paper and card, blue-plastic. Can't put gardening waste in the brown bin now unless we pay for a permit. The only annoying thing is how many giant bins there are and that the green bin is once every 3 weeks. We have to make regular visits to the recycling centre, which is always closed so have to travel to the other end of the city. Its been like this for years now though. Ive never washed anything though, dont remember ever being told that.

Depends on which local authority. Some have sorting done by human hand or by machines that can come with any colour.

Both DH and DSs (in their own homes) recycle avidly.
In fact, when we bought our first flat together almost 40 years ago, we used to wash out tins and take them to the recycling centre - well before household recycling became normal and glass jars and bottles went to bottle banks.

Accidentally voted YRNUR. It is unreasonable to complain your bin is full if you don’t recycle jars. Just put the lid on and shake or use a dishwasher. Or a washing up brush. If you eat it, how can you consider it gross?

I agree it is unreasonable stuff comes in so much plastic packaging though. Council don’t take that and it was most of our land fill. Now we have supermarkets that take it so have the joy of washing it up. Dishwasher is broken so we use it to dry the soft plastic in 😂

sometimes there’s a bag of rotten lettuce or something- that goes in landfill once most of the lettuce is pouted into
xompost. Almost all out landfill rubbish is black
plastic, cat litter and pet bedding.