Nothing worth recycling

[maggienetball]

I was so angry yesterday when I got a circular letter from our local refuse collection service. We have a twin bin system.

The letter wanted to clarify what items could be placed for reycycling and what couldn't. Previously virtually everything except fluids, food, batteries, glass and the yellow pages could go in our recycle bins.

Anyway, now, in addition to the above, the following are not allowed in the recycling bins:-

Yoghurt pots, margerine pots, plastic food trays, glossy magazines, glossy junk mail, shredded glossy paper, envelopes, fruit juice cartons, milk cartons (the ones like a box) tinfoil food trays, ordinary phone books, plastic bags of any description, polystyrene, tin cans, plastic straps (like you get round parcels), clothes, shoes and bedding(you used to be able to bag these separately and place in bin).

So essentially the only things you can place in the "green" bin is newspapers, plastic milk bottles, plastic bottles generally, cardboard and confidential mail that has no glossy bits on it and that I have forgotten to shred!

I am flummoxed as to why they are excluding so much stuff that is clearly recyclable. I pay huge amounts of council tax here in Torbay (rant rant) for this service. Am I expecting too much?

Do other people have this system? Is their system better than mine? I really hope so.

[Eigon]

It's always infuriating when a good system is replaced by something less good (much less good, in your case, by the sound of it).
Here in Powys we can put pretty much anything paper and textiles in one bag, and pretty much anything tins and plastics in the other. Glass goes to the bottle bank in the car park.
In Herefordshire they have a rather complicated system where the householder has to remember what sort of recyling they will collect that week.

[ina]

The only recycling that gets picked up here is "paper and thin card": no envelopes, no brown card. So you are still a lot better off than us...

I'm not trying to say that it's good enough, though! We have to take everything else to the recycling centre. They do take quite a lot of stuff, but I haven't heard of anybody in the UK yet who takes marge and yoghurt pots or other odd plastics. Although they are, of course, recycable...

That just reminds me: got my new AA card today. The letter tells me I can now recycle my old card - by sending it to an address they include! Now who the heck will spend even a second class stamp plus an envelope on sending their old card down south??? Not me! Needless to say, they won't take any other cards...

[Enormous Sage]

They're not taking tin cans??!

That's madness, scrap steel is worth nearly £100 a ton these days!

[maggienetball]

Sorry, I've just reread my rant and see I've not been very clear.

They DO take food cans but not drink cans. We have to recycle those separately.

[Thurston Garden]

I must say that the Cooncil here are very good at their recycling. They have an excellent recycling centre in Dunbar -new built 2 years ago and takes absolutely everything 'cept car tyres. All the main towns have had a fortnightly kerbside uplift for a couple of years too.

We are fairly rural and the Cooncil said that they had asked the contractor for a price to do the outlying areas, but it was prohibitively expensive - they would therefore not implement that collection until they got a subsidy, or the penalty for not doing so out-weighed the cost.

They started our kerbside collection last month - a two box scheme like maggienetball, but apart from cardboard and yellow pages/magazines/envelopes, they seem to be happy to take the lot. Perhaps once the system settles in and they relalise it's costing too much to sort the waste or they are not getting top dollar 'cos the paper quality is not good enough, we will all get a letter too....

[Helsbells]

In reading they only recyle plastic that is in the shape of a bottle!

[ina]

In reading they only recyle plastic that is in the shape of a bottle!

That's probably because they think that all their customers (and possibly their own workers) are too stupid to see the difference between the types of plastic - it's easier to distinguish the shape, which is often connected with the type of material...

[Super.Niki]

our halls are useless....

they "recycle" plastic bottles ONLY (so milk bottles and drink bottles... any other type of plastic must be taken away) and paper ONLY (no card, no paper with anything attached to it, no magazines, no envelopes, etc.) oh and a meager attempt and non-broken glass BOTTLES (no jam jars or any other type of bottle...)

So I have to chuck food cans, all other paper and plastic and tin cans away as well as any cardboard (I actually have a huge box in my room with lots more boxes in it... don't have the heart to chuck it in landfill...).

They will chuck EVERYTHING in ALL recycling bins into landfill if one bin is "contaminated" with the wrong stuff even something pathetic as someone's left a cork in a wine bottle...

I feel so guilty throwing out perfectly recyclable stuff sometimes but mostly I don't have a choice