Green!

[ailbhe]

Last night I emailed the guy who stood for the Green party here last local election. I've tried talking to the council refuse collection dept direct but it got me nowhere.

You see, we have a huge grey wheelie bin for landfill waste and a huge burgundy one for recyclable waste (where "recyclable" means "accepted by local council for recycling"). I've asked before if I can get the huge grey bin replaced with a smaller one - no - and whether the recycling bin can be collected more often - no.

The landfill waste, usually less than a quarter of a binfull, is collected weekly. The recycling waste, usually so full the lid doesn't close properly, is collected fortnightly. Our friends N+L (Of Baby Iz and Baby Jo fame) have a similar problem, and their kids are both in disposable nappies, which should be producing plenty landfill to go around.

So I wrote to the Green fella. I asked him if he thought the Greens would be interested in a petition or a poll, since the Council's excuse to me is "there's no demand" for more recycling and less landfill.

I'd like more recycling. I'd like a paper bin and a tins bin and a plastics bin (all in together at the mo) and I'd love a glass recycling collection instead of having to schlep it to the bottlebank. I'd like to be able to recycle waxed cardboard milk cartons, which aren't usually waxed but plastic lined anyway, and plastics other than "bottles". Yes, the council only accepts plastic bottles for recycling, no other kind of plastic. If it's molded into a box instead, no dice. Isn't that... arbitrary?!

I'd also dearly love a compost collection; our own compost bin isn't really up to us, and the wormery isn't either. (Memo to self: start seperating cooked and uncooked kitchen waste again so we can use both composter and wormery again). I'd love a garden waste collection. At the moment, people just put all these things into landfill, which is so wasteful.

And I want my water butt to arrive. We ordered it ages ago, I think.

User	Paper	Card	Waxed paper	Plastic bottles	Other plastic	Food and drink cans	Glass	Garden waste	Uncooked kitchen waste
ailbhe	x	x		x		x
sam_t	x			x		x	x	x
cangetmad	x	x				x	x
artela	x						x	x
ai731	x	x	x	x	x	x	x
mrs_warwick	x	x		x		x	x	~
buzzy_bee	x					x	x

Comments

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

We only get plastic bottles collected too (there was a reason but I can't remember what it was), but our other recycling is working quite well. We get a 'normal' grey wheelie bin for landfill rubbish, a similar sized one for green garden rubbish to be composted (no food, no invasive weeds), a box for tins and glass, and a bag for paper. Everything is now collected fortnightly, one week for landfill and one for recycling, so if your council provided better doorstep recycling they'd probably save on the landfill collection. After the first month or so of the current scheme (which introduced the fortnightly collection and added plastic bottles to the recycling scheme), just about every household I noticed was putting out less landfill waste.

I hope you get your survey, and that the council listens.