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!

Don’t be so lazy, OP. Washing up is one of the things us women were put on earth for.

No. Taking responsibility for your own waste is what good citizens of the earth look like. The fact that she's a woman is neither here nor there. It is not a woman's job to deal with her own shit.

It's a HUMAN'S job to deal with its own shit.

For rinsing out the re-cycling. You said due to drought conditions last year you wondered if it was the best use of water to rinse re-cycling. If you've washed up you have water left that you can use to rinse the recycling.

Your recycling bin must stink 🦨👃

I get your point. I don't mind rinsing out a jar but its where we haven't eaten something by its use by date that's a problem such as a tub of taramasalata or or half a carton of soup. Its such a time-consuming faff to have to scrape it all out first into the food bin before rinsing out the tub, and a 3-weekly bin collection is too long. Dog poo goes in the general rubbish bin where I am and I think if it were left for 3 weeks, the stench would be pretty heinous by then.

I can't believe some people are so precious they will only use the top part of a jar of mayo and think other people should wash out jars for them/deal with thousands of square miles of landfill.
Why don't you just employ some staff to do the washing for you? They can also prepare your silver serving dish of mayo globs, while they are at it.

I remember when my sister got her own place our Mum went to visit her and came home with a barely eaten roast chicken which was about to go in the bin. Sis had just taken off the breast meat for her and her boyfriend and wasn't going to use any more. Mum was almost apoplectic. This was years ago and my sister still over buys and wastes food. Nowadays there is a massive amount of packaging too, which people pay a premium for and then discard.

You're showing exactly what's wrong with the world right now.

We're a family of 4 and a large dog, our black bin is collected once every 3 weeks.

Recycling consists of:
Paper and card
Plastic and metal
Glass and other containers
Garden waste IF YOU WANT TO no one makes anyone pay for it.

A simple rinse of a container takes 3 seconds.
If you're that bothered it can go in dishwasher.

If you recycle properly, the waste you throw away is significantly reduced so 3 weeks is plenty.

Honey, you are just plain lazy.

You are being so unreasonable. People like you are the reason so much recyclable material ends up in landfill or incineration - the latter being horrifically polluting. You should have to live near a landfill and experience what happens to your waste when you make it someone else's problem.

You handle raw chicken and cook it but now the packet is gross? It's the same thing you just cooked and ate. Grow up.
Same for mayo and jam in a jar - you ate it? Why is is gross outside the body but fine in?

It's not hard - do the washing up, chuck in any packaging for recycling at the end. Leave it in there to soak whilst you wipe up and put away other bits, drain it, some jars might need a shake, then pop it in the recycling.

And garden waste - get a compost bin, why should people with no garden subsidise your waste? Everyone produces the other types of waste, but not everyone has garden waste.

If you're complaining about what we do vs big corporations, then stop supporting Temu, Shein, Amazon and buying random things that serve limited purpose. They exist and pollute because you, the consumer, say you want it and are willing to pay for it. If everyone made small changes, collectively we'd change consumer demand which does change corporate behaviour.

I always rinse the meat packets and jars. Never seen an issue really. I used to compost food waste, now I'm mixing it up with the food waste collection (which is great, as we would dig to bury the food to compost, so we just compost the good stuff now). My black bin goes out once a month, recycling every two weeks, food waste every week. Seems pretty streamlined.

Supermarkets take the soft plastics often

I dont wash anything out, im on a water meter and unless the council give me a rebate on my council tax then unlucky!

Who cares if it stinks , it’s a bin . I don’t spend time sniffing it

Because people have to physically handle your recycled waste. Or do you completely lack empathy or respect?

I’m pretty sure even ‘clean’ bins can still stink with the waste that’s in them, dog shit, nappies, out of date food that smells etc

The things you listed go in non-recyclable waste bins (and if bagged correctly, don't stink).

Recyclable waste is sorted by hand and machine. So, your plastic meat packaging, yoghurt pots, etc are handled by human beings.

Wasteful, entitled people like yourself mean that these systems have to be put in place. The fact you can’t even be arsed to wash out a jar speaks volumes.

I'm quite passionate about recycling. I do wash out all the tins, jars etc so they don't stink up the house. It was all nicely under control. Then they introduced 'flexible plastic recycling' at my local supermarket. All the plastic packaging that can't normally go in the kerbside recycling. This seemed like a great idea. So now it's washing all the plastic films and bags that have food matter on them. It's so much work! But I really don't want to go back to putting it all in the bin again. I wish they would somehow make it easier, or just package more stuff in non-plastic.

I agree, put plastic jars and tins through dishwasher cycle after scraping in food bin...admittedly I'm retired but it just makes sense to your automatically rinse stuff. My 3 week emptied (black) general bin is always half empty.....

Well you should do

It's not normal to waste food in our house. A silicon scraper gets all but the very tiniest bit of mayo (or whatever is in a jar) out, to be used. All the bread gets eaten. I think you have a very strange view on waste.

You can always just keep taking your glass to the recycling bank, if you don't want to comply with collection rules.

I work a full-time job and a part-time job, have a 4-year-old and two dogs. I still manage to rinse out all my plastic containers and recycled my soft plastics. It takes seconds.

How horribly wasteful. Our household of three puts one black bag a fortnight in the black bin - it’s about halfway full and that includes cat litter.

Fruit/veg peel, tea bags (ripped open) etc is put on the compost heap. Everything that can be recycled is recycled and is washed before putting in the recycling.

All soft plastics are put in a bag and taken down to the supermarket when we go shopping.

I genuinely had no idea that people were this wasteful in their lives. No wonder the world is fucked. It’s certainly not something to be proud of.

Not to lecture but please don't think you're not making a difference - if everyone had that attitude our planet is screwed. It does absolutely make a difference (or at least signals that people care and that governments and businesses need to remain committed as well). We are good at recycling and choosing specifically recyclable / minimal packaging things and even with the very occasional thing that's gone mouldy and beyond saving going in the bin we barely fill up our black bin. The recycling on the other hand is always full on recycling day. I think you'll find you'll be fine.

I hate walking past stinking bins on bin day. I expect the bin/recycling people feel the same way about emptying them. No-one is too busy to rinse out a few packets and jars.

We all have a responsibility to do our bit and be considerate of others. This is why we are polite to others, queue in shops, don't drop litter and respect other peoples property. A dirty jar may not be the main problem but a selfish attitude is.