“Mad” New Recycling Plans Could Force Every U.K. Household to Have Seven Different Bins
New waste plans that could see U.K. households have as many as seven bins to comply with recycling laws have been blasted as “madness” by MPs. The Mail has more.
Under the new plans, which are set to be announced in mid-April, all councils across the U.K. would be required to individually collect paper, cardboard, metal, plastic and glass as well as garden and food waste.
This would in theory mean some households could have seven waste receptacles in what has been described as a “national bin service”.
The proposed change has been brought about by a Government consultation on household and business recycling, with Environment Secretary Thérèse Coffey due to publish her report next month.
The changes are being made to increase the consistency of waste recycling across the country due to disparity in the rates under different local authorities.
In order to be exempt from some of the changes, councils would have to demonstrate that it is “not technically or economically practicable” to collect different forms of recycling waste separately.
Another get out clause would be that they are able to demonstrate there would be no “significant environmental benefit in doing so”. …
However there has been backlash from within the Conservative party over the changes with Bob Blackman, MP for Harrow East and member of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities parliamentary committee criticising the decision.
Speaking to the Telegraph, he said: “It would be of great concern if we end up with huge numbers of types of bins. That would be madness. In urban environments, people already have four sets of bins and to go beyond that would be absolutely crazy.”
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If this stupidity is not reined in I will abandon any further recycling and chuck the lot in to one bin.
F. ’em.
There’s been several occasions where I’ve gone out after dark and dumped the rubbish I couldn’t fit in our wheelie bin in neighbours’ bins because they only get emptied every fortnight. Actually it was my nextdoor neighbour that told me to do that so I have no shame now and nobody realistically gives a stuff. There’s only so many things it’s practical to recycle and I think those living in a flat with less space would find it even more of a pain in the arse. We have containers of glass, plastic and paper/cardboard permanently in the house, and they’re starting a 15 cent deposit on tin cans over here 1st April.
There is a bin at the bus stop 20 meters from my front door that is very useful when there is particularly smelly mixed rubbish I need to dispose of and provides a great opportunity to say F you very much to the local council.
That’s what I do now…..
Stupidity is never a reason not to push a collectivist pipe dream down everyone’s throat.
This checks all the boxes.
1. Proposes a solution to a non-existent problem? Check
2. The goal is utopian? It’s even better than that, it never ends. Check
3. You’re a bad person if you don’t agree? Check
4. We all have to do it or doesn’t work? Check
5. When it doesn’t work they’ll be able to prescribe more of it, more strictly? Check
There you have it. It’s not something that’s supposed to make your life better. Its purpose is to give some people an excuse to tell others what to do. Checks all the boxes.
You forgot one:
6. Vested interests NOT generating wealth make tons of dosh. Check
I do this, anyway, chucking a bit of ‘forbidden’ in different bins. Love a bit of sabotage, me!
Lol. Don’t know if the picture is to scale but the row of bins more or less completely takes up the whole width of the front of the house. How many people live in a house that size?
I have 3 wheelie bins in my front courtyard. I cannot practically fit any more in, and that’s a rural-ish semi-detached house. Cannot imagine what those in streets of terrace houses would do, especially where half the pavement is already marked out for car parking. As recycling sorting has developed, surely the number of bins required should reduce, not increase? It must surely be more efficient to sort centrally and have fewer bins, and so types of collection vehicles, than to have households sort individually, where everyone has a different interpretation of what is and isn’t recyclable.
In Italy they have giant wheelie bins on every street, every so often, and the binmen come every day and empty them as it’s much less work. You have to walk a tiny bit further, and it takes up a bit of room on the street, but it seems more efficient.
It varies a lot around the UK. Some charge extra for certain types of bin as well, e.g. where I am they charge an annual fee (or tax) to collect garden waste. Not everyone does, and my next door neighbour cancelled it after 5/4 this year, on account of them jacking up the price, on top of the Council tax rise. I use a general purpose wheelie bin, a couple of small plastic trays for glass bottles and tins in one, paper in another, and a throwaway plastic bag full of recyclable plastic bottles – mainly dairy ones. Nothing capable pf being composted goes out – I have two at home, and two in my allotment.
Where I am, it’s a bi-weekly service. Lots of problems with lack of space for older houses as well, so no shortage of junk on certain streets. Good for the foxes, I suppose; no shortage of those here!
They’ve thought of that.
“Liverpool City Council in the UK has outlined plans to install underground smart ‘super bins’ in 140 high-density locations.”
https://cities-today.com/liverpool-plans-underground-system-of-smart-super-bins/
The word ‘smart’ is a worry. Presumably, people will end up being monitored and if they put the wrong rubbish in the wrong bin, they will be shamed, their social credit score docked and fined. China has been leading the way on this.
AA cells are easy to conceal and contaminate it all when they split.
And certain other types tend to catch fire in certain circumstances.
Bi-weekly!!!!! Where my son lives there is a complicated system of pick-ups. Some bins are fortnightly and others every three weeks. Where we are the pick ups are fortnightly with alternating pairs of bins sorted. There is a weekly food waste pickup which isn’t well used.
It’s mad, because where I live, each county seems to have a differing set of recycling rules. One rule wants you to split plastic/metal, cardboard, paper and glass up. One wants the same, but plastic and metal to be split too. Another was happy to just chuck all recycling in a big green wheelie bin.
The farce of it all is that all area’s recycling merges to one (maybe two) recycling plants, meaning that the initial separation of rubbish is a total waste of time since they bung it together and sort it there instead. I highly suspect there is some payout going on for “the greenest council” and by splitting the stuff up these councils are earning greener grants etc. despite it doing absolutely nothing.
Still. Pays for councilor’s Teslas and makes them feel all warm and fuzzy.
These folk don’t have enough work.
Exactly. Too many people telling everyone how to do things, and not enough people actually doing anything.
Not sure how I judge this, natural reaction to anything presented by the eco fascists is a gratuitous f off but I suppose if people are wanting to, or more accurately have the space to and it’s on an ‘opt in’ basis I’m all for us sorting it beforehand if this is the fundamental problem (I’m presuming once mixed and broken beyond all recognition it can’t be sorted). As an apparent solution for the space issue – why not just have smaller bins, or one of these large ones with component partitions?
This madness is already in Wales, a bin for everything except to put the local council or the Welsh parish council of Cardiff. These containers take up a lot of room, room which you have to provide yourself, some people have garden storage units purchased for the job, other just let the containers roam free in the wind, and those in flats have their own problems. If you want to go to the tip, you have to book online, time, date, place you intend to visit, with sometimes this criteria is overloaded and you have to try a different time or date. Then you proceed to; car type with or without trailer, Car reg, Covid yes or no, are you a resident, and print off confirmation in pdf. When you arrive at the tip, (don’t be too early or late as you will not be allowed in) Your number plate is checked you may be asked proof of identity, driving licence, poll tax/ utility bill. Its household waste FFS not radioactive wastes. Why the checks? it’s not as if you are going to nick a car full of rubbish and then go and deliver it to the correct tip, on… Read more »
I’ve seen enough evidence now that this recycling, at least of plastic, is nothing to feel virtuous about. What they do here in the NL though is charge you extra ( 15 – 30 cents per bottle ) when you’re at the shop to incentivize you to go put it in the machine when you’re finished and get your money back in the form of a voucher. I can’t remember if this is a thing in the UK yet…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R7XAeWCNqI&ab_channel=SorelleAmoreFinance
Reminds me that many years ago, a lot of glass bottles were re-used time after time. When I was a kid, we used to have bottled milk delivered by a local farm, which took back the empties, washed them, and used them again. In some towns in Germany, local breweries do the same thing, for bottled products; I can remember this being done in Bamberg quite recently.
Ref recycling glass bottles. I asked at my local brewery if I could bring the bottles back. The response was no; as the bottles used as designated by EU/UK regulation for bottled food products cannot be recycled because of the type of glass used within these bottles. I believe it is the same for jams and preserves.
Door step recycling are EU/UK directive driven by virtue signalling councils and not very flexible. The receiver council then passes on the waste for further recycling; job done; Pembrokeshire is good at it. However, Pembrokeshire also receives waste from other sources which it processes at landfill. Job done; happy days, all requirements met.
Everything done for the environment makes the environment uglier: wheelie bins, wind turbines, solar farm ..
Stand in the Park Make friends & keep sane
Sundays 10.30am to 11.30am
Elms Field
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Wokingham RG40 2FE
As a somewhat reluctant member of the Chartered Institute of Waste Management, I have had some exposure to what Local Authorities did almost twenty years ago in order to meet EU recycling requirements. There was a coordinated and massive “investment” in state of the art recycling facilities, financed through PFI or Public-Private Partnerships, which local council tax payers were told would revolutionise the way that their waste was handled. Predictably, hidden in the small print of the multi-million pound contracts were get-out and penalty clauses that would allow the operators of the waste facilities to walk away from their obligations in the event that the councils failed to provide high specification, clean waste, to these “waste palaces”. To my certain knowledge, at least three of these plants have now closed, at vast expense to the residents of Lancashire and Essex, and I would assume that many others are teetering on the brink. The main reason for this is that there is simply no demand for dirty paper waste, plastic and general inert rubbish and, even after the waste’s been sorted, there’s no-one interested in buying it. The most recent initiative by the DEFRA is just another step towards forcing us… Read more »
And some local authorities have had a pop at pyrolysis plants – e.g. Bristol CC, and no doubt others. Controversial, I think. Of course, decades ago, quite a few councils did burn rubbish, albeit in a rather dirty, polluting method – then switched to landfill.
I always enjoy reading posts from sceptical insiders. Thanks.
Well, exactly. That wouldn’t look very “green” would it? What I would like to know is, are plastic wheelie bins recyclable?
Gonna buy a filing cabinet for my rubbish!
And I’ll continue to subvert it all with cross contamination.
I do that if I put green glass in the brown glass hole!🤭 Not sure what the ramifications are for that further down the line though…🤔
Our rulers want us to consume less as part of their overall desire to make our lives miserable. Why they get pleasure out of our less-enjoyable lives, I don’t know.
I cynically believe that of household recycling collected every Tuesday here, most ends up in landfill. If there are 7 bins handed out in future, I guess the same will happen. I’m fortunate to live in rural N Wales and not a city or town. So I collect the metal myself and weigh it in once a year together with my workshop scrap; Paper and most plastics, except PVC, burn in the multi fuel stove ( mixed with wood ) 6 months of the year. I’ve used food waste for composting together with garden waste for 45 years. Leaving half a bucket of general waste and half a dozen bottles and jars a week for collection. But this could not work for many people I know.
It is well know, down our way that they collect more cardboard and plastic than they can sell for recycling. Whatever they can’t goes in the big incinerator, unless it produces something toxic, in which case it is baled, sent to Romania, and they burn it there for a suitable fee..
i suggest an alternative plan.
endure all areas use consistent colour schemes. Green seems logical for recycling but in LB Newham green is non while recycling is orange!
the same borough does not collect garden waste.
“Ven you live in ze 15 minute cities, you vill have 15 different bins, und you vill be happy!”
Not quite true. If we do indeed end up imprisoned in 15 minute ghettos one bin will be the maximum required because we will have F#ck all to put in it.
You vill have only one bin. For all ze uneaten bugz. But you vill be happy.
Where I live we have four bins. GREY (paper and cardboard) GREEN (plastic and tins etc) BROWN (garden and food waste) BLUE (everything else). ——But in the West Midlands my sister has only one bin and everything goes in it. ———–The entire phony and environmental tyranny is in full swing. But bins are just one tiny aspect of the total control over every aspect of our lives. But there is also what we eat (Ze Bugs), what we drive, where we drive, how we drive. Our cars are to be removed and we are all expected to travel around in big busses like the Old Yugoslavia in 1956. Flying will be restricted. Our heating systems are to be ripped out (that is 22 million gas boilers). We are to be fobbed off with silly heat pumps and hugely expensive hydrogen which isn’t even a fuel. The only thing we might have left is the ability to cut our own toenails, but don’t be surprised if we get bin number 8 for the clippings.
Seven plastic bins per household. That doesn’t sound very ‘green’ to me! Seven separate waste disposal lorries calling to empty the separate bins doesn’t sound very green to me!
So who was consulted and who made the plans?
We’re not told.
The Government could obviously stop the lunacy, which I suspect has been dreamt up by one of DEFRA’s Quangos.
A bit early for April fool?🤔
We don’t even have our glass collected here in my part of the UK, you have to drive to the nearest recycle place. Not very green lol But at least all colours go in together. No idea how people without cars manage. The only plastic they take for recycling is bottle shaped so all the rest is general binned. There is no food waste collection and you have to pay a lot for a garden waste bin and collection. So my garden waste gets put in a plastic bag in the general bin (they won’t take it if they see it) otherwise I would have to drive that to the tip. So 2 bins only. I can’t see our council ending up with 7 gladly. They couldn’t cope with the cost or the organisation. I am generally in favour of recycling rather than landfill as long as it actually does get recycled and hope that as my council doesn’t take that much, that what they do take actually is recycled!
This was a reality in Lewes seven years ago, I expect it’s worse now
We already have 5 bins… garden waste, general household waste, food, bottles and cans as well as paper and small pieces of cardboard. Many are just left sitting out on the footway and sometimes you can hardly walk past for bins all over the place.
A good ‘recycling’ scheme I’ve heard of is where everything goes into a giant shredder’, reducing it all to small particles, which when mixed, can be composted. Perhaps better to fill a landfill with material that will rapidly decompose and become part of the landscape again, than expending huge resources and energy trying to recycle individual materials? Dust to duct, ashes to ashes?