Our twin bin scheme has arrived

[Escapee]

I got home tonight to find the council have delivered my Green bin, black box and kitchen caddy.

The information pack is great, here must be people around the borough with nothing better to do with their time than read 13 pages and then turn it around and read them again in Welsh.

The 'Green' wheelie bin apparently goes with my 'Black' Wheelie bin or possibly they mean the original 'Green' coloured wheelie bin that they supplied about 10 years ago.

They are now encouraging recycling by adding the second black box to the one we already have and will be collecting them weekly.

There does seem to be a few silly points:

1) They state they will not recycle cardboard.

2) You must double wrap food in 'newspaper' and place in the Green bin.

3) The recycling items must be seperated an placed into plastic bags.

Girlfriend will be pleased when I tell her her bag for life was a waste of money as we now need to use disposable ones. I always used the disposable ones in place of bin bags to dispose of food waste.

4) They will not recycle envelopes.

5) Shoes must be paired for recycling!

I am really annoyed about the wrapping food in newspaper bulls**t, I do not buy a newspaper so I guess I need to start buying them if I want to dispose of my food waste. The next door neighbour was not amused because he just used his pile of newspapers to make 42 logs this morning for his wood burning stove, my parents will be in a similar situation.

It does make it look like they are making it easier for the worst offender, ie: ones who have lots of newspapers and general rubbish but making it worse for those who make the effort ie: use paper to make logs and dont use plastic bags!

Surely this will discourage people like myself from making the effort, my original bin was rarely half full if it went out each week but now I will be sure to fill it and get my moneys worth.

[Maggy J]

Well our's allows us to just chuck everything ad hoc together in a big wheelie bin.However we can't recycle glass and we can only recycle plastic bottles such as pop,shampoo,detergent,plastic milk containers.

However there are the plastic boxes for veg and for ready prepared meals that they won't recycle.If I could recycle them I'd halve my rubbish.

However fair play they take all paper(but not shredded),cardboard,newspapers,magazines,tin cans,pop cans,the plastic containers I already mentioned.That's fortnightly.Ordinary household rubbish is alternate weeks.Clothes and shoes have to be taken to the local recycling centre on the sea front or to charity.Glass goes to the recycling centers as well.

Greenery is collected separately in green bags by ad hoc arrangement.Mostly we take it to the big recycling center 'cos if we put it in our household bin the refuse collectors take it out.It is however composted and on sale at a 'dirt' cheap price to the public.I dunno why my husband has started doing this as he used to make his own compost or dig a trench in the garden and we would throw our green waste in there.

[Hom3r]

Well we are lucky we have a plastic crate, and a reusable nylon tpye bag to put all recycleables, Glass, metal, plastics, paper & cardboard.

Food waste can go with all the other general rubbish, clothing/footware goes to a recycle point at a supermarket.

[RDDearing]

I've found a way for our local council to save energy. At the moment, they print our local free paper (hopefully on recycled paper), put it through my door and it goes into the recycling bin without ever being read - how green of them! Surely it would be better to "opt out" of the free paper and save on the energy wasted in bringing me the same piece of paper every few weeks!

The differences between the various recycling schemes suggests to me that it comes down to the usual story of councils trying to demonstrate they are achieving 'targets', rather than properly addressing the problem of too much waste going to landfill.

We aren't too bad here, we have a general waste bin that will accept most anything, a 'green' bin for garden waste & plain cardboard & smaller bins for glass, paper & cans. The main bin is emptied every week, while the green waste & recycling tubs get done alternate weeks. They also sell very good compost bins dirt cheap. There is no separate collection for plastic, though.

Wrapping food waste in newspaper seems nonsensical, to me, beyond helping to keep the bin clean ???

[Alien]

As I live in a small block of flats [3 ground floor, same on top], we have 1 of those metal wheelie bins of the type you sometimes see at the back of businesses, etc. We also have 3 plastic ones for recycling [newspapers, tins/cans, & jars/bottles]. A few months back they added a brown plastic 1, which I think is supposed to be for garden waste, but considering our "gardens" consist of 2 small lawns [front & back], a hedge at the front, & a few "bushes" of some sort [possibly rose, but if so they're really pathetic] at the back, & that the council takes care of all of it except the bushes, I don't really see the point in a garden waste bin. What would be useful, would be a recycling bin for plastic.

[Matt D]

We have:

- a general bin: for anything that can't go in the recycling.

- a green bin: for food waste, plants & weeds, cardboard, shredded paper, envelopes (minus the plastic window)... and Christmas trees.

- a blue box: for plastic bottles.

- a black box: for newspapers, magazines, glass, tins & cans (including aerosols).


General bin & black box on one week.

Green bin & blue box the other week.


Works well...

[Escapee]

As I predicted I have arrived home from work to discover they have not emptied my bin, presumable because it is 'Green'

This is my original 10 year old bin they supplied that they have obviously assumed is my Green bin put out the wrong week!

It seems they have found an excuse not to empty my bin, but looking through their paperwork that arrived with my 'new' green bin delivered yesterday it has a foot note stating the following:

'If you already have a green bin to dispose of your rubbish we will replace it with a black bin'

Now common sense would suggest that they can only replace it with a black one after emptying it, so it would of been a reasonable assumption for them to empty it today and replaced it with a black bin!

But the biggest bl**dy contradiction is a calender in the literature showing this week as a green bin collection week, but the heading of the letter in capitol letters says the following:

TWIN BIN RECYCLING SCHEME STARTING FEBRUARY 2008

Am I missing something or is that a contradiction?