New recycling arrangements

[Pat-H]

Now it's had a chance to settle down how are people finding the new mixed recycling arrangements?

We're finding the one bin every 2 weeks to be far less capacity than we need.
We used to have our one brown bin plus 2 plastic boxes plus 2 glass/paper boxes and they would all be pretty full at the end of two weeks.

We now have the option to do runs to the dump to get rid of excess recycling (at the cost of the fuel and the counterproductive nature of the exercise)
Or put it in our black bin which is now much less full.

Are others managing or is the new arrangement cost effective from the local authorities side of things but counter productive?

[Aardvaark]

We obviously don't use as much as you, probably smaller family? But we find the one "blue" bin to be more than we need for our plastics, glass and cardboard, and much more convenient. We kept the original green paper box - the new "inner" box doesn't seem to be very big.

Our neighbours with 3 children always seem to have a lot more to recycle than we do and also used to put out extra boxes with plastic bottles etc in, and often their paper recycling box was overflowing. However I do notice that they aren't very good at flattening cardboard boxes, tins and plastic bottles and this would make a lot of difference.

[RichardH]

I'm with you, Pat - we fill the blue bin really easily over the two weeks - certainly no space for the inner paper holder, and we end up having to keep craming it down to try and fit it in. We've taken to not putting cardboard in there to save space.

[juliaamwell]

We are finding the new recycling arrangements a vast improvement on the previous. I had great problems squeezing everything into the small blue box - the dark blue wheelie bin is much easier!

[mb1]

I'm finding the new wheelie bin better than the old arrangement. The old blue bin was always overfull, but the new wheelie bin is a better size.

[Darrellh]

Definently a better arrangement but like others posting it seems to fill up quicker but if you squash things down it should cope......just about! Our black bin generally has next to nothing in it so I would we are doing our bit for recycling in Ware

[Matt40]

I think the new arrangement is better, it takes up a bit more space but there's no need for the 'john wayne' walk with the small blue bin anymore, things don't fly away with the wind and the missus can't count how many bottles of whiskey or wine I can get through . I do wonder about the space issue though, I mean 3 big bins for people with small houses or no back access, it's a bit much really, imagine if they brought in a new 4th bin...

[Joho]

I love the new bin with the blue lid as its so much easier to put the recycling in one place. Its just a shame that so much of what we buy comes with excessive packaging. When I worked part-time and cooked everything from scratch using raw ingredients we had much less packaging than the past few years since I've been working full-time. We are completely filling the bin every fortnight but have little rubbish in our black bin hence pat-h's comments (he's my husband). I've been told that the dustmen will be taking 'side waste' at Christmas but at no other time.

[Ian]

I'm not finding it a major problem, though this week is a bit of a push with the excessive cardboard delivery companies use but we'll still get everything in there just.

I do feel though that the central government and local councils should be doing more to reduce waste overall instead of just recycling more, I'd like to see an initiative from Government to get companies to use less packaging generally. I use the local butcher and the local veg shop as much as possible and it's very noticeable how much less packaging you have to get rid of compared to the supermarkets. Companies such as Amazon could do with cutting down on packaging too, sometimes the size of the cardboard box they use for a delivery is plain stupid!

Perhaps the local councils could start an initiative to talk to suppliers and encourage less packaging?

[WickenMan]

There are parts of the world where customers leave excess packaging with the supplier. When you are at the checkout at Tesco take the Corn Flakes plastic sleeve out of the box and leave the box for them to deal with. If you have empty reusable containers, take them with you and fill them up. When you buy razor blades, leave the excess packaging behind. So many ways to recycle, clog up the checkout and influence the suppliers to behave responsibly.