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!

but the waste you produce reflects your choices doesn't it? Making mayonnaise is too much trouble for you, so you buy it in. You could choose to make it, or you could choose to manage without it - in those cases no jars to worry about. But you are choosing the waste, that then has to be disposed of/recycled.

We buy our meat from a butcher, so don't have any plastic waste that comes with it, so we don't have to think about washing up plastic meat packaging for recycling.

we're all of us being nudged toward making more sustainable choices as consumers. It's not always comfortable, and sometimes annoying - but also necessary for future generations.

and talking of people making their own cornflakes - yes, a ridiculous idea. It's a useful guide really, that if something is damn near impossible to make at home (like cornflakes) then maybe it's not a good idea to eat it at all (UPF and all).

But you do you, of course.

I didn’t know that there were people who didn’t wash out the jars and plastic trays. That’s pretty disgusting. They don’t have to be forensically clean, but a scrape out and a rinse under the tap should do it. Or as a pp said, pour some water into the jar and give it a good shake with the lid on. It seems that some people are only prepared to do their bit for the environment when it, erm, doesn’t involve doing anything. It’s a bit of a pain, but so are lots of things.

Tell that to my Council who have never issued such instructions.

Our changed to this system last August. The recycling works well but they halved the size of the general waste bin. This works well for some people but for people with nappies, incontinence products, cat tray litter, every three weeks is hard.

We have had mixed recycling for years you just need to rinse the plastic out i just let cold water run into the jars till they are clean, takes minutes.

I used to live in an apartment with big bins outside so I could put the black bin out as often as possible. I recycled cardboard and glass but not much else. Bought/moved into our house last year and quickly realised it was black bin every three weeks. Panicked. Thought that would be horrendous. First few weeks were tricky adjusting, but then we just started…recycling. And it’s fine. You get used to it so quickly. I dont properly wash meat packets, just run them under the hot tap for a second. You’ll be fine.

Yanbu tbh, once every 4 weeks is a health hazard

What a waste of water.

My latest water bill is £220 for 3 months. " people. South West Water.

I will not be washing out my recycling. Tho I would consider putting some of it in the dishwasher.

I still have the memory of moving from London to here, previous water rates were £16, the new water rates was £55 - we quickly went onto a water meter.

We just stick jars in the dishwasher, otherwise, we’d just sluice them out with water.

Plastic meat packets don’t get washed.

We have an extra bin service for nappys etc, it does mean you have another bin but it does get emptied every 2 weeks instead of 4.

If this is all you have to worry about, you are very lucky. For goodness' sake. Just rinse the stuff out.

Never occurred to me that it was an arduous task to wash out meat packets or jars….I would do so even when i had a 20-times-a-week bin collection (Westminster) 😂

It's not ridiculous. They're unable to use the lifting machinery if the bin is over full.

Me neither. Let's not pretend it all gets recycled.

I don't wash out raw meat packets it just splashes everywhere. I let the dog lick ham etc packets.

DP is even fussier about it than I am. So that’s one I know of😅 But then he also saves all the little metal lids that they don’t accept in our area and takes them to the scrap metal bin at the recycling centre.

Yes, exactly this! I used to wash out glass bottles over 60 years ago, as a child, and take them to the local supermarket to get the deposits back. We also used to wash the empty milk bottles before leaving them out for the milkman to collect.

Before doorstep recycling was introduced, which was in the 1990s, I used to sort recyclable items (cans, glass, paper and card) into separate boxes in the garage and when they were full I'd put them in the car and drive to the local recycling centre with them. The cans and bottles were always washed first.

People often accuse us older folk of not having cared for the environment when we were young, but it seems there are a lot of people today who don't care at all and who aren't prepared to put themselves out one iota. I grew up in the 1960s and we had one tiny metal dustbin, which was less than half the size of a standard wheelie bin, for a family of five. We produced just a fraction of the waste that is produced nowadays.

We have a glass recycling plant why wouldn't it all get recycled?

I’ve never washed any recycling in an area I’ve lived, they sort and wash it anyway

Good god!

Same here. We dont wash things out.

Sorry, but YABVU and ridiculously precious.

We pay for all our bins and recycling privately here in Ireland and some households choose not to and have to take all their rubbish to local refuse amenity sites.

We’ve always washed out plastic meat packets, tins, cat food pouches etc. before putting them in the various designated bins. Them’s the rules otherwise they won’t collect.

(RANT — Fucking cheapskate camping tourists who don’t use designated camping sites - stop assuming the council is going to come along and collect your roadside rubbish, they don’t!! - RANT OVER)

I don’t like washing jars (especially peanut butter) or meat trays.

I also don’t like cleaning loos, unblocking plug holes or sorting laundry but needs must 🤷🏼‍♀️

Recycling is my DH’s job, along with the food shopping and cooking. Everything kitchen related is his really.

Yuck - I wouldn’t dream of putting an unwashed mayonnaise jar, or unwashed chicken wrappers, in the bin. In summer the smell must be disgusting, and were you aware that bluebottles can smell anything dead - and traces of anything dead - from a mile away?

No wonder people complain about flies, and maggots in their bins.

In this house any scraps of e.g. meat or fish go in a sealed bag in the freezer until the night before the bin men come.