I'm watching the recycling collection out of my window

[marthamoo]

Haven't seen them collect the box before - we've not had it for long. The box is for bottles, food and drink cans, and empty aerosols and they only collect once a fortnight so it's full. I hadn't realised that they sort as they go along! The road is entirely blocked by a great big truck and they are hand sorting each box as they go and putting it into separate sections on the truck - green glass, brown glass, clear glass, I think all the cans go in together. What a palaver And not very safe for them - I crush my cans (so there's more room in the box for the wine bottles ) so they have really sharp, jaggedy edges.

Is everyone's sorted 'on the job' like this or do you have separate boxes?

I think our boxes are dumped in the truck and sorted later. Paper is separate from glass/metal but that's it.

Ours sort on the road too.

We have 2 boxes. Out council takes glass, HDPE plastic only (milk bottles etc), tins cans not drink cans, paper and carrier bags.

They ask if it can all be cleaned and sorted as much as possible inside the boxes. THen the men sort by hand into the truck - they've got maaaaaaasssive gloves on though and won't take any broken glass.

Had to forcibly pull my mum away as she tried to bung crisp packets and cellophane into the recycling box. She said "but it's plastic paper!"

Oh we have a different day for paper and cardboard and clothing ( we have a paper bag and a cardboard sack and a clothes sack). And we have a black wheelie bin and a green wheelie bin plus the recycling box and it's all alternate Thursdays and, blimey, it's complicated - all my Thursdays on the calendar are shaded different colours with a 'key' so I know what goes out when.

(this from black bags in your dustbin and if you want to recycle you do it yourself only a month or so ago!)

Ours don't take plastic bottles/packaging.

Oooh, I don't know - will try and catch the truck as it comes along later! I really want a proper thing to store recycling stuff in - like a veg rack/tower or something like that - does anywhere do them? With lids so it can be stored outside?

Not done on the job (unless you count "smashing jars in the road" ) - we have clear sacks which are collected weekly.

(DS1 calls the yellow ordinary bin lorry the "dirty nappy lorry"...my eco-warrior son!)

We have are given one box, but are encouraged to separate before we put it out. I put mine out separately - tins, bottles, paper. I also sort the bottles by colour. (There should be an emoticon with a halo above it!)

Plastic and cardboard boxes goes to school for junk modelling as they don't recylcle that yet

we have a wheely bin for paper, plastic bottles, and tins/cans - no glass.

It all goes into a big lorry and is presumably sorted at the depo.

go to school, not goes

Ours must be sorted later as it is all put in one big wheelie bin (paper n all)

I'd like something like that, GDG - outside my back door maybe. I'm all for the recycling but fitting all these extra containers in my house has been a complete PITA (not the wheelie bins - I do keep them outside).

Well, either a sectioned recycling container or a huge detached house with a garage where I could put it all...

Ikea Sortera

Oooh - I've seen them somewhere...

We have clear sacks for paper,cans & plastic - white sacks for gardening and boxes for glass and wheelie bins for normal refuse.

I did have to snigger this morning when bin men left my neighbours extra black sacks. They don't do any recycling

And Lakeland do various things that's my can crusher on that page, that is!

Cross posts... that'd be what I'd seen

We sort ours before we stick it outside (just have one small black box). We are encouraged to do this and we do as we have too much stuff for the box anyway so would have to put it in bags anyway.

What really annoys me though is that we are told to put it in carrier bags, which then the recycling men (cos they don't collect those) then chuck them over their shoulder onto the floor

A wheely bin must take ages to sort out though - seems very time consuming for the bin men.

They sort ours at the road side too, but they are soooo fast at doing it, me and dd always watch, dd is always so impresed by the big truck.
We normally put cans in a seperate bag (or 4-5 seperate bags - drink far too much lager ) and newspapers/waste paper in another seperate bag, all the glass jars/bottles, tins etc all go in the box as there is normally not too many of them.

Our only collect compost and paper/cardboard, allthe glass tins and plastic have to be taken yourself to the recycling points dotted around the place.

nothing like a consistent policy then.

In the Western Isles (when we were on holiday) they were just introducing a composting thing - anything composable - paper, food, garden stuff, ash, clothes etc went in there, glass and cans and platic containers had to be taken to big collecting containers in the villages, and the rest went in the bin.

Everywhere seems to have come up with their own version - totally confusing for everyone. It seems more sensible for the government to work out the best national policy, then get the local regions to work towards that and adapt for local variations (eg in the Western Isles there does not seem any point in transporting to a distant reprocessing plant on the mainland).