Weekly/Fortnightly Bin collections

[Cobbles]

Here, Here. Not all unemployed people sit and watch TV all day.

Ah yes, I was forgetting, there's time spent down the betting shop/pub/internet cafe as well.

Make that part-time rubbish sorting, then - I'm sure that on the flipside, the waifs and strays that carry out this function on the 3rd world dumps where our stuff is apparently shipped have to break off at some point to watch Carol Vorderman adding things up.

 

[AnnO'Neemus]

Here, Here. Not all unemployed people sit and watch TV all day.

Nah, why would we when we can faff about on urban and annoy all the self-righteous employed people?

 

[Grandma Death]

Due to having two children still in nappies come Thursday our wheelie tend to smell & starts to attract flies. .

Get on the nappy washing scheme (if there is one in your locality). Far better for the environment plus no smells.

 

[Grandma Death]

How ?

By a variety of ways-it has also been proven that councils that switch to fortnightly schemes have better recycle rates. Clearly it works.

 

[Grandma Death]

Its the perishible stuff like food which stinks to high heaven even over a week. .

Some councils are now offering food recycling as well. I actually think ALL councils should offer it. Our LA also offers heavily discounted compost bins for those who choose to do it themselves.

 

[gentlegreen]

I suspect the food collection is designed to shame those with gardens to put a small compost bin next to the wheelie-bin. My composter eats anything - it has recently received about 15 dead mice

I was thinking yesterday that all this recycling means we've kind of rediscovered the rag and bone man ...

 

[gentlegreen]

It takes me 4-6 weeks to fill a wheelie bin and that includes all the dog muck I put in there.

Time to reinvent "pure finding" I reckon

PURE FINDER

I am an Old Pure Finder, yes pure is the word
What I find, me and my kind, you might find absurd
I searches out what lurchers left, it’s a strange kind of job
Picking up a job or two, to pick up just two bob.

I am an Old Pure Finder, when folks say “How d’ya do?”
Says I, “Well, I do doodoo and do do well don’t you?”
I do doodoo so well, when the doodoo I do sell,
But could do doodoo better if the doodoo didn’t smell.

<...>

http://www.users.waitrose.com/~cresby/songs/PureFinder.txt

 

[King Biscuit Time]

Ah yes, I was forgetting, there's time spent down the betting shop/pub/internet cafe as well.

Make that part-time rubbish sorting, then - I'm sure that on the flipside, the waifs and strays that carry out this function on the 3rd world dumps where our stuff is apparently shipped have to break off at some point to watch Carol Vorderman adding things up.

I bet your the kind of person thats continually moaning about the NHS too arent you?

"My mum was in for a routine op and no-one emptied her bed pan for 2hours and the nurses and doctors could hardly speak english it's no wonder 99% of people who go to hospital with a saucepan stuck on their head end up dying of MRSA is it"

 

[Andy the Don]

Its all about saving money.

When are the supermarkets going to take their responsibilities seriously. The packaging you get now is ridiculous and wasteful. The government though, I believe is to frightened to challange Tesco, Sainsbury etc etc over this.

Exactly again all effort to reduce waste is being put on Joe Public. We are told that there will soon be laws regarding what the average householder can throw out (yes I do know we all need to recycle more) but for the large supermarkets they are going to be voluntary guidelines. What about a tax on plastic bags, no say the government voluntary guidelines are better a tax on plastic bags would just be a burden on business.. I was in a supermarket the other week & they were selling coconuts which had shrink wrapped plastic around them.. WTF.

 

[greenman]

We do need to put pressure on the supermarkets and the government softly softly "voluntary approach" to regulating the packaging industry is pathetic, especially when they are giving councils carte blanche to "get tough" on individuals. We should also not forget that domestic waste is a small proportion of all the waste in the UK. Those great radicals the Womens Institute recently showed the way by organising a campaign where their members returned all the unnecessary packaging from their weekly shop to the supermarkets.

Separate collection of food waste is a good idea as it allows for anaerobic digestion and other technologies that can create biogas for use as an energy source, that helps with the energy crisis. However, the Mail, , Excess, Evading Standards etc are already onto this one - "a stinking swill bin in every kitchen", "government set to impose unhygienic swill bins", "another nanny state health risk" etc etc. Scum.

In our area we have alternate collection (rubbish in one bin one week, paper/card/tin cans/plastic bottles in another bin the next week along with garden waste in a third bin) We also have "bring sites" for glass bottles and 'Tetra-paks' - doorstep collection for glass would be an improvement. Cheap composting bins have been available via the County Council. The District Council are responding to the 'smelly wheelies' campaign by saying they are going to do a weekly collection over the summer months only - the opposition parties are trying to have it both ways i.e. "what is that going to cost extra?" and "why not a full year return to weekly collections?" Politics, politics.
Local environmentalists have been arguing that a better solution would be weekly collection of food waste, all year round, alongside the current alternate collections.

There is a lot less fuss around here about alternate collections as the area is afflicted with various proposals for an incinerator and landfills which tend to concentrate the minds even of the "I should be able to chuck anything I want away, at any time, at no extra cost, and recycle nothing" brigade.

I am against "bin taxes" and "bin spies", people should be enabled rather than stigmatised. Councils should have staff able to negotiate with families and individuals over their individual waste and recycling requirements (bin sizes and numbers etc). These are not the same for everyone and not static over time. The overall aim should be to cut the amount of mixed municipal waste. Taking degradable and food waste out of the waste stream makes the remainder of largely dry waste much more manageable. Mechanical sorting to recover even more recyclable waste becomes much more of a possibility for example. Most of our remaining waste in my house is now just plastic wrappings and non-compostable food waste (to the person who suggested it above, putting animal product waste in compost is not a good idea for all sorts of reasons!)

Some areas have involved various local, charitable and voluntary groups in their recycling set up - much more community involvement and ownership is needed. The waste multinationals like Veolia and WRG etc just want to manage waste to make the largest profit - this means a steady waste stream in most cases, rather than the progressive reduction that is really required. Unfortunately they are still the driving force behind many local waste strategies.

But as suggested above the key aim should be waste avoidance rather than recycling or disposal - hence the need to tackle the packaging industry, supermarkets etc and to promote re-usables rather than disposables.

 

[Cobbles]

I bet your the kind of person thats continually moaning about the NHS too arent you?

No, I have very comprehensive medical insurance so I should get a rebate on my NI as I don't intend to use the NHS.

 

[poster342002]

Yes, you're quite right. People *should* change their habits. People should change their lifestyle to a one week eating/one week fasting cycle, so that they don't inconveniently create any food waste during their no rubbish collection week.

That'll be the next moronic campaign. I'm put in mind of how North Korea had a campaign extolling the virtues of only eating one meal per day (this didn't apply to the North Korean ruling class, funnily enough), and this was backed up with scare stories in the media about how people eating more than one meal had "exploded" from over-eating.

Put bluntly - this tactic, along with that used with the bin cutbacks (and THAT'S what they are) is known as Polishing A Turd.

 

[Andy the Don]

No, I have very comprehensive medical insurance so I should get a rebate on my NI as I don't intend to use the NHS.

Get a rebate, but remember that private medical insurance does not provide emergency care, so when you are laying bleeding on the road after being, knocked down, in a car smash, fallen over or just kicked to shit for being a muppet please do not expect a publically funded ambulance to take you to a publically funded A+E to receive treatment for publically funded NHS staff.

 

[poster342002]

That's where the packaging and prep stuff goes. Plus the leftovers.

I live in a flat and don't have a garden or a compost bin. And not all food waste is suitable for compost anyway. And cooked food leftovers aren't always suitable for compost either.

Not only that, if you've got a recurrent mouse problem (as I have), a compost bin will only succeed in encouraging mice to take hold.

 

[tarannau]

That'll be the next moronic campaign. I'm put in mind of how North Korea had a campaign extolling the virtues of only eating one meal per day (this didn't apply to the North Korean ruling class, funnnily enough), and this was backed up with scare stories in the media about how people eating more than one meal had "exploded" from over-eating.

Put bluntly - this tactic, along with that used with the bin cutbacks (and THAT'S what they are) is known as Polishing A Turd.

I bet you £50 it won't (be the next campaign), you silly sausage. Get a grip man - you're spouting absolute nonsensical bollocks

 

[poster342002]

I bet you £50 it won't (be the next campaign), you silly sausage. Get a grip man - you're spouting absolute nonsensical bollocks

I. Was. Being. Sarcastic.

 

[tarannau]

No. You were being a miserable hyperbolic plonker. Again.

 

[gentlegreen]

Not only that, if you've got a recurrent mouse problem (as I have), a compost bin will only succeed in encouraging mice to take hold.

The thing to do is kill the mice and put them in the compost

I had to let a small flock of bluebottles out of my living room window yesterday - presumably the result of my last few rodents being poisoned rather than trapped, dispatched and composted.

The term "compost" is a bit loose in my case - I can rely on a wide spectrum of bacteria, fungi and insects to munch whatever I put in my bin.

 

[chymaera]

All this chat about bins is making me jealous. There are no bins where I live, we still have to put out rubbish in plastic bags.

 

[King Biscuit Time]

No, I have very comprehensive medical insurance so I should get a rebate on my NI as I don't intend to use the NHS.

Ha ha - Worse than even I imagined! Can I get a rebate on the Iraq war I demonstrated against please? Or for the Schooling of the kids I haven't got.

Just cheer the fuck up. The country is not collapsing around your ears, we are not, repeat not going to hell in a handcart (or a dustcart for that matter).

 

[admirablenelson]

AWC is all about reducing the stuff sent to landfill. Existing landfills are full and no one wants a new one anywhere near them. Decomposing material in landfills produces methane. Driving stuff to landfill in big trucks is expensive and a waste of resources. In recognition of that EU and central government have set targets to reduce the amount of material going to landfill. If councils exceed their quota they get fined and the fine goes on the council tax. And that will go down well won't it?

AWC works by confronting people with their own waste. If people want to chuck out a load of foodscraps they may think about it a bit more if they know it won't be collected for 10 days. It's at that point they start to think that getting a composter/switching to cotton nappies/not buying products with excessive packaging is a good thing.

It's all about changing behaviour and people in the UK are not clever when it comes to thinking about what they throw out. AWC isn't perfect and indeed won't work at all for some homes. But it's objectives are sound and it should be supported where possible.

 

[nightbreed]

Ha ha - Worse than even I imagined! Can I get a rebate on the Iraq war I demonstrated against please? Or for the Schooling of the kids I haven't got.

Just cheer the fuck up. The country is not collapsing around your ears, we are not, repeat not going to hell in a handcart (or a dustcart for that matter).

Brilliant.Cobbles get a life. Miseryguts!!

 

[poster342002]

The thing to do is kill the mice and put them in the compost

A nice, easy job, I'm sure. I'd be more than happy to spend all my time running around catching/killing all the extra mice attracted by an indoor compost-heap.

 

[poster342002]

.

 

[tarannau]

Christ. Can this get any more desperate.

Relax: nobody is going to force you to put an open compost heap behind your telly.

 

[poster342002]

I don't want any sort of pile of rotting shit inside my house in any way, shape or form.

We, as a society, invented sanitation and hygiene for a reason (it saves lives). Part of this novel idea involeved, er, not having rotting crap inside our living quarters. Proper refuse colection was a major leap forward to this end - one that is (in common with just about every social advance made during the last century) now being rolled back in the interests of cost-cutting. But this time, the liberal "philanthropists" are whooping and cheering.

 

[tarannau]

A collection of rubbish every other week hardly represents a return to primitivism, even in your misery-addled world of distortion.

Nutter.

 

[King Biscuit Time]

I bet the bin-bashers are the same people that write into local papers complaining about sculptures in the middle of roundabouts.

 

[gentlegreen]

The EM Eco-Revolution
by Caroline Robertson

Imagine a chemical-free world with pristine air, food and water.
This utopian ideal seemed impossible until a Japanese scientist discovered the earth-saving solution of Effective Microorganisms (EM). With endless applications in agricultural, industrial and domestic areas, EM is being hailed as one of history�s greatest environmental breakthroughs.

http://www.universal-tao.com/article/em-final.html



You youngsters are so scared of decay - Freud would probably have had something to say about that

 

[poster342002]

A collection of rubbish every other week hardly represents a return to primitivism,

I didn't say that it was. What I said was: Proper refuse colection was a major leap forward to this end [of sanitation and hygiene] - one that is (in common with just about every social advance made during the last century) now being rolled back in the interests of cost-cutting.