Recycling Services

[Sarah]

I'm not sure how many of you have a recycling service - the three coloured bins - where the lorry comes to your door and takes the stuff away.

Well! Today I have been left most perturbed as they left me one of their 'patronising' leaflets as to how to recycle properly and they didn't take away ANY of the stuff in the middle bin.

It was only a couple of bean tins, a couple of pizza boxes and some plastic cartons.

They are now stating it all has to be neatly arranged in order to reduce their Covid risk when they are emptying it.

Now I have a lot of respect for what these people do but I feel this is taking it a bit far. I wash all my cans, crumple my boxes and keep each week's stuff to a minimum.

This means in preparation for next Tuesday's extravangza that I will have to lift the first box off every time I want to put something in the second. These boxes were designed with a letter box flap so that you DON'T have to do that.

I wish I'd got a chance to speak to them. It's really ticked me off. So much so that I might put it all in alphabetical order next week with a note attached!!!

 

[Mo Mouse]

Sar, recycling bins aside, I'm a bit worried that you might not be getting the appropriate vitamins and fibre in your diet. Tins of beans and pizza just won't cut it, I'm afraid. I've put a few suggestion below for you.

MONDAY - breakfast consisting of brown, wholemeal toast, scraping of spread (ideally Utterly Butterly Light) with bran flakes and fat free soya milk. Lunch will be a Ryvita topped with guacamole mousse and a satsuma. Dinner should be grilled chicken with mashed potatoes and green beans and a Wagon Wheel as a treat.

TUESDAY - breakfast just half a grapefruit and fruit juice to drink. A carton of Um Bongo would be my advice. Lunch today will be two kippers freshly caught off the Cork coast with boiled potatoes. Dinner will be a real treat - kangaroo steak with boiled rice and mango chutney with 4 cans of Tesco lager.

Try the above and let me know how it goes, Sar. You have to look after your body or you'll get scurvy or rickets or something like that and die well before your time. You might even get jaundice and have to have your leg chopped off or whatever.

 

[Barbara Fan]

Not so fussy in our council area

Black bin for general rubbish'
Blue - recycling and i do my best, but they dont take glass
Brown - garden waste - leaves, twigs, grass etc

Some friends in other areas have one for food, but we dont have that!

the binmen just come and tip it in to the lorry - no questions asked

 

[Seaviewer]

All our bins are green with different coloured lids - red for rubbish, yellow for recyclables and green for garden waste. The rubbish is taken every week and the other two on alternating fortnights.
Occasionally, I've had a leaflet attached with either a smiley face or a frowny face commenting on how well I'm doing - or not - but there's no real clue on what I did wrong.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

I just drive mine to that empty parkinglot behind the high school. I took mine Tuesday.

 

[Sarah]

Well, apparently now the pizza boxes - takeaway only - go in the brown bin which was originally for plants/greenery.

But store bought pizza goes in the blue tub at the top!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Fek sake!

 

[Daniel Avery]

Where I work we have one of those baler machines for our cardboard (basically a huge pressing machine) and there are pre-printed signs attached to it telling us what we can and can't put in . Any cardboard that has grease or oil soaked into it has to be 'rejected' for recycling, just as waxed-coated cardboard has to be rejected. They likely just associate all pizza boxes with the greasy ones. The cardboard gets reduced to a "soup" during the recycling process and that oil just rises to the top and has to be skimmed off. Similarly, we have to separate out all the cellophane and plastic wrap that comes with the packages, since the company that buys our cardboard bales will reject them if there's 'foreign objects' (anything other than cardboard) seen in them. And what the &^%$ would we do with a 1000-pound bale of compressed cardboard?

One of the neighboring counties had to produce a "public-service ad" basically begging their residents to separate the cheap plastic grocery bags from all the other plastics in the recycling, showing pictures of their machinery all gummed up with grocery bags, getting all "lecture-y" that it costs them X dollars to fix the broken machine.

 

[bmasters9]

Similarly, we have to separate out all the cellophane and plastic wrap that comes with the packages, since the company that buys our cardboard bales will reject them if there's 'foreign objects' (anything other than cardboard) seen in them.

What do they think is wrong with anything but pure cardboard?

 

[Daniel Avery]

Entire bales of cardboard gets chopped up in heavy machinery and then flooded with water (and chemicals, I assume) to turn the soupy mess into "pulp" (think papier-mache) in the recycling process. They then press most of the moisture out and end up with a solid cube of cardboard fibers (cellulose) that is then loaded up to be shipped out to be used for whatever they need it for. The Chinese apparently use a lot of it for manufacturing.

The plastic and other foreign objects obviously won't turn to pulp in the process--the bits just float around. Since all this is done on an enormous, mostly automated scale they can't have people sticking their arms in the works to fish out plastic. I'm sure they have to fish out some odd items, but these people have to set some standards or else the bales of cardboard would be full of all kinds of trash that makes it impossible to process them properly (and profitably). Since the recycler is taking all that cardboard off our hands and giving the company a set amount of money for each bale, the company expects us to help the recycler out by sorting our trash, so to speak.

One thing that has always puzzled me, however is the cellophane tape that is on virtually every cardboard box we toss in the baler. I assume they put some chemicals in the 'pulp' to break down all that cellophane during the process, but I have yet to hear anyone confirm or deny it. We've not been instructed to pull off the tape, but they certainly tell us all those other things not to put in the baler....including the cellophane sheets that often wraps the items in the boxes.

 

[Seaviewer]

the cellophane tape that is on virtually every cardboard box

That and the plastic on "window" envelopes. I've seen nothing to direct what is to be done with them either.

 

[Sarah]

Projecting ourselves into a whole new level of insanity in N Ireland, yesterday they took everything but a SMALL cardboard tube (remainder of toilet roll). They left it behind because it wasn't in the right box. It is the size of my hand.

 

[Daniel Avery]

Leave him a gift to brighten his mood:

 

[bmasters9]

Projecting ourselves into a whole new level of insanity in N Ireland, yesterday they took everything but a SMALL cardboard tube (remainder of toilet roll). They left it behind because it wasn't in the right box. It is the size of my hand.

What, according to them, is the right box for such things?

 

[Emelee]

Most Swedes have green for general rubbish and brown for compost. Some buildings also have bins for glass, plastic, metal, electronic waste and paper, but most have to go to a nearby recycling station for those.

 

[Daniel Avery]

They sure don't make it easy to get rid of junk nowadays. I have an old (and HEAVY!) TV set that I've been trying to off-load for over a year. The county has a couple of days per year they will 'accept' old electronics, but they don't seem very good at publicizing when those days will occur, or where the drop-off will be. Lugging that 60lb. TV down the stairs and out to the car would be quite an undertaking but I'm willing to give it a shot if they would just let me in on the secret of when and where to take it.

When I was growing up, we could drive to the local landfill ("the dump") anytime we needed to get rid of stuff. My dad and uncles emptied out and dis-assembled an entire barn and hauled it off to the dump bit by bit. Now? Heck, they won't even let "the common folk" enter the landfill to dump anything. You have to place it in your standard-issue garbage cans or hire someone to haul off larger loads. Part of me wonders if I should just take the TV apart bit by bit and put a few pieces in the trash every week.

 

[Crimson]

They sure don't make it easy to get rid of junk nowadays

Some years ago, I lived in an apartment building and had a large entertainment center I needed to get rid of. I didn't feel like trying to haul it down steps, so in the middle of the night I just dragged in into the hallway ... and left it there. Someone dealt with it eventually, but that someone wasn't me.

Not that I'm giving you any ideas.

 

[Daniel Avery]

Some neighbors will leave old furniture and other items on the sidewalk in front of their homes, the implication being that anyone passing by who wants it can have it. I think it is tacky, but the stuff does disappear quickly. I do not have that option because I live in a rental, and the landlord often gripes and carps about the neighbors dumping their stuff on the sidewalk. His head would explode if I left an old TV on the curb. Besides, it's not usable--it's one of the older, "square screen" TVs with cathode-ray picture tube ("the very latest in 1980s technology") with a picture so dim it's like watching a TV through a welder's helmet. It needs to go to the recycler.

 

[Rove]

Local Councils irritate me sometimes. I had a huge skip placed in front of my place for a week. I cleaned out the garage, household items and the backyard lawn locker. All this will go to the dump to become landfill. Each year my council rates go up yet council still expects us to do all the hard work for them by separating recyclable items into their 3 useless wheelie bins.

I have an old (and HEAVY!) TV set that I've been trying to off-load for over a year.

One of my elderly neighbours had an old television which has been sitting in their garage for years. So I placed it into the skip as well. Like you Daniel they had no way of getting this heavy device anywhere simply because our local council refuses kerb side pickup.

 

[bmasters9]

Each year my council rates go up yet council still expects us to do all the hard work for them by separating recyclable items into their 3 useless wheelie bins.

Paying your government insanely high sums of money, and they still treat you like a lackey? That's awful (at least IMO)!

 

[Seaviewer]

Some neighbors will leave old furniture and other items on the sidewalk in front of their homes, the implication being that anyone passing by who wants it can have it

That's illegal here now. We used to have regular kerbside pickups of "hard" waste but they discontinued that as an eyesore and now one has to book a special collection. The result is that instead of all households disposing of their items at once, there could be one or two piles out at any time. And if an illegal dump is left a sticker proclaiming it as such is slapped on it and it could stay there for weeks while they investigate it. Not an improvement to my mind.

council still expects us to do all the hard work for them by separating recyclable items into their 3 useless wheelie bins.

Years ago we used to put out our old newspapers with a brick on them to stop them blowing away. Then they gave us a tub for glass and metal. Then they gave us a wheelie bin to put all the recyclables in together. Now they're complaining that the paper and the glass are getting mixed up.