If you live in London......

[nath9425]

Are you paying your Council Tax!

YES: Good now are you paying for this in your area........... [Click]
NO: Well you should you tax evading....

Whats your Refuse Collection like!

Mine is fortnightly...
Week One -Brown Bins (Garden Waste) + Blue Bins (Plastics,Papers,Yellow Pages NO GLASS)
Week Two - Green Bin *Any Cr^p you want to get rid of! Includes recycables*

One decent thread I thought!

 

[TheSlash]

Can't see anything wrong?

 

[Tom B]

Yes, many councils are bringing this in. I suppose it will only become a massive issue of concern once it happens in London.

 

[devon_metro]

Whats your Refuse Collection like!

It's a load of rubbish...

 

[Max]

We still get our weekly normal refuse collection, as well as a fortnightly recycling bin collection, so we're doing better than some local authorities (namely North Lincolnshire where it has been cut back to 1 collection a fortnight). However, I think we could be doing better on recycling, there are only a very limited number of materials that can be recycled, and it's not as good as Hull I don't think.

 

[Nym]

Hull it's a peice of p*ss. Blue Bin for paper, Black box for cans tins bottles etc. and black for whatever you like. In brid we got 2 collections every week becouse we're on a commercial site...

 

[Mojo]

Some parts of Westminster get multiple collections per day though!

 

[nath9425]

Yeah lucky buggers! All the foreigners put it in each others piles! Meaning the householder has to pay extra!

 

[Max]

Hull it's a peice of p*ss. Blue Bin for paper, Black box for cans tins bottles etc. and black for whatever you like. In brid we got 2 collections every week becouse we're on a commercial site...

Yeah but Hull have had those collections for much longer than the East Riding. The East Riding were very slow to jump on the bandwagon, fantastic for a supposed '3 star authority'. :roll:

 

[NSEFAN]

In my local area, Bucks, they too have tried to force people to recycle by only collecting the general landfill stuff once every 2 weeks. However, there is now loads of rubbish just thrown everywhere and people applying for bigger bins!

Even though our household has been recycling our paper, glass, tin foil, cans and garden waste for ages now, we STILL needed a bigger bin. They try to force us into giving up landfill, but don't provide more things that could be to recycled / biodegraded. Plastic it seems is the main culprit......

The problem with the green compost collection bins is that when (I mean IF ) it gets hot and sunny again, they will absolutely stink! I've also noticed that the number of flies buzzing around has also increased dramatically.

In my area, they were introduced in November, so as to put off a big stink until later.

 

[ChrisCooper]

Last summer was the first one we'd had fortnightly collection, and in the heat the bin smelled awful and even had maggots at one point. We try and recycle as much as possible, but still find we mostly fill up the wheely bin (it's a medium sized one). A big problem is plastic, a lot of which is not recycleable. Ours will only recycle High-Density PolyEthylene (type 2), so a lot goes in the normal bin. They also like to give regular threats that anything wrong in the bag will lead to the whole bag going for landfill, so I and a lot of others tend to take the stance "if in doubt, put it in the wheely bin". Another irritating thing with the recycling collection is that it's so noisy. First you get them coming along and tipping everyones glass boxes into a wheely bin, then the lorry comes along and picks that up and tips it in, and at the same time they put the bags in the back, then as it compresses them it makes incredibly loud groaning and creaking sounds, presumably from the hydralics. I hate it when I've got a late start on a wednesday since even with the windows closed it's enough to wake me up, coming sometime around 8 (and I'm a quite heavy sleeper). The wheely bin collection is annoying aswell, since we're told the bin has to be in the correct place or it won't be collected, but they will just dump them anywhere, and I've often had to move it before I can get back on the drive.

 

[Mojo]

In my area, we have a fortnightly collection of general waste, and a weekly collection of recycling, which includes almost everything except plastic. Our bin never smells because we don't put in there anything that can smell badly, as we have a weekly food waste collection with the recycling (something I believe should be essential with all alternate weekly collections.)

Any plastic has to go to the supermarket or recycling centres. Although the signs say only plastic bottles, in reality, any types of plastic 1, 2 or 3 can go in there - councils obviously think people are too stupid to check whether the plastic is recyclable.

In the black box we can recycle loads of things, paper, glass, tins, cans, foil, spectacles, mobile phones, car engine oil, fabric, shoes, Liberal Democrat propaganda papers, etc. Cardboard & food waste goes separately for composting. You can also pay for garden waste, but we either take it to the tip or put it in composting bin. At the start of the year they will also take your old "real" christmas tree away.

If there are adequate alternative facilities, like I believe I have, AND there is a weekly food waste collection, then I agree with alternate weekly collections with a maximum of 1 bin or say a number of bin-bags.

What gets me, however, is convincing the public we are going to save the environment by recycling (yes, it helps), but what about carbon emissions from transport?

 

[Tom B]

It would help if they let you recycle half the recycleable stuff!

We have a green bin, a green box, and a black bin.

Black bin = anything

Green box = paper, cardboard, glass

Green bin = anything decomposable (garden waste etc)

So the whole idea of having the green bin which is supposedly half of our household waste (as it is collected alternately with the black bin) is pointless as no way is half of our waste garden rubbish! The reason being it's all put in a massive council compost heap and sold off... ho hum. No plastics whatsoever. "Go and take it to the tip" says the binman Waste Disposal Operative - err no, I pay for you to take it there for me and you ought to be bl**dy well doing it, I would like to see how you suggest I get to the tip by public transport.

 

[NSEFAN]

What gets me, however, is convincing the public we are going to save the environment by recycling (yes, it helps), but what about carbon emissions from transport?

I think that the only way to solve this would be by using some sort of bio fuel. True, they give off carbon emmisions, but the carbon given off was already in the atmosphere and absorbed by the bio fuel plant, so you are not putting in any more carbon.

Burning fossil fuels is different. You are putting carbon into the atmosphere that isn't supposed to be there (it was taken out millions of years ago). This leads to an overall increase in the levels of carbon in the air, which in turn causes the greenhouse effect.

Mind you, I'm not putting my money on the oil and gas companies. In around 70 years time at this rate, there won't be any more fuel left! Whether giving off carbon really does cause climate change or not, it is sustainability that is important. Bio fuels could last a lot longer than fossil fuels, so why don't we use them?

Rant over

 

[ChrisCooper]

Weekly collection of food waste seems a very good idea, since that is the big problem when it comes to smells, maggots and worse. Plastic recycling is difficult, since not all plastics are recycleable easily. Also, I've heard that there are so few plastic recycling plants in the country that in most cases it takes far more energy to transport the plastic to somewhere where it can be recycled (and even then only into low grade plastic) than to make new plastic. Of cource, the solution is to reduce the amount of plastic used, but that's not going to happen. It's not just packaging thats a problem, but many products make a lot of use of plastic, a lot of which arn't recycleable, and plastics are increasingly replacing wood and metal in many areas, without thought for the future disposal (just imagine the amount of plastic that will need disposing of when modern trains are scrapped).

 

[Mojo]

I read in the paper today about this new milk, that comes in some sort of bag rather than a plastic bottle. The idea is to reduce the levels of waste we've sent to landfill, except the bag it comes in is not recycled in the UK, which seems pretty pointless to me. It's like cholocate bars, I buy a kind that used to be wrapped up in foil, with paper wrapped round it, both parts recyclable, now it's some kind of plasticy foil thing - unrecyclable. It's not just excess packaging that needs to be tackled - the wrong kind is being used too.