How does your council encourage you to recycle?

[fryalot]

If bins are going to be collected every two weeks instead of weekly to encourage recycling, what does your local council do to help you?

We have a blue bin for paper - no cardboard, magazine type paper or packaging. Just paper.

erm.... that's it.

And, we have a bottle bin that is 7 miles away.

What do you guys have laid on for you?

My council doesn't do squat. I'm happy to participate in recycling efforts so long as they fit into my busy schedule. For example, give me a blue box and I'll happily fill it for you to collect. I can separate cans/bottles/plastic if you give me the bins in which to put them and come and collect them.

I live in Spellthorne, and they don't even supply us with a bin. I had to buy my weelie bin to the tune of some £50 a few years ago... for a plastic bin!!

So, I'm a fraid I don't believe this biweekly collection is anything but a cost saving scheme under the disguise of being environmentally friendly.

We have a wheelie bin for usual rubbish, one for gardening stuff and food waste (i think!!!) and a box for newspapers and cans n bottles, cardboard etc

You had to buy your own bin?????

That's bloody outrageous

stoppinattwo: Is that one bin altogether for papers, cans, cardboard etc. or did you mean a bin for each?

oh ours gets collected weekly, the garden on is fortnightly, then weekly in the summer

Wheelie bins collected every 2 weeks.

Black box for paper, cardboard, metal, glass etc every week.

Brown lockable bin for food waste collected every week.

The ony thing that can be recycled that isn't collected weekly is plastic bottles, and the council have managed to get recycling points for these in just about every supermarket car park in town.

Very impressed TBH

We have a blue bin for paper only too. And that its it. That is emptied every fortnight. At present our black bin is emptied weekly.

There are no full recycling places very close to me at all - would all involve driving a fair distance.

They collect our main bin bi-weekly here - it's terrible. We're really good recyclers, don't buy a lot of packaged goods, have a waste disposal unit for food waste, have one toddler in nappies still but doesn't get through nearly as many as a newborn would and we're struggling to fit it all in the bin for a fortnight.

Dread to think how people who have slightly bigger families, a young baby or buy more convenience foods and don't have a waste disposal cope. Funnily enough, there's always queues into the tip at the weekends now - so that's done a lot to help recycling, hasn't it

Black bags are still collected here once a week. There aren't any plans to change this arrangement currently.

Residents in this area get a roll of sacks for recyclables like paper, all plastics (not lids), tins and cardboard. This is collected once a fortnight. We also get a plastic box for glass which is also collected at the same time. If you want more rolls these can be obtained from the council or library (for no charge).

We've now been allocated a green wheely bin for grass clippings. This will be collected fortnightly a day after the recyclable sacks get collected.

Our council has the green bin for general waste (pickup every fortnight), brown bin for garden waste (pick up alternate to green bin). Blue box for cans and glass. Blue bag for paper. White bag for cardboard and plastic.

Sorry squonk, the box is for all the other stuff, they have a wagon with seperate compartments and they chuck each bit in the right compartment, so you have to make sure that stuff is clean for them. It is really good..........just a shame that a lot of people dont make the most of it, i still see cans in the wrong bins etc etc

We do have one big wheely bin for unsorted recycling though (you chuck everything in: cans, glass, paper, etc)

did you see my thread before here

We have a green bin and a brown bin. Green one for paper, card, tins, recyclable plastics. Brown for everything else. All our local large supermarkets have recycling points for paper, card, glass, clothes, plastic bags etc. The local tip is now a reuse and recycle site so everything is sorted when you take it in, instead of just dumping it. Our green garden waste collection starts in a couple of weeks, we get given bags every year for grass cuttings etc. So not bad really!

Oh and you can get a garden composter for almost nothing from the council if you want one.

yes, I did, but that didn't answer my questions, so I started a new thread.

I am just really worried that when they go to collecting every two weeks we'll have a big overspill. We aren't particularly wasteful people and we have a real fire so a lot of stuff gets burnt but still the bin is full to bursting at the end of the week (in fact, after everyone has put their bins out, you can see me having a nosey to see if they've any extra space in theirs for me to chuck stuff in!)

We recycle what we can, but the main thing is plastic milk cartons... we go through about two of the six pinters a day!

ahh i see your point, could you request an additional wheelie bin, some of the bigger families in our area have 2 main wheelie bins instead of 1??

fortnightly does seem a bit stingey tho, even thoug we recycle our main wheelie bin is still bulging at the end of 1 week!!

We have our wheelie bin emptied every two weeks, then a blue box for glass and cans/tins, a blue bag for paper and a green wheelie bin for garden waste.

We end up every other weekend making trips to the tip with all of the recycling that won't fit in the bag and the box and then all the rubbish that won't fit in the wheelie bin, it is a total pain in the backside.

Not a lot. We get a fortnightly collection of glass, paper, tins and clothes. No plastic or card (inspite of the fact that there's a paper mill that takes the stuff about 10 miles down the road) so that has to be taken to the recycling centre. About 18 months ago were were told that rubbish would be fortnightly and recycling would be weekly but no sign of that yet. We are quite keen on recycling and do our best but in houses where people aren't that bothered the council need to do more to make it as easy as possible.

stoppinattwo: We could have an extra wheelie bin for £35.00 per month.

I think not.

our bins are already collected fornightly - have been for ages.

We've got 3 bins

Brown one for Garden Rubbish
Green one for recycling stuff
Black for everything else.

Brown and Green get picked up one week, black the next.

When they switched to it we were worried we'd have overspill - but has only happened once - that was at Christmas

We have a green wheelie bin for garden waste/ food scraps and cardboard - Its full up every time its collected.

A plastic box for glass.

and a plastic box for plastic bottles ,cans and paper. I paid for an extra box so the paper is separate from the bottles and cans.

We can't give other plastic food packaging like yog pots though.

Or clothes. I take them myself.

Hmm...we have a black bin for normal rubbish which gets collected weekly (thinking of switching it to fortnightly) and a green recycling bin for paper, plastic, cans, etc (pretty much anything but glass that can be recycled) but it only gets collected every 4 weeks. Ours is always full after about 2 weeks so a lot of stuff we could recycle ends up in our normal bin.

Squonk ours is just like yours and it seems like half-hearted recycling to me. The town I come from in the States gave us color coded boxes one for paper, one for glass, one for plastic, and one for organics. They were probably about the size of your average child's toy box and they picked them up twice a week. It works brilliantly and there are hardly any complaints.

Not impressed with my council and recycling TBH.

One blue bin for clean card and paper (eg no bits of pizza stuck to it)collected once a month.

Black bin for general rubbish emptied once a week. Will no be emptied if anything is poking out of top of it.

Nearest tip a long drive away, and local recycling bins always full or no parking.

Teach this at A level. Why so much emphasis on recycling card, which is ultimately biodegradeable, and accounts for a very small amount of recycling. Plastics are the real problem as they are oil based and non-renewable. However some of the new plastics are recyclable (quite a lot) but Britain doesn't have the facility to seperate and sort them, so plastics are conveniently ignore in UK.

If councils care so much they should be focusing on this