...or is anyone else secretly fed up with recycling?

[Chil1234]

I do it, of course I do. Socially responsible, obedient, middle-aged woman, terrified of getting a big sticker on my wheelie-bin that I am - what choice is there? I've got the two-sided Brabantia for the compostable waste, I keep my reusable shopping bags in the back of the car, I'm even tipping the dirty washing up water on the plants to conserve that. But as I look at my little collection of rinsed-out bottles, cans and cardboard waiting to be sorted outside into their relevant bins, bags and boxes I can't help feeling a twinge of nostalgia for the days when you used to just throw stuff away and forget about it. I threw a dead battery in the 'everything else' bin this week and felt positively subversive.... yet elated.

Anyone else a reluctant green?

yes yes yes! Fed up of all the ruddy time it takes to work out which thing goes where, and traipsing from the kitchen to the recycling boxes (we have a recycling bin in the kitchen but still end up carting stuff out all the time). Also gives dh, a hoarder extraordinaire, even MORE excuse to hold onto crap.

i hate it. Additional mess where none is recquired thank you very much. My kitchen is already messy enough without old rubbish needing to be washed / cruched / sorted / put out in the right place.

Good for you, reluctant green, we all think it!

Yep, another - fed - up - but - does - it -anyway - out - of - social - duty - recycler here too.

I get so fed up of washing out jars, keeping old newspapers and sorting. I too, threw away a tin yesterday and felt all rebellious .

And to annoy me even more, our council doesn't collect thick cardboard so my shed is full of cat food boxes etc.

Yes, though its got a lot better since I had some work done at the back of the house which sort of rejigged my utility room and I now have a big red bucket (the kind you keep toys in or the kind builders mix grout in!) and I just chuck everything in there.

It is then DH's "job" to sort through it at his convenience (when it spilleth over) and that works for me fine.

Before then, there was a silly system involving me washing the thing out, and leaving it on a bench where DH was supposed to take it out but then wouldn't due to the door situation (I wont bore you with it).

We'd end up with cat food tins and custard pots and just general crap everywhere and I used to get the dick with it and scoop it all into the rubbish bin to go into landfill.

Why is it DH's job? Because he rejected my fine system that I created a few years ago which I thought worked quite well also which I wont bore you with therefore he will be punished for the rest of his life.

Nope.

Yes but only becuase i live in an upstairs flat and getting downstairs if flipping painfull (i have HMS) i loath going down an extra trip a day just to put the recycling in the bin area... i did keep my recycling bin at the top of my stairs but the miserable old bat downstaisc complained of the noise it made coming down the stairs for emptying once a fortnight.

no - its all rubbish. One goes in RUBBISH bag one goes in RECYCLING bag. No issues whatsoever.

No secret it is a pain. The cupboard under the sink has nothing but four tubs in it. Plastic, glass, cardboard, paper, so at least I don't have to look at it. Then traipsing out side when they are full, three storey house so several trips downstairs and out to garage. Then what goes out when? Then they collect it spilling half over the road and leaving it there. Then bank holidays and they don't come at all.

But I do it yes reluctantly.

YES, and you have to wash everything out, wasting water and your time. They should sort it at the refuse department, we pay for it!

Yep - another reluctant recycler here too - I really wonder how much is actually recycled and how much is just put into landfill anyway (here or in a foreign country) .... I wonder this as I am rinsing, sorting, storing, faffing around with rubbish....

IF I truely believed it was doing any good, I wouldn't mind nearly as much.

Nope

Ooh we just have two kitchen bins - one for recycling, one for waste
then cupboard for glass under the sink

newspapers, yoghurt pots, cans, tins etc all go in recycling bin
why are you sorting so much?

We have a tiny flat, and our hallways is so full of recycling boxes we can't open the door fully, and instead have to squeeze around it.

Oh and our council doesn't collect it from our road, instead we have to lug it all round to another road.

So yeah, really tired of it. But still we do it. Except for the weeks where they haven't bothered collecting at all and we've shoved it in the rubbish just so we can actually use our front door.

No, oddly enough I quite like "filing" things into their separate wire baskets for our different categories - paper, plastic bottles & cardboard for the blue wheely bin, glass bottles to take to the bottle bank, envelopes and aerosols to take into the next county as they collect different things (I work the other side of the line...)

The only down-side for me is that the ordinary kitchen bin can get a bit smelly before it's full, when it used to fill up with plastic bottles

I do not quite understand the problem with washing things out? Surely you would do this anyway? Why would anybody want to have unwashed cans/jars in their bins? They would smell and encourage vermin I would have thought.

YANBU. We have no choice in the matter as we live in Switzerland and the rubbish bags are very strict about what you can and can't put into them (no dead animals or radiocactive waste amongst them). I actually went to the recycling place today with dd and she was horrified that a woman put a Nutella jar in the glass bit 'and it wasn't even clean'.

i put a yoghurt pot in the bin as could not be arsed to rinse it. The guilt

but we use disposable nappies so I must try......

we have a as follows:

1 x garden waste
1 x plastics
1 x tin/cardboard/glass
1 x food waste
1 x bin bag

hours and hours

I don't mind recycling, but get a bit annoyed at how difficult the council makes it. If our recycling box is left out and a passer by drops a crisp packet in it, they refuse to empty it as it hasn't been sorted correctly.

Am fuming at the moment as our recyling box was stolen. My mum, who lives 5 minutes away but in the county rather than city, has a spare. I borrowed hers, popped a note on the top 'sorry, ours has been stolen, pls could you take this until our replacement arrives'. What a surprise, it's still there, full, now.

Annoys me so much, if we go to all the hassle of sorting, washing and storing it. At least take it when we try and give it to you!

Rant over. Sorry, must get out more

To paraphrase someone: I didn't go to Uni to end up rummaging through rubbish. And still...

I get fed up doing this too - especially washing things out before recycling them. Some things are easy enough to rinse, but others need a proper wash to get them clean enough. And I have to confess that the waste from upstairs doesn't always go to the right bin, because it would mean me collecting the bins from 4 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms and then sorting it into recycling and rubbish.

And the dses are worse - I've lost count of the number of times I've fished things out of the bin and cleaned them up for recycling, or nagged them about reminded them about rinsing their yoghurt pots and putting them in the recycling bin.

Then the dog goes in the recycling bin and drags stuff out to shred on the lawn or the dining room rug, and I have to clear it up again.

We do it, but I absolutely agree how irritating and time consuming it is. We may be saving energy, but clearly my time and energy have little or no value - it is at the disposal of the refuse services and the council.

compo - because every council has its own rules. We have to sort some stuff into a green wheelie bin and other stuff into either of two boxes. At my old house, it was MUCH easier, all recyclables in one bag.

Wishing I had a council that picked up recycling, and didn't just expect me to take it all to the big recycling things at Tesco. Apparently living in a flat and recycling don't go together.

Yoghurt pots? It didn't cross my mind to do these ones as well.

crystalqueen that's for certain!

In our old flat thye council only supplied 1 recycling box for our whole flat (3 floors) which our downstairs neighbours would fill up instantly then rarely take out. (I think the record for the box sitting on our landing was 4 months)