what to do with plastic milk jug things....

[fryalot]

We go through about ten six pinters a week and, whilst we do have a recycling bin to put them in, it's only collected once a month and we are supposed to put paper, plastic and tin cans in it as well, so it would be full after a week. Council will not give us any extra bins.

We live ten miles from the recycling centre, and it's not on the way to anywhere, so it would be a twenty mile round trip just to recycle them.

We have an open fire and can burn them as soon as they are empty.

If they get put in the normal waste bin, it is full to bursting every week and if they're going in the bin, they're not getting recycled.

Am currently burning them on the fire but not 100% sure that this is the most environmentally friendly thing to do.

Any advice?

Are you certain that there isn't a recycling centre nearer to you?
I live in a fairly rural area and there are groups of recycling skips all over the place, but they are not always obvious - I found another one just the other day about 3 miles away! Have you tried phoning your council to find out if there is one nearer?
If you want to put them in the bin, have you tried cutting them up? It might not make enough difference but it still might be worth a go.
I'd also get on to Tesco about having one in their carpark - your council might be able to help with this too.

sure there isn't one nearer to me. There are just fields in between me and the town

Tescos is a good idea - it's where the glass recycling is so shouldn't be a major issue for them to add a couple more recycling thingies.

Will ask them tomorrow.

Ethical choices always seem to involve a trade off.

Organic milk in plastic cartons or non-organic milk in reusable glass bottles.

Processed white sugar in a paper bag or unprocessed brown sugar in a plastic bag.

I find it frustrating.

yeah, that's what I was thinking. I was just wondering which got the most "green" points on this one.

There's no easy answer for any of it, is there

Squonk, when you say nowhere to store your 50 cartons, do you mean no space or no container? We squash ours into an old dustbin, it takes quite a lot. we have to take it to the tip ourselves but if the council collected I'd just put the whole bag out on collection day.

amazing that council won't collect them when they are under pressure to get their recycling percentages up. Most of them are very happy to give you extra or bigger boxes.

your family must have a serious cereal habit!

both - no space inside, and no box or anything to go outside.

There are five of us, all with serious milk habits

When I lived on an island (no rubbish collection at all) we used to cut them up - sharp pair of scissors, cut off the top and the bottom, then cut the middle into four separate sides. Run hot water into the carton first to make the plastic more pliable and easy to cut. (we then had to burn them unfortunately - but it kept the volume of rubbish down until we did a big burn!)