Thursday, February 17, 2011

People are being given too many recycling bins

Household bins in Newcastle under LymeCouncils are asking householders to sort their rubbish into as many as nine bins to boost recycling, a survey suggests.

On average, the Taxpayers' Alliance pressure group found councils expected residents to sort their household waste into four bins, bags and caddies.

Newcastle-under-Lyme had the largest number of bins, with nine containers.

The government said this number of bins "seemed a little over the top" and it was reviewing waste collection.

The research was compiled through a combination of freedom of information requests and checking council websites.

Newcastle-under-Lyme uses separate bins for refuse, cardboard, plastics, paper, glass and cans, textiles and garden waste. It also hands out two food waste caddies - one for putting food scraps in for the kitchen and another for kerbside collection.

The survey also found 20 other local authorities including Chelmsford, Aberdeenshire, Guildford and Middlesbrough give residents seven or more containers....

Two councils, Dumfries and Galloway and the Isles of Scilly collect just one bin.

Across England, around 40% of household waste is now being recycled, composted or reused.

Councils face taxes for using landfill to deal with waste and fines if European Union targets to reduce the amount of rubbish sent to landfill are not met. ...

via BBC News - 'People are being given too many recycling bins'.

1 comment:

oliver stieber said...

alternatively, if you read other reports they say things like.
Some councils aren't separating materials very well and are using air separation leading to low quality recyclables that often end up in land fill or have low value.
For instance shards of glass in paper, when materials are collected together and tumble separated.

Also I have lots of recycling bins, in-fact pretty much one in each room that I then empty into the collection bins every so often.

Also if you read the report there's only a minor gripe which amounts to it being more efficient for it to be collected together and hand separated by the bin men (yeh if people can't be bothered to do it in their own home, what a lovely job that is for the bin men). I also fail to grasp how it's more cost effective in terms of money to pay someone to do what you could do yourself for free.