to not do the weekly recycling??

[ihavenotime]

I have name changed as dont want a ripping in my usual name

We dont have time in our house for the weekly recycling, we have 3 dc,
dc1 is disabled
dc2 just started nursery school
dc3 is under 1.
DH can work over 60 hours a week, so im left by self most of the time and running round after 3 children by myself i dont have the time to farkin sit their and sort out all the recycling in to the appropriate boxs, then wash out tins, take the label of tins or plastic.
I dont have time to pick my own nose let alone all of that.

Anyone else not do it??
Right got my hard hat ready

OP, I was a bit harsh before.

Just do what you can when you can. I like to recycle and reuse and compost as much as poss but sometimes feel like chucking it. I just can't do it!!

I think the washing is just to reduce smell. I just give everything a quick rinse so that the recyling box doesn't drip.

well I suppose it makes it easier for them if it's clean - less gunk to gum up their filters or whatever - but it definitely wouldn't negate the value of the whole process.

Taking labels off at home would surely be mad though in energy terms, especially if you used hot water to do it!

My neighbours carefully collect all of their plastic and then weekly drive some considerable distance to the recycling bank.

Hmmm. I think I'm with onager at al on this one.

Our kerbside recycling is just as easy as putting things in the bin. I just do a quick rinse and don't delabel. They take glass, metal and newspaper.

The other stuff is more of a pain, because it has to be taken to Sainsbury's. I have a big plastic toybox that sits in the garden (they type with the rope handles), and chuck everything in there. About once every 3 weeks, I take it to the recycling - it's a job I loathe, but in reality takes no more than 20 minutes of my time.

I also compost what I can.

We have been recycling our plastics for just over a year now, and have got our bin down from 1.5 wheelie bins a week to less than a third - that's for a family of 8 plus a dog.

It is an effort and you shouldn't feel you have to do it if it is too much for you at this time - there is a season for everything. I agree with whoever said just pick one category and focus on that. I would focus on cans, if you use a lot, as that is where the greatest scarcity/most energy is atm.

well where we live its a bag for paper, box for glass and a box for plastics.

some of our neighbours have been told off by the recycling people who do the collection for not rinsing out cans, for putting glass jars in and leaving the labels on.

Someone on our street also got told off for putting a empty pringles packet in the paper bag as the lining inside isnt made of paper, and on the pringles pack it says it recycleable,

And i said dh works at least 60 hours a week, some times he can work 7 days a week from 5am-8pm as he works on the roads.

as you can see here it can be complecated on what to recycle and what not to and i havent the time for it

Someone mentioned optimal recycling. Perhaps there is a case for having us seperate out the one most helpful item (Paper perhaps or glass) and keeping the whole thing simple. Something that won't smell if we have to store it until it's collected.

The current idea that they can add more and more categories because it's only your time being wasted is unreasonable.

Also I get annoyed at the propaganda that if we do as we're told and recycle everything then our children will be born into a bright future filled with trees and fluffy bunnies. It's manipulative, cynical and unrealistic. The councils will be doing it so that their recycling officer gets a bigger bonus and can afford two flights abroad a year.

sorry should add we also have a box for tins

You wash the tins and take off the labels? I don't.

Surely you could put any glass into that box - that wouldn't take any more time than throwing in your bin. Putting your junk mail into the paper bag ditto. Leave the tricky stuff, and get your middle child involved in the easy stuff.

yabu I'm afraid, I'm in a fairly similar situation to you, (one less dc though!) dh works away 3 nights a week and the recycling gets done nonetheless.

To be honest, once I got into the swing of it, it takes no more than 5 mins per day, if that. I rinse tins and bottles but leave the labels on, I don't squash them, just sling them into the right sacks and stick them out on the drive once a week. I think everyone has a social responsibility to do it tbh.

If you don't wash things out, it attracts critters!

In our apartment block there are 12 apartments. We have 3 x normal-sized wheelie bins for normal rubbish, 1 x red normal-sized for plastic/glass and 1 x blue normal-sized for paper. That's between all 12 apartments.

I keep a red and a blue plastic crate in the kitchen of my apartment and put plastic/glass (rinsed out but not de-labelled) in red and paper in blue (including our shredding and junk mail & envelopes).

We recycle as much as we can and normally end up with just 1 x kitchen bin + 1 smaller bin of rubbish per week (plus the recycling).

When we first moved here I wondered how we were going to manage with only having 1/4 of a normal-sized wheelie-bin as "ours" but it's been fine.

We definitely waste less here than we did in the UK

Ihavenotime, you can do some recycling. You just start bit by bit and build it in to what you do. DC2 can help you - mine do.

I put the cans, jars, and plastic milk bottles in the dirty water at the end of the washing up. I have a dishwasher but there are always some things to wash up. I just chuck them in and leave them if they are gunky. It doesn't require any extra energy, and takes less than a minute a day. My DCs are too small for me to have a glass/can box on the floor by the bin, so I have it on a little shelf in the downstairs loo.

Or you could just do paper or cardboard, as one person said. Before kerbside recycling lots of people just did paper, so we got used to doing it gradually. I do think it can be a struggle to start doing it all all at once with three DCs so don't beat yourself up, but don't allow yourself to believe it means you don't have to either.

The reason we need to do it is not because we will wake up tomorrow with fluffy bunnies but because we live on a small island and don't have space to chuck everything in landfill. A lot of the things we chuck can be reused.

Good luck, but take it slowly so it doesn't take over your life.

Paper
keep a recycling box somewhere handy (near the bin?), stick it all in there and put it out the morning the recycling men come.

cans
It really doesn't take long to stick a can under a running tap and rinse it out. Collect all from one lot of clearing up and take them straight out. (Just like taking the bin out, which I'm sure you do, and which you'll do much less if you recycle more, so it's simply a matter of replacing trips to the bin with trips to the recycling box, and it's much less pleasant to deal with a smelly bin bag and a big smelly wheelie bin than a couple of cans and a clean plastic box).

Plastic trays and bottles
Plastic trays with meat or fish can be washed up with the rest of the washing up. How many would you use for one meal? It won't add ten seconds to your washing up. Water bottles ? straight out. Fizzy drinks ? rinse (again, not ten seconds).

It's not time consuming to recycle. You just need to get into the habit.

The 'energy' to wash out a tin can is almost zero - any idea on how much water / energy is wasted in extracting / processing ore and to finally process it into a new can its LOADS more. This thread does highlight the differences between local authorities and there is a lack of consistency. We are not asked to remove labels - wash out yes. Curb side we have bi-weekly, cans, foil, paper and glass. The same people that do the collection run the local recycling which also takes plastics (two types) and 'tetra pack' style cardboard & ordinary cardboard - neither of which they will collect - go figure . Its a bit of a pain but now local supermarket we use regularly has plastic / cardboard bins so we can recycle pretty much weeky and avoid the build up (which is a pain).

We should all recycle and it should be easy and consistent for us all to do that - would like to see more incentives for those that make the effort (not penalise those that don't).

Yeah, don't bother recycling - who cares what kind of a shit-heap we leave behind for our children when we're gone?

Despite being an avid recycler to the point that we asked the council for a teeny wheely bin for our two carrier bags of rubbish a week - I did have some sympathy with the OP.

But then she revealed that they actually have a kerbside collection. Maybe to collect recycling and have a trip to the recycling pount is a bit of a faff but to just chuck your rubbish into different bin - difficult???? I think not.

YABU.

Do you also just chuck your crisp bags onto the pavement or do you find the time and energy to put them into a bin? It's all the same to me I'm afraid. Lazy and selfish.

Yabu, it does not take more time to put a tin in te recycle box than it takes to bin it, well ,not that much more time anyway. BTW you just have to rinse cans, you do not have to scrub them with Fairy.

It is a bit disheartening when you read about thousands of tons of material put out to be recycled ending up at landfill. But i think we still need to make the effort.

Sorry the excuse your dh works 60 hrs a week doesnt wash, i work 50 hrs a week, have no dp to help out and i still recycle, oh and i have 2 dc.

Erm..I don't spend any time at all sitting and sorting out recycling.

Cans, glass and plastic bottles get rinsed out when I do the normal washing up, then cans and glass go in the kerbside collection box and the plastics go in another box that we take to the recycling centre when it's full (or our neighbours take it when they take theirs).

When I finish a packet (eg cereal), the plastic bag goes in the bin, and the box goes in the recycling box.

I have a compost bin too so any veg peelings, teabags etc go in a container on the kitchen worktop and then go out to the compost bin at the end of the day (sometimes every other day if it is raining hard )

When I open the mail I put any envelopes/junk straight into the recycling box.

Doing it this way I really don't find it any more hassle than putting it in the bin.

If you save up all your bottles you could always build something like this!

here most of the stuff I send for recycling will end up in landfill so the local news points out, but I still keep doing it simply so that I don't have an overflowing wheely bin. But it means that it's a fairly pintless exercise. If you are really concerned about the environment (I'm not talking to you OP, as you're being honest) reusing not recycling is the way forward.