Recycling is a load of rubbish.

twentyone said:
In Norway we got this recycling deal when it comes to plastic and glass bottles that you bring them back to a shop (they all have the machines for it) and then you get something between 10p and 25p for each bottle you recycle. They then get reused and people have an incentive to recycle them too (even if you pay the extra money when you buy the drink)
Click to expand...

This. In the local shop In Crete where the in laws live you get 10p for every empty beer bottle. 4 empties gets you a full one! :D
 
I was at a meeting with a client of mine the other week and he was talking about their plans for their recycling business. Basically they collect shedloads of rubbish and it gets dumped on a big conveyor belt and a whole bunch of people pick the recyclable bits off the conveyor.

Sounds pretty grim, but hey ho.
 
Morgoth said:
We have 3 bins, it's not much of a hassle.
Click to expand...

Lucky, my parents also have three bins so I guess it depends on the local authority but in Brighton, we have 1 "black" bin and then a bunch of stupid little plastic boxes that are too small to put any substantial amount of anything in.

We routinely make sure that the right stuff is in the right box but they still winge about every little thing.

I mean seriously, if you want people to recycle you need to make it easy and give people an incentive to do it instead of just shouting at them when they get it wrong.
 
I have 1 Grey bin & everything goes in it - I refuse to clean out any tins or bottles I put in. The council can clean em if they want em clean.

Recycling is a cash cow for the council.
 
We got a 4th bin back in November for paper/food packing carboard, first time it was collected two women from the council came around checking each bin making sure it had the correct items in, they had stickers with them and could stick them on so the bin men know not to collect that bin

Great use council tax money if I say so myself
 
We don't have room to store all these bins and bags etc. so all the rubbish just goes in together and outside the door. Even then we have it stinking up the house as the collection is fortnightly. They don't enforce recycling though.

Plus i'm not doing the council's job for them if they're not going to give me something for doing it. My Mum has to sort everything into stupid separate boxes, all with stupid picky rules and what does she get for it...? Nothing.
 
used to have the 2 seperate boxes, 1 for cardboard, the other for metal and glass etc but a few months ago we were provided with a green wheelie bin to put the lot into, makes things a lot easier.
 
Landlord at our small block of flats has just told us that we are no longer to use the large Bin we normally put everything into and switch to the colour coded multi-bin cluster **** setup.

Apparently it costs to maintain a commercial style colllection but the bins provided by the council are free, thing is, they've left the current large waste container FULL.

I'm also going to have to take time out to figure out which bins do what, then figure out how what im going to seperate it out into in the house ( I only have 2 bins inside ).

I'm all for saving the environment, but im being forced to spend hours of my time each week sorting through ****, without any kind of incentive or direct benefit. Cheaper Council tax anyone?
 
mame said:
I was only a child. the shops near to me used to sell bottles of pop in glass bottles. I can't remember the price but it was probably only about 35p. You used to get 10p off by taking an empty bottle back. The cap said "10p" then some text asking you to return it.
Click to expand...

Shame they didn't continue to develop that.

Mr Jack said:
In what possible way are these things exclusive? Isn't it trivially better to do both?
Click to expand...

It is. But to me it seems like they are only targeting one group and pushing in that direction :)
 
Article / survey is exaggerating though, the numbers aren't as high as they say in practice

The survey also found 20 other local authorities including Chelmsford, Aberdeenshire, Guildford and Middlesbrough give residents seven or more containers.
Click to expand...

I live in Guildford and we don't have 7 containers. We have two recycling containers (cardboard / paper and plastic / glass), a food waste container and a wheelie bin. Garden waste is an optional one that you have to pay for. I'm not sure what else they're referring to to make it up to 7, maybe the fact that you get a smaller food waste container to keep indoors and 2 large ones in case you have too much (which makes perfect sense), maybe the optional extra wheelie bin.

It's fine for me..
 
Last edited:
I remember as a kid buying and returning bottles of Barrs fizzy juice to get my 10p back for the bottle. Used to do pretty well on my paper round collection as well from those bottle left on the kerbside and pavements where lazy folks would just drop them rather than return them.

Our recycling set up isn't to bad. A general waste wheelie bin, a garden waste wheelie and a third for plastics and paper. Takes little sorting so I dont mind but those places with loads of buckets would just annoy me.
 
Tute said:
Plus i'm not doing the council's job for them if they're not going to give me something for doing it. My Mum has to sort everything into stupid separate boxes, all with stupid picky rules and what does she get for it...? Nothing.
Click to expand...

Problem is the council has targets for recycling to acheive. If they don't then they are fined and your council tax will go up.

Secondly, sorting post collection is either very labour intensive or requires very expensive equipment.

The company I used to work for had sorting machines which cost £1m each and each sorting facility cost around £3m in total to setup. It was great and automatically sorted everything out even into different colour glass but obviously we used to charge the council a packet and made a killing in profit. I can remember winning a contract from one Council for two months of rubbish processing because that meant they would hit their recylcing target that year and what they paid us was less than what they were going to lose. They still paid us something like £250,000 though. If they can get the public to do that free for them I would.
 
AcidHell2 said:
why's it strange?
imagine how many bins and boxes you need. It's not practical.

.
Click to expand...

you just need large recycling bins instead of normal bins

its not difficult at all

and it strange, that houses with few people get hit hard when they don't recycle

but hugs blocks of flats with lots of people just get let off without having to do it
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom