to think that recycling is a big con?

[TiggyR]

I've just been to yet another party where the topic of recycling came up, and I was told (for the umpteenth time) that our councils are just dumping it all in the same landfill hole, and all this sorting and seperating business is just smoke and mirrors to make us feel that the government takes the issue seriously.

Now I reycle avidly, I do as I'm told (to a point) but I do sometimes just chuck packaging that is too soiled to rinse effectively or too flimsy to go through the dishwasher. I don't see the point in spending so much of my time, not to mention heating oil and water, making sure that everything is totally clean before it goes in the bag. Counter-productive - surely? And costing me money and time and increasing my carbon footprint! But the council says that if there is any evidence of traces of food on packaging the whole bag gets dumped in landfill because they don't have the resources to sort it.

Now then: I used to have to sort tins and cans and plastic into one bag, and paper and card into another, and newspapers into yet another. I have seen with my own eyes the binmen chuck both bags into the same crusher section of the lorry.

Now we are told we can mix them all into one.

Have the council suddenly beome very generous and employed people to sort it for me, or are they taking the piss, and dumping it? I read about a year ago that the resale value of recycling scrap had plummeted and the buyers in China or India or wherever it went no longer wanted it. Maybe the councils don't want to tell us this because we'll stop recycling altogether, and when the price picks up again, they'll want to carry on as before.

Also, our green waste bin used to take only uncooked peelings and garden waste, but now it takes all cooked food waste as well. How come? I just smell a big fat rat, if you'll pardon the pun.

I'd love to know the truth once and for all.

My borough is Colchester, BTW just in case anyone has any specific information on what happens to my rubbish!

Oops. It's Braintree actually. Forgot where I lived there for a moment. Well, it's on the council boundary - it's confusing!!

I believe ours is okay (I'm in Staffordshire). Our recycling gets picked up separately from our regular trash, so that's one good sign. Also, we have a plant in Stoke that's supposed to be the cleanest burning plant or something in England because they reuse trash. (I obviously know the gist of this, but not the details).
Our local tip is really good as well, and they lament people around here who WON'T separate stuff and who refuse to recycle.

So, whether they're talking a really good game, I don't know, but it feels pretty worth my while here.

I have no idea. Ours is apparently being stacked up on military land until someone wants to buy it again.

Sorry, I just realised I was a bit unclear. We can now mix plastic, tin, and paper etc into one recycling sack, but it is kept separate to the black bin for landfill stuff, and then a green bin for compostable waste. They are collected on alternate weeks. Green and recycling sacks one week, and black bin the next. I could practically take a degree in this.

I'm very sceptical about recycling tbh. My local council is Colchester and they are very organised about collections but I'm not convinced it is recycled or even the cost effectiveness of it.

The thought of it being towed on a gigantic boat to a desperately poor country for them to sort makes me furious.

We can harness energy from incineration now. Surely that must be a better use of energy?

Also don't understand why they say they can take all cooked food scraps yet not dog poo. Surely if the temperature is high enough to kill bacteria it will handle to dog poo? There must be some ecological way of putting dog poo to good use! What about drying it and using it as fuel - not domestic, but maybe in industry/agriculture? Sorry, bit gross I know! Just seems like missing a trick to me.

I do recycle but have heard from loads of people that it just goes into landfill.

That's what I mean TCF - what evidence do they have that is being kept from the rest of us? Cos I'm getting cheesed off with having to drive to the library to get more recycling sacks, because they'll only deliver two rolls of sacks a year and I use a roll every six weeks or so, and they'll only give me one roll at a time there too, so I have to drive back for more! How not green is that?

And if it's all for nothing anyway I might start a mutiny, or a boycott. Or something.

Alouiseg - do they take your glass in Colchester?

YANBU imo. I've seen them throw all the stuff into the same truck - both here (Midlands) and in SW London. In West Sussex, though, the dump genuinely did have separate containers & treatments for different kinds of trash and they were collected in different trucks. So, there, I bothered to do it.

Tiggy, there's a new process that can separate the cans & plastics by itself. God knows how, but it uses bacteria I think.

Yes, they take Glass/metal and paper/card on one week the next week is plastics and garden waste. General refuse is collected weekly.

We don't have food waste collected yet but I couldn't bear that anyway. I use a waste disposal system in the sink.

Who knows what we are supposed to do with dog poo, I flush it or use a clean green dog you, which doesn't work.

i am in northern ireland and i also have seen the binmen taking the blue bin (recycling bin here) and putting it in with teh black bin rubbish.

my cousin had here blue bin left unemptied one day with a big tag on it saying 'contaminated'. she couldn't work out from the list what the contaminated item was so she phoned the council and asked them to come and collect her recycling. they came teh following week while they were emptying the black bins and emptied her black and blue, one after the other into the same lorry. she was furious, as you would be.

tbh i dont know what to believe. i do think tehre must be some good councils that are doing everything by the book but i know from seeing it myself that there are some who are full of hot air, just for appearances sake.

I've got one of those dog loos in the garden. Tis rubbish.

I thought I'd seen Colchester people with glass mixed in with stuff in the crates outside their houses. Not fair. I want that. Then again, I'm not sure I want to advertise how many wine bottles we get through in a fortnight. I'd end up taking half mine to Sainsbury's anyway, just to look like less of a lush!

Recycing takes up the time and energy of already overworked women and we get paid nothing to do it. In fact the answer to the recycling problem lies with manufacturers, who are allowed to produce endless amounts of packaging. The logical approach would be to tackle the problem at their end but governments won't do this because it ruins their relationship with business. So instead women (in the main) have to spend time cleaning and sorting rubbish, unpaid, and get threatened with fines, etc for doing it wrongly.

I couldn't agree more.

Our council is regularly voted best in Scotland for re-cycling. We have a brown bin for garden waste, blue bin for cans, metal, paper and plastic, blue box for glass and green bin for everything else. There is a recycling centre where you can take all of the above + TVs and white goods, furniture, rubble, bicycles, etc - all goes in separate bays/sheds and re-used e.g the bicycles go to a workshop where they are plagerised to refurbish other bikes. We also have a garden waste recycling facility at the Council's Nursery. They will shred stuff, e.g. Christmas trees and give you it back in bags to use as a mulch or you can pick up free loads of the compost made from the brown bin waste. They do charge for special uplifts and about £5 for big bins for home composting, otherwise all free. I do not think the Council makes a profit but they do break even, provide local employment and are expanding into collecting and processing waste from neighbouring Counties.

It can work.

We have a bin for paper and card and one for tin and glass. Don't wash anything though.