...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?

I hate it. It makes my already small kitchen even more crowded. If I had a utility room I think it'd be less of a pain.

We have four types of recycling bin-oh no five, forgot plastic bottles, plus our compost bin and wormery. They don't take cardboard or plastic here, so we collect them to go to the recycling site separately.

So. Much. Stuff.

Ah well, must do it!

Not to sound like an "eco-warrior" but I would prefer to take a little time out washing up pots and sorting out rubbish to help pass on a nicer and greener world to our children.

I don't do anything - everything goes in one bin.

DD1 did a project at school on recycling a couple of years ago. We were then living in a town where the local council had an excellent reputation for recycling - it was held up as a paragon of virtue.

Unfortunately, the school uncovered the fact that the vast majority of the recycling meant it was being shipped abroad to be sorted and 'disposed' of there. Basically their fantastic recycling was merely shoving the problem onto another country with the added burden of the energy used shipping it out.

Very half hearted recycling goes on in the Stratton household now. Most of it ends up in landfill anyway - I see the lorries on the school run ffs.

its not that hard, get a grip

I was OK with it until the new food recycling bins were introduced here. We have to put our old and manky food in a bin and have it picked up weekly. The bags supplied disintigrate leaving you with a heap of mould food that has contaminated the box. It seems so unhygenic.

Plus, unfortunately my DH has to fly to work (not his choice) which makes a mockery of it all.

Ours is just about to go to fortnightly collections I usually put 2-3 recycling bags out and 1 bin bag a week if I forget one week now i'm going to be stuffed nowhere to put it.

No. It's easy virtue - high returns for low effort

No, not reluctant what-so-ever.
As people become frustrated with sorting all of their glass, plastic, etc., they do become more aware of what they buy, and don't buy.
Our family shops and eats healthier as a result.

Just swoosh your tins around in the dishwasher, after you have finished washing up.

I hate it. My DH is always checking to see what I have put in the recycling as he says I just throw any old rubbish in. I had no idea I couldn't put in clear plastic. Plactic is plastic to me. I also never clean out the tins. In fact I have often thrown half full tins in. DH is often appalled by this but I tell him that they clean them anyway when it gets there.
I am bad, I know

I know what you mean... but I get an odd sense of pride at a materials sorted correctly for recycling. Never did like throwing everything out (before the recycling bins were introduced) and still feel shame at the amount of glass and paper I threw away before we got into recycling. Especially glass. And metals. During the war I believe people collected little bits of foil for the war effort yet it's so widely used and disposed of nowadays!

I am quite shocked that a £1 jar of jam for example, should buy you the glass pot it comes in as well! Why make it from glass just for a cheap pot of something that'll get eaten up quickly? Surely biodegradable plastic can't be more expensive than creating a glass jar, can it?

Yanbu. To make it worse, dh is a huge believer in it.

I have no problem with recycling and I just about have room for all the different bins but I do think it's a bit complicated and there's too much variation between authorities as to what goes where. Some will take cardboard, some won't etc

I don't mind sorting the stuff that is collected but there is no plastic collection where I am & only fortnightly rubbish collections so my kitchen is filled with empty yogurt pots & bottles that we have to take to the recycling bins ourselves.

It's stopped me buying so many things in plastic packs from supermarkets. Veg comes in veg box for example. I avoid ready meals etc, m & s cardboard packaging.

Kitchen bin in much smaller and less smelly.
Recycling I keep outside in five sections.
It is a hour's work a week to deal with it though.
I love the food recycling service, makes it seem so much less wasteful tipping old leftovers away. Why do people complain about the smell, after all the same food leftovers would be in your bin bag rotting away and attracting rats..

Can't say it bothers me too much. Someone has to do it and i've been used to doing it for years.

I buy the stuff, so should deal with it.

I write letters to supermarkets about packaging also when I have the time. (and get some vouchers for my annoying useful suggestions!)

I dont know if im repeating what anyone else has said, but your recycling isnt dumped on other countries, its bought by them, so the council makes money on every single carton and tin you wash, its in their best interests to have everyone recycle, it has nothing to do with being green, its all about profit.

The reason i know this is cos i used to work for a recycling company, it was all carefully sorted to be packaged up into huge bales to be sold to China

If it's used in China and not going to landfill that's good for me too.

"Just swoosh your tins around in the dishwasher, after you have finished washing up."
Oops! I meant dish water, not dishwasher.

In my borough the recycling collectors were caught dumping the stuff into the eurobins outside a block of flats!

I still do it but I'm not as diligent as I could be as a result.

The thing that bugs me is that I used to a rubbish pick-up just-up along our lane: bottles, cans, cigarette packets, etc, and put them in our bin.

I'm not going to wash out everyone else's rubbish and wash it for them and sort it. So the lane will become littered again. :(

I've also removed the rubbish bin from the playground, which I used to throw out with our stuff. No way I'm sorting through that lot.

A very small percentage ends up being recycled anyway. The majority goes to landfill.

My friend works for the Environment Agency and doesn't bother to recycle. She reckons that the energy used to collect and process the recycling cancels out any benefits. She has even argued that it may be better to incinerate the waste and use the energy generated

I've been really fed up with it ever since I found that the stuff you get from mixed waste recycling (which we have round here) is almost totally worthless - if the government/various packaging industries/retailers aren't going to invest in better systems, why the hell should we bother recycling? For example in Switzerland/Finland etc, you put a glass bottle into a colour-sorted glass bottle bank and it goes directly to be melted down to make a new glass bottle. I put it in my black box and it's mixed with all the other stuff I put out (plastic bottles, paper, cartons etc), and might get used as road filler if it's lucky, but is more likely to end up in landfill! Makes me mad!

"YES, and you have to wash everything out, wasting water"
Why does it waste water? We simply wash/rinse bottles/cans when doing the washing up and don't use any extra water in the process.

We have recycling collections for everything except plastic bottles, and recycling has been second nature to me for many, many years. I feel guilty when we are on holiday and there is no provision for recycling and I end up throwing a plastic milk bottle in the bin. It just feels so wrong to me.

In answer to the original question YABVU.