Recycling! How good are you?

We do. Kind of frowned upon not to around these parts. We still have a HUGE environmental footprint, though. Typical North American lifestyle.

Our recycling bin has grown, and our trash bin has shrunk quite a bit over the years.  Our town has a strong program, with pickups every two weeks.  They also make it quite easy.  Almost everything is recyclable, and there is no sorting required.  We also have haz mat centers where we can drop off old petrol, oil, paint, fluorescent bulbs -- all at no charge.

Seems like only a decade or so ago that recycling concept was new, and a bit daunting.  But now, even for those who complained at first, it now just second nature.  A great success I'd say.

ATB.

Hook

My wife is pretty committed, some weeks we have achieved her nirvana of an empty rubbish bin with everything re-cycled or composted. She has been seen trying to iron out aluminium foil for re-use. Our cellar is full of boxes of meticulously sorted plastics/paper and tins etc, quietly festering until the next drop off. I do my best but she still sifts through my office wastebin occasionally tutting as she weeds out slips of paper I have neglected to put aside.

We have to sort everything as apart from paper it is not collected so we have to take glass and plastics etc to the supermarket re-cycling bins. We used to have inserts into each domestic wheelie bin that held glass and metals but they were removed after a few weeks because they were designed by an idiot. You hat to lift them out everytime you wanted to put conventional rubbish in the bin and they got wedged in place. Several people got cut by broken glass trying to lever them out. Hopeless.

The situation is a bit harder for larger items such as cardboard/polystyrene and metals etc since at our local council refuse dumps you actually have to register or ID and proof you live/pay council tax in the area. Since the one she passes on the way to work is actually in W Yorks not N Yorks this is teeth grindingly irritating (as is the fact the one closest to home and actually appropriate for us to use shuts all day on my mid-week day off). Talk about not making it easy to do the right thing.

The council also now requires you to register and pay for garden refuse collection once a month. We don't want this but have found it impossible to get the (previously freely supplied) huge brown wheelie bin removed. I sarcastically suggested I would dismantle it and take the components for plastic/rubber and metal re-cycling but they did not feel that was a helpful comment.

The re-cycling wave seems to have stalled, and if the system is obstructive it will go backwards. I know we must make an effort but surely the Council could facilitate it better. It seems far superior in other European countries I have visited.

It also strikes me that we throw away vast amounts of simple (ie non-clinical) waste at work without having any re-cycling service. The legislation also now makes it impractical for us to sterilse items such as surgical instruments on-site so we have single-use metal instruments and vast amounts of packaging.

Bruce

We recycle 100%. At least we do in terms of our council's definition of recycling. Which is to sell on. They stopped cardboard and plastic recycling services when they couldn't get enough money for what they collected but happily they have resumed it again. By their definition, since everything we own involves paying for it, we are good recyclers. I think cynicism call for an appropriate response.

We have 3 bins provided by the local authority.  

Food waste - our case this is almost only meat

Recyclable (clean & unsorted)

Non-recyclable

-  What is recyclable or not is as per the local authority list

I compost everything that is possible & I mean everything; anything vegetable from the kitchen, house, garden & the neighborhood "public" grass verges,  plus most of my house waste paper type materials (shredded if needed).

Garden refuse items that cannot be composted such as wood & conifer get removed via yet another bin (grrr) that cost me £34 a year.  

Food waste is typically a lot less than 0.5kg per week 

Recycle items is normally 60% full at the 2 week emptying period.  

Non-recyclable item bin is normally a lot less than a quarter full.   

My 3 compost bins & worm farm are all very busy making not enough compost for my garden needs.    

I had really thrifty grandparents (my Nan used to wash tinfoil and reuse it!) and parents who grew up in London during and after the War, so the idea of throwing away stuff only when strictly necessary was drummed into us at an early age. My first serious girlfriend in the early 80s was a German girl who was a lefty/hippy; she was pretty fanatical (ie bullying ) about recycling (in Germany and Scandinavia recycling has been the norm for decades) so very early on, even when it was comparatively difficult, I've been recycling.

Wandsworth Council seems to be pretty good on recycling - they take away paper, card, plastic, tetrapaks, glass etc once a week, and will also provide you with free composters to recycle food waste. This makes recycling much easier.In addition, there are good recycling facilities (scrap metal, batteries, light bulbs, furniture, paint etc) at the Smuggler's Way dump.

In addition we recycle old clothing, books, CDs etc by taking them to charity shops; many charities also take really tatty/unsellable clothes/rags to sell on to make high-quality paper.

"123 Recycle for Free" is a really good service for recycling old electrical items. Book an appointment and they will come and take away your old tellies, toasters, kettles, fridges, computers, iPods etc etc for nowt. The British Heart Foundation offers a similar service for furniture.

Freecycle is another great way of getting rid of unwanted stuff.

We recycle glass, plastic, paper and we've got a composte heap. 

Remarkably I read the other day the ovens they use in The Netherlands to burn garbage did'nt heat up as they used to do because we started disposing of plastics separately.

We can bring batteries back to the store (can even dispose of them at work), chemicals are collected once a month or we can bring them to the city waste cite, for free. Same for construction materials and larger garden stuff.

We're very fortunate to have a council that make recycling very easy. We have 3 large wheelie bins; a green one for garden waste, food waste and cardboard, a brown one for metal, plastic and glass and a black one for what's left. We also have a blue bin for paper recycling. We now only half fill a black bin every 2 weeks. 

We have three bins too. Green for garden waste, blue for perceived "recyclable" stuff - cans, plastics, paper, cardboard etc and black for everything else. 

The blue bin fills up first mostly.

They do recycle as much as possible at our local "dump" - which has a crusher, an incinerator and recycling centre - and a landfill about a mile away. 

The funniest thing though is the amount of stuff that doesn't even get through the gates - as soon as you park up there are people who want to relieve you of your "junk"!

As they say Chris, one mans junk is another mans treasure. 

We're pretty good, and I think most of the people in the area are good, if only because we have to be. We have the gray bin for trash and the blue bin for recyclables. Garden waste is piled by the curb and picked up separately. 

Aesthetics aside, we have to be good because every once in a while there will be a note on a bin saying, "Nope, you can't put that in there."

This, in turn, is because the collector gets fined if there is a large percentage of recyclables in the trash--Hit 'em in the pocketbook, and their hearts and minds will follow. 

This is where things should be going, we simply can't expect to keep consuming with limited sources. We recycle also everything that is possible: glass, plastic and everything suitable for burning (it's called the energy waste), paper, cardboard, metal and we've got two compost heaps for biowaste from the kitchen and garden. Any larger stuff like furniture, TVs and fridges are carried to the Recycling Center. It's amazing how little one actually produces litter after all this. As a matter of fact, it's not even hard when you get used to it.