BB FANS

I know that recycling the domestic waste will cut down on resources but what about the cost ?

East Northamptonshire started their new recycling scheme today so we have 3 coloured bins for paper ,glass ,and plastic plus the normal bin for the rest.

Previously we had one Refuse Wagon do the rounds collecting all waste.
So far today we had a wagon round just after 7am that collected the normal waste in sacks. Then around 8am a second wagon appeared and collected the glass waste. And there has to be a third wagon to collect the paper waste.

Now tell me if I'm missing something but isn't it a waste of money to have to pay for three wagons and three crews when surely they could have devised a way of collecting all three in a single wagon ? And this is the general thoughts on this estate this morning. All this extra money has to come from somewhere and most likely the concil take will rise again to pay for the 'step forward'.

How does the recycling collections work in other parts of the country ?

we have a black bin for normal refuse collected one week and on the alternate week we have the green collection so there is still only one wagon but our rubbish is collected effectively fortnightly. When it was started they went round checking everyones bins to make sure we were al behaving. People were not happy at having their normal waste collected only fortnightly but they were told if you recycle there is no reason why non-green stuff couldn't be kept to a minimum and there was no need to collect it more frequently. It had a few teething problems but the system works fine now.

Here I think they do some sort of picking up of newspapers once a month but we just put all our recycling in a box and take it to the big recycling bins at Tesco, Safeway etc.

local government inefficiency, don't you just love it!

here we have a normal bin lorry, which is now a huge one which can barely squeeze into my street, and then a smaller truck comes along to pick up the green box recycling (paper, glass, tins, old clothing, and CLEAR HDPE2 plastic). I live on my own and produce 2-3 Tesco shopping bags of rubbish a week as I recycle everything. I have a compost bin for organic matter and garden waste is taken to the back of my sister's garden as she's doing some land reclamation.

I think the answer is fewer collections, say fortnightly but maybe with a bigger truck. anyone who doesn't recycle when they could do easily (if they have a recycling collection for example) is just downright lazy, arrogant, thoughtless, selfish, inconsiderate, not to mention intellectually-challenged imho . it also annoys me that people just throw away old PCs and mobile phones when they can be re-used abroad, or the components stripped out. Local authorities can be fined for not doing enough but I think they should be doing a lot more.

Here's another idea (you heard it here): why don't car roofs have solar panels to run the air con and other electrics? I'm not talking about those solar-powered cars, I'm talking about something that could act as additional power for your average car. If your car's outside all day you may as well harness the power inflicted on it.

(bugger, someone's already thought of portable ones that can be plugged into the cigaratte lighter, but maybe car manufacturers can design them so they are built in?)

also, if they linked the weight of your wheelie bin to how much council tax you pay people would soon start recycling more (or they might just stick everything in the recycling box (but if caught should risk a huge huge fine)).

We have a compost bin as well, two actually. Can't remember when dad got the first one but everything that can goes in it. We recycle everything that can be recycled.

We have both'black bag' and green box collections weekly.I usually only have one black sack out but 3 green boxes.However,where it ends up I dont know.Given that the company that collects it is the local landfill site owner.....

Well we had three full size refuse carts today.
1st normal blacks bags ,2nd Glass ,3rd Paper.
Next week in place of the later two we have a collection for plastic.

Now let me see three times the diesal ,three times the workers etc.
What a waste !

We have a wheelie bin (for normal rubbish) on one weekly wagon, orange bag for all recycled stuff that comes the same day but usally earlier than the other wagon so you have to put it out the night before. And we also have another green wheelie bin for all garden waste which they pick up fortnightly...there are runours of us getting ANOTHER wheelie bin for the recycled stuff too.

We don't have wheelie bins but three containers about the size of the Green Safeway baskets you used to be able to buy. I'm guessing they have a capacity around 20 Litres. Three colours ,Green ,Red ,and Blue.
Plus the normal dustbins.

The ones to be collected have to be out by 7am. But we are reluctent to leave the rubbish out overnight as last year some kind person on their way back home decided it would be a good idea to set light to our dustbins that were against the wall. I still have video footage of the fire but the camera I have at the time couldn't provide a clear enough picture of the lads face else the Police might have shown more interest. They didn't both sending anybody out after the Fire Brigade reported the fire and we had to ask them to have a look into it when the mobile station was in town.

I try to be environment friendly but it's frustrating when you see people just drink from a can of coke and then hurl it over their shoulder to the street as if they own the planet! I almost never throw food in the bin tho, straight out the window for the birdies! Which reminds me - there are only 2 in my house so we can never finish a loaf of bread. It always goes mouldy before we are half way through it. The birds in my neighbourhood are getting quite fat now...

I actually almost did a really stupid thing recently. In my front garden there is a crevice under the pavement where a blackbird has made a nest and has a bunch of babies there. I often put catfood out for the local strays and as recommended by the RSPCA I fed a rescued blackbird on chunky catfood once. I had the bright idea to put a dish of catfood right outside the nest so that the mother bird wouldn't have very far to go to get food for her babies...

My boyfriend just raised his eyebrows and said ' So you want to put a dish of catfood right next to a nest of baby birds... think about it dear...'

You also need to consider the cost involved in buying the waste in landfill sites. If half the waste is recycled then the costs for burying the rest is halved.

True but doesn't defeat the object if the cost of collecting the waste for recycling increase 3 or 4 fold by using a different wagon and crew for each collection ?

The town was ,seemingly ,a wash with refuse wagons Wednesday.

I would have thought they could have got away with two wagons ?

I'll keep my eye of the letters column in the local paper as I'm sure there will be some voicing their concern at the extra costs. And who will land up paying for these costs.

I'm all for recycling but lets be effecent not wasteful in doing so.