How do you recycle without having 3 bins or a messy kitchen?

[msrisotto]

My kitchen is small and I hate it looking like a big mess. It doesn't take much for chaos to reign in there. So what do you do about your recycling? At the moment i've got one proper kitchen bin then recyclables spilling out on the floor around it. It looks pants.

Because we don't have to sort recyclables and they go into a large wheelie bin, I can put things in a large Sainsburys reuseable shopping bag hanging from a hook on the kitchen door, and then put the contents into the wheelie bin when it gets full. No problems with smells, amazingly. Maybe because the kitchen is too small to be ised as anything but a kitchen so no need to heat it much!

Thanks for your responses so far, it's interesting to hear...we do have to sort our recyclables into separate paper, tin, glass and plastic compartments. PITA and i'm sure they all get thrown into the same truck.

We don't have to sort recyclables luckily. All goes on same wheely bin.

What do people do with food containers like yogurt pots before recycling? eg. rinse under tap, wash up, dish washer, chuck in as is?

I would give a quick rinse under the tap or in a basin of washing up water if I was washing other stuff anyway

I rinse the plastic pots out, otherwise it would soon be very very pongy indeed.

I knew she was useful after all! My labrador cleans out all yoghurt pots, sardine tins and other containers.

We lucky in that we can put paper,cardboard, plastic and tins in one bin. We can also now put in clothes as well now, and leave small electrical appliances next to the green bin and they will take them.

I have two pull out bins in my kitchen and we have just started recycling properly here. I need to split one of the bins into plastics/glass and general. The other bin is compost. I have a waste disposal on one of my sinks. Lots gets chomped by that including chicken bones. I do not put out food waste at all but just wondering what I will do with my large rib of beef that will be finished tomorrow. This may have to be collected as I am not sure the waste disposal will cope with it. We have two wheelie bins in the drive for storage.

My only real annoyance is paper recycling. The box the Council has provided is too small so DH has a bonfire occasionally or we put it on the wood burner. We are avid newspaper readers and seem to collect lots of unwanted packaging!

No Bertie, I wish we could but our area/binsmen seem to be very strict jobsworth and unless it fits perfectly in the regulation box, they won't take it.

We also get great service in other ways - bins left in the road, blocking cars/driveways, or in places where the slightest wind blows them into a neighbour's garden/car.

Don't get me started on the Christmas collection changes

How I wish for a recycle pick up. We have to put it in the car and drive about a mile to recycling bins that are often full. Pain in the arse. (France)

On the inside door of the sink: 2 tiny bins, one for wood waste (usually emptied into food bin outside daily), one lined with plastic bag for general rubbish.
Then a 40cm wide cupboard with a single shelf. Top layer has a plastic tub for plastics, cans, glass. Bottom tub for paper and card.
When they get full they get emptied into the recycling tub outside.

I have two plastic baskets on my worktop, one for green bin (cardboard) and one for brown bin (plastic and glass). When they're full I take them out and empty them.

Having said that, I've actually chucked a few bags of recycling in the main bin this month. Fortnightly collections, and it got all ballsed up over Christmas and New Years.

i hang an Ikea shopping bag on the back of my kitchen door and carefully sort lob all my mixed recycling in there. I then take it out and empty said bag into mixed recycling wheely bin which lives next to my black non recyclable wheely bin, which lives in my garage.

If it is mainly papers then I leave them in the bag for a few days, but if food packaging, plastics, tins,milk bottles etc I tend to do it daily.

Fortnightly here too, one week Black Wheely bin for landfill, the other mixed recycling wheely bin.
No food waste collection here thankfully. Just bleurgh. Have insinkerator which is much cleaner...

I have a butchers trolley in my kitchen and on the middle shelf I have two big seagrass baskets....one is for glass and when it's full it gets put in the car and taken to Tesco for recycling....the other is everything for the recycling wheelie bin which is collected every other week. Easy enough to empty once full. I have a 'normal' brabantia bin for rubbish.

An under-the-sink pedal bin for waste, a visible skinny/tall silver bin with black lid for recycling kept by the kitchen door, and a Lakeland ceramic crock for composting kept on the work surface near the kitchen roll and radio (ie away from food).

We have a paper box and an 'all other recyclables' box in the kitchen. The 'all other' one gets emptied into the recycling wheelie bin outside pretty much daily, the paper one gets put out on collection day, which is fortnightly. The two boxes live in an under the counter gap next to the back door so fortunately they're pretty unobtrusive.