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!

And I don’t envy daily collections of communal bins like I’ve seen in Spain - they always stink and they seem to arrive noisily crashing the heavy bins around at about 4.00am.

I struggle to fill a black bin in four weeks, now. Once you start using the food waste bin religiously (which you need to reduce the hum from the black bin), it makes a huge difference. And I've got a baby in nappies.

Most stuff goes in the food waste or recycling (cleaned) although I do also take soft plastics back to the supermarket and compost my garden waste. If I have a clear out and stuff can't go to charity, I do do a tip run.

I've started using dog poo bags in the kitchen (which I appreciate sounds insane) because I ran out of bin liners and had some (don't currently have a dog). It's mostly just hoover stuff and the occasional unopened packet of stuff that's gone off and would reak to open. The rest of the black bin is bathroom bin and nappies. Wouldn't have believed it was possible until I tried.

Sorry but you are being so bloody precious

You can eat the product but cant rinse the packaging it comes in?

Admit, your wee comfortable used to this schedule has been messed up for you and you are stomping the foot

The responsibility of being a consumer is recycling as much as you can. We didn't used to do food waste, but we do now and soft plastic, we have hardly any black bin rubbish now. It's shocking how much we consume when I see all the recycling but I would feel worse about it if I didn't bother to recycle it. We all need to do our bit, it's our responsibility.

I say this every time, it is not beyond science and engineers to invent a way to burn all our rubbish for energy and siphon off or contain the toxic fumes somehow to be filtered and safe.

Absolutely correct! We used to wash milk bottles before putting them out for the milkman to collect, wash and collect the foil caps (was it for charity?) Our parents grew up in wartime and recycled everything they could. At my primary school we had huge containers for food waste (cooked school dinners) which went for pig swill. I believe this was discontinued for disease control but it was an efficient system at the time. Of course babies had cloth nappies and nobody used tissues or kitchen paper. Food packaging was minimal. I can remember butter being cut off a big block!

A different world.

Me too. Personally I think it’s pretty gross to put unwashed tins and jars in the bin.

Haven’t had time to read the whole thread. I thought I was a good recycler but I didn’t know the council would recycle mince packets. Is this everywhere?

Presumably people drive to the bottle bank. If so isn’t that worse than chucking stuff in the bin

We recycle as much as we can. Not only is our black bin overflowing after 2 weeks. There isn’t space in our recycling bin either. So 3 weeks would be even worse

I must be missing something - I just stick all my jars in the dishwasher. But then, I re-use quite a few of them making jam and chutney and marmalade.

Same

good grief. just scrape the jar out properly, fill the jar with hot water, put lid back on, shake, pour out, then stick in the dishwasher if that didn't get all of it.

you don't need to wash 'gross' things in the sink if you don't want to.

We've had the food bin for about 3 years now, its just normal, i'm liking not having a minging bin and a march of maggots in the the hot weather.. the food bin gets collected weekly, and we wash everything that goes in the recycling... it isn't fair in the sorters to have to deal with your laziness.

Cop on and stop being lazy.

How does rinsing out jars create space in your rubbish bin?

It just helps the process to be cleaner - those yucky jars can break in the collection lorry, stinking it up as your mayonaise mingles with someone else's marmalade with a bit of congealing meat juice thrown in. Gross.

Same. All my jars, packaging and bottles go in the recycling as is.

Councils have all had a directive to widen the range of things that can be recycled. It was supposed to happen by about now although a lot of councils have asked for an extension.

But the person handling your rubbish can touch the gross, now going mouldy packets?
we wash out everything and have done for years. Why would I want that attracting flies etc near my home and bins and why should someone else have to handle it. It takes a few seconds

It takes 10 seconds to rinse a jar.
We're been doing it for years.

I have two sets of friends who live in rural parts of France. One of them has to drive over 2 miles to dispose of their rubbish, the other one is at least 1.5 miles.

That made me really value the council collecting it from my drive!

If it' s plastic you recycle ,depending on the type of plastic.

Stop being so lazy. Rinse the jar in cold water before washing..and don't buy chicken and mince if you can't be arsed cleaning them. This isn't difficult

Put a dash of washing up liquid and some water in the jar/sauce bottle. Put the lid on and shake it and it cleans it well enough
I spray meat packaging with antibacterial spray and then rinse

It doesn't need 'washing' just a quick swish of water to get most of the leftover product out.
I fill it with water, lid on, shake, empty and into the bin.

Washing my garbage with my precious water resources isn’t going to save the planet.

It doesn’t need washing at all. It is all washed at the point of recycling in industrial washing machines.