Selfsufficientish.com

Hi,
I remember being so proud of our family when we moved from drinking sodas to water. Getting the kids hooked on water required buying expensive water bottles. I remember clearly this past year walking out to our recycling bin (50Gal) and seeing it full of bottles. Must admit it was overwhelming. Sure we were recycling but what an awful waste. We made the shift by buying the kids their own fancy water bottles. I'm glad to say that made a difference.

Our recycling collection services accepts mixed materials now. We used to maintain multiple, presorted bins. This has made a very large difference. I used to pay for two very large trash bins for weekly pickup. Now we barely fill 2/3 of single bin each week. We've reduced the cost from our service too.

We placed a 1 gallon container with lid in the kitchen and gave clear instructions on what was to be added. This has helped to reduce our actual waste.

So, all in all it was a good year for recycling.

Now, if we can get the kids out of the house we can recycle their bedrooms into a hot tub room, library, entertain room, etc. ;D

Regards,
Chuck

Seems strange that you are now starting to be allowed to mix materials when our council is now starting to make us seperate everything! We will end up with up to six different bins (at the last count!) and a fairly complicated regimen for putting them out. My OH is steaming about it as he feels we are being used to sort the recycling while the council makes the profit and doesn't pass it on! Even have to tear off the windows in envelopes as the council will not take the bag and can fine us if they see them in the clear bags with the paper! There must be an easier way...my cousin puts everything in one bin which is taken weekly. If recycling is to be encouraged it has to be a bit easier!
What happens in other areas of the UK / world?

Our council only introduced recycling collections about a year ago (just before the snow hit and nothing could be collected at all!) and they're very keen to encourage it. They say they'd rather see non-recyclables put in by mistake than the other way round. It's a mixed bag, too. Most recyclables can go in, with the exception of glass and juice cartons, for which there are bins in town, and compost, which they collect separately (though I'm not giving away my compost!). I do tear the windows out of envelopes though. Recycling's collected weekly, landfill fortnightly.

Councils making a profit? Seriously?

Swindon jumped on to the recycling bandwagon quite late on but they seem to have got their act together. We have a box for paper/card, glass and metal and fabric. They do ask they you try to keep things separate within the box but don't seem to mind if you do jumble it up.

We have bags for all plastic (not just bottles), as long as it's not black, and separate bags for garden waste. You have to provide your own bags though but at least they collect from the kerbside now and we don't have to take it along to the recycling centres.

Zoe

Wow! It's amazing that we are now allowed to combine stuff when once we had to keep several containers for separating recyclables...and some of you now sorting where you once combined. In our case, the recycling center didn't have the machine to separate, now they do. I wonder if they shut down some machine on you...unless it was hand sorted...and now they're trying to save a few bucks (quid).

Just on the other side of the road in a town, people can place their lawn debris on the street by the curb such as branches and sticks. We, on our side, have to cut ours up and place into 'paper' lawn debris bags. I stopped that a year ago by buying a small used pickup truck.

Regards,
Chuck

Bromley (London) is quite good with recycling. We have paper and card, then we have metals/cans in another bin and then a third for plastic stuff. While we can't recycle tetra packs from our front gardens there are facilities just down the road for plastic bags, coat hangers, shoes and clothing too. Ooo and last year they started to take waste cooked food which is fab as it means that we have very little that we throw away now. We manage to just about fill a normal size dustbin by about 2/3rds every two weeks.

I just wish they would have some kind of enforcement Our neighbours have approximately 12 - 15 black bin liners FULL every two weeks which they put out the night before and have been torn open without fail by the foxes by the morning

I know that enforcing by fines would lead to a whole host of problems but.... in a perfect world........

I have a wheelie bin for stuff that can't be recycled. I normally put one carrier bag full of my own waste in each fortnight and then fill the bin with litter that I pick up out of my front garden that has either been dropped by passers by or has blown in from the street.

Zoe