Despite me thinking that all this recycling ends up in a landfill in China I go to the trouble each week of having the three bins , one for food , one for dry recyclables and one for other stuff.
A couple of weeks ago I got home on bin day to find a red tag on the food waste saying it hadn't been emptied as it had the wrong type of waste in (it hadn't)
Then last week I get back to find the same again , this time I had a look inside and apart from the food wate there was a tissue which was probably put in there by someone passing. The Missus rang up Greenwich council and the fella apologised and promised someone would empty it by the end of the day . This wasn't done and today I've come home to find the same all over again. Not a problem now as I've emptied it all over the grass verge outside to be picked up with the black bags later on
From now on I will be putting everything in black bags
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Thing is along the series of roads I live in there must be at least 50% of the bins with these tags on. It aint the binmen doing it , some jumped up little hitler does it in the morning
Saying that we were also supposed to get the large recycling bags (we put out a couple of the old bags a week at the moment), but have now been told this plan has been scrapped here, and to stick with the clear bags - and I am quite pleased. I think they also gave us an option of a wheely bin, but I dread to think what that would be like after a few weeks, when our pristine bin has been swapped with some dirty individual who won't wash out their recycling🤪.
1) its only clean stuff that gets recycled and if recycling is truly a worthwhile endeavour it might as well be given every chance possible of re-enrering the logistics chain
2) I also don't want a stinking mass of tins, takeaway trays, milk containers etc
3) it takes seconds. You don't have to dry them, nature will do that just rinse under the hot tap most of the time. The greasier takeaway trays get treated to a cycle in the dishwasher
I'd love to see stats for how much of our recycling actually gets recycled, I know councils have found the garden and food waste bins to be a good revenue source from the compost they create from that waste, its more the plastic and glass recycling.
The best thing we can do as individuals is shop with recycling in mind. By that I mean trying to minimize the problem and avoid plastics wherever possible.
It's at the point of purchase that it becomes time consuming for me in considering: that; where my it's come from to minimize carbon emissions; and as I'm reducing my meat and fish consumption, looking for only organic/wild when I do, or vegetarian alternatives.
That's what's time consuming, and expensive too, not the washing/rinsing.
How should you clean your recycling?
Because all the recycling waste gets rinsed at the recycling facility before being processed, there's no need to scrub items until they're sparkling clean.
In fact, when you consider that running a tap for just one minute uses six litres of water it's best to avoid using water for your recyclable materials as much as possible.
All you actually need to do is scrape out any excess food residue with a dirty utensil or used cloth. This way there's no need to use any water. Any leftover food can be emptied into your food-recycling bin.
We have a green bin for plastic, glass, foil etc.
And we have a brown bin for garden waste.
We have a double bin in the kitchen, one with a bin liner in it for non recyclable waste and the other side is for glass, plastic and foil which we wash before putting it in
Easy 👍🏻
EDIT the bottles are mainly Mr Tatter’s beer bottles,
I'm glad that Maidstone Borough Council use wheelie bins. We have one for non-recyclable rubbish, one for mixed recycling and a smaller food bin. We have a food caddy in the kitchen, the contents of which we transfer to the bigger food bin. I keep a box in a cupboard for soft plastic that can only be recycled at supermarkets