Can you fit a fortnight's worth of rubbish in a small wheelie bin?

[Loobeeloo]

I have 3 under 3 in my house as well as dh and now we are recycling we have managed to reduce our rubbish down to 4 bags a week.

The larger wheelie bins hold 4-6 bags I'm told (the council won't take them if the lids won't close fully) but I now see there are suggestions we will all get half size bins to avoid "bin envy"!

wheelie bins

How on earth will I get my rubbish down to just 3 bags a fortnight?

We have no recycling collections where I live, and very little in the way of recycling collection points - apparently it's not cost effective to collect it from up here (Far north of Scotland) . Dh was looking into following this up with a company in Inverness but I don't think anything comes of it. Local people are willing/keen to recycle but the council won't/can't support it financially. Very frustrating.

The whole UK has gone bonkers. Arn't there municipal tips where you can take excess?

Here in Holland we have to recycle the paper and we also recycle our glass, but we have a 240 litre bin, plus a smaller one. We just had to pay extra for the additional one.

I second the comment though, that it is ALL about squashing it down...

also - if supermarkets were encouraged to put less sodding plastic packaging on stuff there would be alot less waste.

Its the food packaging that is our problem too. All those meat trays/yoghurt pots etc. I have to say I don't mind washing things out but to have to cut things up too...

Agree that recycling facilities should be the same everywhere - the irony here is that, we don't have recycling bins, we have to take it to the village, but the people who live in the village do have recycling bins! They are less than a mile away!!

yoghurt pots can be used for all sorts - my mum used to save them all up for planting her seedlings and stuff in .

We used to have a large collection which DS1 used to build towers with.

Oh - for squashing, several friends use paving slabs on top of the rubbish. Just have to remember to take it out before collection day!!

actually that was one thing I was really pleased about when I bought a huge load of meat from teh butchers the other day.

Most of then were packaged (big multipacks) on meat trays.....but when I went to pay for them she opened the pack and chucked all the meat straight into a bag (seperate bags for eat type of meat I hasten to add LOL) - the butchers then disposed of the packaging for me

Lobby your council to provide plastics recycling.

I have no problem with fornightly bin collections, bu that's because every other week I can get rid of cans, glass and newspapers in boxes, all compostable waste (including food waste, cardboard and junkmail) in a green bin I can take my plastics to the supermarket for recycling.

If councils want us to recyle (and of course we should be recycling) then they need to provide the facilites to make it happen. Write some stroppy letters.

We usually have only 2 pedal bin liner sized bags per week but we have allotment so can compost easily (plus veg not packaged from lotty) and reuseable nappies make the difference for us i guess.

What about having a milkman deliver your milk...i switched to this a year ago...i hardly have any plastic bottles to recycle now as they were mostly milk ones.

Extra bonus is not having to lug home heavy milk in the buggy plus i feel better giving my cash to the milkman rather than supermarket.

Tried the milk delivery but he delivers it around 2am and we kept getting it nicked off our doorstep!

It is ridiculous and I do fear plans to bring in fortnightly collections here - I live in a smallish house with only a little space to put the recycling and rubbish out and I don't have a car. I think I could recycle more but we need more assistance rather than penalities.

I have to say though that the story is in the Mail on Sunday and seems to be using this to have a go at the Labour Party. I know government is looking at these policies and so are councils, but I have to say that Tory Councils are also bringing in changes that are very hard on some people. In one London borough where the Council has changed from Labour to a Lib Dem - Tory partnership, one of the first decisions was to scrap recycling collections on estates. I wouldn't trust any of the three political parties not to introduce more negative policies on this -by negative I mean cutting bin collections and introducing charges - positive changes would be increasing doorstep collections, the range of things you can recycle or special collections for bulky stuff that could be reused/recycled not just put on the dump.

We moved recently to Hampshire ( my complaints about Fife councils recycling policy are well documentd) and I ahve a green lidded wheelie bin which gets collected fortnightly, and a recycling bin. I can't put glass in the recycling bin (we take it to Tesco and get green points) I can put plastic bottles in, but not other plastics such as yoghurt pots, meat packaging etc. Hampshire council say there are NO facilties at all in the UK to recycle this type of plastic, yet my mum takes all hers to Asda in carlisle!. I can also put in cardboard, newspapers, metal bottle tops and tins and cans
My household waste bin wouldn't be so full if didn't have so much uneccesary packing in it

our recycling is fabulous - just chuck anythng recyclable (sp) (apart from glass and clothes) into the one bin and it's sorted out once they've taken it away. All 3 major supermarkets in our town have those recycling bin things for the other stuff.

Supermarket based recycling - useful to the individual if you have a car, not much help if you don't, whether because you can't drive (like me), can drive but don't want to, or can't afford to run a car.

elkiedee - I don't drive, and can't drive.......but I still manange to take the clothes/glass to the supermarket recycling...

Half size bins is definitely a step too far. We have fortnightly collections and our black bin, green bin, and recycling boxes are all usually full up before being collected.

A while ago I looked on our council's website to see if they had any tips about reducing the amount of rubbish and they had 'useful' tips such as 'use toilet roll tubes as toys for a hamster' and 'keep your ear rings in an egg box'.

Haven't read thread but Yes to OP.

We are family of 4, youngest dd just out of nappies (still in them at night).We have v g recycling locally (kerbside collections of paper and tins/most plastics/glass every week. Our large wheelie is usually under half full for a fortnight now, was about half full when dd was in nappies all day. If the council were to collect green waste too, we would need even less bin space. And that is without composting anything.

Any ideas? We have a dog and his poo bags fill up quite a big space..Big dog!!! Also I think the smell brings the flies even though I disinfect the bin after collection and put jeyes down it as I'm filling it. I can't really take it out with me and dispose of it elsewhere - not in this heat anyway - but he seems to think that gardens are for doing his business in, not when we go for a walk where there is usually a poo bin or two!

ROFL Melpomene!

Composting makes a huge difference to us - I was amazed how much of our waste is organic. Specially as much of our cardboard (not collected for recycling) goes in there as well.

Do you think it will be easier or harder for the councils to collect the rubbish from roadsides than it is to collect it from our bins? They are just plan stupid sometime -- okay most of the time.

Quite Eleusis.
And is it better or worse for the environment to have all those people driving to the tip every fortnight instead of one big lorry collecting everyone's?

I won't be holding my breath for my Council to give me a smaller wheelie bin. I'm still waiting for my small black box for recycling cans and plastic bottles a year on. They sent me a letter saying I wasn't part of the new 2 weekly collection as I'm in a terraced house and would be collected weekly and therefore, wouldn't have a small black box. That never happened. After numerous emails they said they sent me that letter in error and would be 2 weekly. They told me in the meantime to put my plastics in carrier bags.

They don't collect glass - I take that to a local bottle bank. I recycle cardboard, plastic bottles & cans, glass, garden waste and paper yet still manage to fill a large wheeloe bin every fortnight.

have not read thread etc

but if you have a provable need (ie 3 under 3 and 2 adults) for more/larger bin/s, they have to provide them.

we have extra, but i had to negotiate with the relevent beurocrats to get them.

Hotcrossbunny, I can tell you what my mum and dad used to do with their dog's poop. They used to flush it away down the toilet, my dad's view was it's poop after all.

Ought to clarify, he would empty the plastic bag with poop into loo, he wouldn't flush the bag.