Fed up with recycling

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p.penn
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Fed up with recycling

Post by p.penn »

Does anyone else get completely fed up with recycling stuff? I have 2 bins in my kitchen - one landfill, one recycling. I compost ALL my food, so have a compost caddy outside and usually a bowl inside waiting to go out. I save eggshells for roasting then keep them as a slug deterrent. I keep paper and cardboard for fire lighting. I keep jam jars for jam and wine bottles for wine. }hairout{ I am permanently attemping to get on top of it ...I don't think the chooks help as I have a mountain of bedding etc and am filling up the composters too quickly (all 5 of them yike* )

I have to say I am beginning to wonder if it all worth it. I usually end up with just 1 black sack of landfill a fortnight - all dry stuff too. Then I see other people's contribution to landfill and when I think of all the effort I put in.... }hairout{

It does seem to take a lot of my time and energy. )gr:
Helen xx

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Steve the Gas

Re: Fed up with recycling

Post by Steve the Gas »

I quite like recycling in the home as well as at the scrap mans yard. )w(
Maggie1

Re: Fed up with recycling

Post by Maggie1 »

Do you have a collection weekly or fortnightly Helen? I must admit when we lived in Ashford we had weekly collection for rubbish and recycle the next week. When we moved here we don't have the same thing. We managed to recycle our own stuff for about 18 months. Judging in mind bonfires are banned I was quite surprised how much rubbish you dispose of. We could buy plastic bags for €4 each as you can't use black bin bags. If you go to the landfill you get charged again. For landfill its €20 a bag. For recycle they charge about €4 a car. In the end we gave in. We pay €250 a year and get 2 wheelie bins which we have to alternate weekly by taking it to the end of our lane which is quarter mile long. The nice bit is we DON'T pay council tax so thats a saving in itself.
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mrs boodles
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Re: Fed up with recycling

Post by mrs boodles »

our council changed over to wheelie bins and we have a recycling one as well as rubbish one, and is collected once a fortnight, we could have also had garden waste bin from council as well. recycling bin saves on having overflow from boxes as before. have stopped using food waste caddy at present but will sstart again when compost bin sorted.(basically when my husband turns it and moves it as I have phobia of rats and to scared to do myself in case I find one)
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AL37
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Re: Fed up with recycling

Post by AL37 »

I have made it my lifes mission to recycle as much glass, tin and aluminium as possible. The contents of any recepticles made from these materials is immaterial to my mission. )t'
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p.penn
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Re: Fed up with recycling

Post by p.penn »

Ha ha ha Al!!

Maggie - I love our refuse service as it is one week landfill, one recycling. We can shove all recycling in together too. It's not that really, it's just I always seem to have jam jars/wine bottles awaiting soaking or egg shells or bits for the composter...it makes such a lot of clutter, whereas if I had no conscience and just threw everything away, life would be a little, no much easier! :?
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LittleBrownFrog
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Re: Fed up with recycling

Post by LittleBrownFrog »

I know what you mean Helen - it's not so much the things you're putting out for recycling, so much as the things that you keep and reuse or recycle at home ... having no conscience would make life much easier sometimes.
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Grannyof4
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Re: Fed up with recycling

Post by Grannyof4 »

Why oh why can't councils get together and get some sort of similarity in their recycling. I think mine must be the worst.We are very limited what can go in the blue bin which is the recycling one, the green one is supposed to be just garden (oops did I say that!!!!). The grey one is rubbish. Our collection alternates week by week, grey one week and blue and green the next. We have no kerbside collection for glass or food waste. Any food waste which can't be recycled into either the chickens or the goat goes in the normal rubbish bin. I won't put it on the compost because it attracts rats. You go to other parts of the country and nearly everything is recyclable and collected.
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p.penn
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Re: Fed up with recycling

Post by p.penn »

Sadly we don't get a garden collection - we have to pay £50+ for it per year and last time I thought about it, the scheme was closed with a waiting list as it had proved so popular. :?

I have a green joanna for all my food waste - it is brilliant. It has a metal plate at the bottom to prevent rats. However, what I was talking about has just happened again. I found some mouldy strawberries in the fridge yesterday, so normally I guess they would go straight in the bin. But no, they have to go into the composter. So I leave them on the side for when I go into the garden. Then, when my cady in the garden is full, it has to go into the Joanna. }hairout{
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manda
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Re: Fed up with recycling

Post by manda »

Yes I do know what you mean Helen but my conscience won't let me do otherwise ...I really can't just chuck stuff away because then I get a huge touch of the gulits and have to rearrange it all }hairout{
My kitchen often looks just as you describe and I think it would be so much easier if I just lobbed it all out rather than saving and washing jars and bottles, looking at decent sized tin cans and thinking I could make a night light holder out of that, saving yet another ice cream container because "it might come in handy"....and it goes on. Even recycling things seems a waste to me at times...I look at something and wonder how we could use it some other way...drives me mad!!!
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wendy
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Re: Fed up with recycling

Post by wendy »

Yup. It does get tedious, although I wouldn't not do it.

We have four bins.

Brown for plastic, tins and glass

Green for food, chook waste and garden waste, as well as thin cardboard.

Black for waste for landfill. Which hardly has any stuff in )t'

Blue for paper, cards etc.

I also have a bowl for food stuff for the chooks and a small holder for food waste not for the chooks. Which I take and empty into the green wheelie bin each day.
These are in the dog conservatory so are not 'in your face'

We have collection every week. One week green and brown. One week blue and black.
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ChrisG
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Re: Fed up with recycling

Post by ChrisG »

We have set up our own recycle scheme for our household. This is becuase the council one is totally inadequate. We are provided with a big black wheelie bin for general rubbish. This is emptied weekly by the council. They also supplied us (well not us, but everyone else in the village }hairout{ ) with a small green plastic box. Into this is supposed to go all plastic, glass, recyclable tins and paper/cardboard. This is collected fortnightly!

So what we have done is as follows:
5 big plastic boxes with lids are sitting in our utility room (they will go in the back porch when there is space to put them there. Each one is for a different type of stuff:
glass, paper, cardboard, tins, plastics.

When they are full and we happen to be going near (it's just behind Ald1) we load the boxes into the car, take them to the tip and empty them.

Composting stuff:
general garden stuff gets composted;
foodstuff gets put in a bowl; at the end of the day, (usually around tea time), it is emptied into the caddy caddy (my daughter has hers on the kitchen windowsill, which I might copy). When the caddy is full, the contents are transferred to the Johanna.

Jam jars and other things I reuse, are stored in boxes out of the way (in the utility room or the pantry) until needed.

This keeps the kitchen tidy mostly and means as few trips to the various places as necessary.

ETA: we have a green bin too (again, we dont but the rest of the village does - no idea why we keep getting missed off and doesnt matter how often I ring them, it has never been rectified). Anyway, that is supposed to be for garden waste and is collected every four weeks. If you saw the size of my garden, you would know it needed collecting every four days! But then we dont like to throw stuff out when we can compost it ourselves.
Chris xx

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Sunny B
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Re: Fed up with recycling

Post by Sunny B »

I visited someone the other day who had a UTILITY ROOM!! Now that would be perfect for keeping all the recycling stuff handy but out of sight. Very envious.
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p.penn
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Re: Fed up with recycling

Post by p.penn »

Yes, that would be lovely - or a garage.
Helen xx

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Orfy
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Re: Fed up with recycling

Post by Orfy »

It'a not really an issue for us.

I buy very little processed food so packaging is minimal. I have Dogs, Chickens and an allotment plus the garden so things go down the line and if all else fails there's the compost heap.

We get a weekly landfill collection but can goa month without filling it.
The recycling goes all in one and again can go up to a months without getting full. It probably gets fuller during the winter because we visit the allotment less, the compost bins don't rot as fast and we don't use any compost.

We also have the council tip very close to where we live with loads of skps etc and they recycle around 90% of anything taken.
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