Recycling changes - kitchen bins

[Ineffable23]

My area is one of the ones that has only had general waste and general recycling up until this point. We're due to be switching to a 5 bin system in June, of which I'll need room for 4 inside: food waste, general waste, plastics + glass + metal, and paper and cardboard.

I don't have the cupboard space for built in bins - my kitchen is jolly small and at the moment I already have quite an inconvenient set up: I have a big recycling bin and a little general waste bin, plus a box for glass, plus soft plastics hanging round til I take them to the co-op to get rid of them. I am keen to improve on this once the new system comes in!

I'm trying to work out what the best option is, because I don't really want lots of bins hanging around, or to be resorting recycling before it goes to the wheelie bin. I don't think I'll need much room for general waste as I can't think of much at all that isn't covered by the recycling categories, but I don't think I can have no bin at all for that, and I can't see anything that's a 4 compartment bin at the moment.

I would be very grateful to know what solutions other people have found to the many bin problem!

It's well documented on our local facebook page that the bin collectors just chuck the food waste into the main waste in our area.

We have a bag provided by the council for recycling, DH tips it into the bin outside every couple of days. Glass goes in a box in the garage until the box is full then it's taken to the tip (someone nicked the caddy from the bin). Food in a small container next to the sink, tipped into the compost bin every couple of days.

Not sure if this one is any good OP? There are similar and slightly cheaper ones on amazon.
https://uk.bargainbrit.co.uk/product/arregui-top-cr622b-4compartment-steel-recycling/B08HZ6VNDR/

I would just have one mixed recycling bin in your house and just separate it when you put it in the bins. I don't use the council food waste kitchen bin and bought my own JosephJoseph food waste bin which attaches to the inside of under sink cupboard door. We have had food waste collection for years where I live and the little council bin on the counter annoyed me.

We have this food waste caddy

https://www.josephjoseph.com/products/compo-food-waste-caddy-stone

We have small general bins in every room of the house; a bin in the upstairs home office for recyclables collected up there (loo roll middles, paper from printing etc). In the kitchen we have a general waste bin and a small food waste caddy next to the sink (the big food waste caddy is kept behind the boundary wall by the end of the drive). In the garage-accessed from the kitchen- we have 4 recycling boxes. One is for plastic, one for cardboard, one for glass and one for cans. If I have a lot of paper I just reuse a paper bag to contain it.

@MigGirl that’s very odd, how would anyone know what is is your own composting bin.

i used to have back garden hens and could only feed them peelings from veg that had not entered the house, which meant all allotment veg got peeled outside.

a quick Google about composting showed all the sites saying to use peelings but not cooked food waste.

@tutugogo Reading all this makes me realise how advanced our council is

Ours don't collect glass, juice cartons, aerosol cans, yoghurt pots, soft plastics, clothes nor electricals from the kerbside. Oh, and if I want green, garden waste collected, its £90 a year!

I do haul glass to the bottle bank and also take soft plastics to the supermarket. 1 problem is that if I wanted to recycle all the rest, I'd need to drive around to 3, separate recycling places. Absolute PITA.

In a previous property, more than once I saw the binmen throw my meticulously sorted recycling in with the general waste 😡

They don't do that round here. A totally separate lorry comes round at a different time of day to collect the food waste. It comes every week. General rubbish and recycling lorries alternate weeks.

I'm not at all interested in things looking nice, so please ignore if no use. But have you thought about measuring the space you have available, and then seeing what storage things (not just bins, any storage things) will fit in the space?

In our house, the paper/cardboard recycling receptacle is in the living room, for reasons that I can't actually remember. My friend does it the same way, and has a tasteful wicker basket next to the fire. In the kitchen, we have food waste in a little caddy (which roams around the kitchen and gets emptied every day or two) and a general recycling container and a rubbish container. The recycling and the rubbish containers are in a useless narrow gap between cupboards, and are actually narrow trugs sold as washing baskets rather than bins as such.
I took measurements of the useless gap, and then just went down the local DIY to see what there was. Next step would have been either the garden centre (reckon they don't actually sell any plants, it's all just plastic tat) or Ikea. But happily I got the bin solutions of my dreams without having to leave my village, phew.

I have a 2 compartment kitchen bin. One half for rubbish and the other for our mixed recycling- no liner. And a caddy for food waste in a bag. I’m not using the revolting one the council sent I am using my nice OXO one! 😂

I have 2 slimmish bins in the kitchen - 1 for general waste and 1 for mixed recycling. Theres a food waste caddy on the floor beside them. I then have a cardboard box near the door that is used for cardboard, paper etc

Songmics is pretty good for this sort of thing. Depends how much space you have. Something like this, then a separate caddy for food waste?

songmicshome.co.uk/collections/trash-cans/products/songmics-18l-kitchen-waste-bin-with-3-compartments-pedal-bin-for-waste-separation-steel-construction-uklb35tb54

Thank you everyone - some great ideas here. I will work through them all and see what would fit best!

All our household black rubbish goes to the local incinerator that then produces electricity. So I don't feel so bad about it not going in the garden waste anymore.

If you compost at home no, but they do randomly check the bins that are collected. They change it here a few years ago now as they apparently switched to a cheaper way of composting which can't guarantee that bacteria that could have come from your kitchen will be killed. At lest that is what they told us, we switched to either home composting veg peal or putting it in our black bin as we had no other option.

Cardboard bin in the utility room.
General waste in one under counter kitchen bin and glass, tins, plastic etc in another.
I won’t be using our new food caddy, it’s just been delivered. I put it straight in the garage and will use it for tool storage. Wasted food will continue to go in bagged up with general waste.

God me too I cant bloody stand it

We have a general waste and we're meant to separate food waste but we dont as no where to put it in the kitchen.

Kitchen is at the back and bins right at the front, not walking to thre with dripping stuff everytime I want to put stuff in there

We have a couple of nice recycling bins in the kitchen for plastic, glass, metal and thats helpful and neat and tidy

Cardboard goes in a bag, again in the front of the garden so frequently the hallway is topsy turvey with bits of card and paper which are 'waiting' to be deposited in the bag, which then gets too full.

@likelysuspect It’s all ridiculous. Instead of the massive cost of recycling we should all be wasting less food and insisting on less packaging. We need to ask ourselves why 50 years one small dustbin was more than sufficient.

My general waste bin is only emptied every 3 weeks so I wouldn't want food waste hanging around for that amount of time. Its bad enough having a 2 weekly uplift on the food/garden bin especially in the summer when we sometimes get maggots

We have a 1x4 Kallax unit in the corner of the kitchen with plastic boxes for each section (whamstudio brand) one at the bottom for glass, one for our green bin (plastics, tins etc) and one for the blue bin (paper,cardboard). We take to the outside bins when they get full.

I don't like packaging lying around on the worktop and having accessible boxes like this means that the DC can also recycle.

I have these:

https://www.argos.co.uk/product/8423328

I have these, amazon can be cheaper than lakeland. They fit against the wall behind the door & they clean & dry quickly

https://www.lakeland.co.uk/46175/rotho-albula-recycling-waste-bin-fern-green-colour-25l

It took a while to find at the time but we’ve had this for about 5 years https://amzn.eu/d/0hXLZHjO plus a food waste caddy at the sink.

We use the large bottom pull out for glass/tins/plastics, inner can be lifted out to empty. Top section paper & cardboard in one side, regular rubbish in the other.

I have a plastic laundry basket and the waste goes in there then I take it outside once it's full usually a couple of times a day