A quick quiz

[Arch]

So, you live in a nice little terraced house in York. You have a kerbside recycling box, like the rest of your street, into which you can put all your materials. However this box isn't big enough for your recycling (mainly due to you being too stupid to squash plastic bottles and flatten cereal boxes etc). So you supplement it with a couple of little plastic crates, which is fine.

Do you

a) think "Ah, as I'm putting out three separate boxes, I'll sort the recycling so that each box holds a couple of distinct materials"

or

b) fill each box with a random selection of plastic, card, tins, bottles, paper etc.

Really, I know I'm 'in the trade', but am I some sort of super OCD genius to think of sorting stuff out if you have more than one box?

 

[classic33]

B. I'm banned from recycling by the local council.

 

[twentysix by twentyfive]

Ha ha Arch. It is the human race we must all deal with

 

[craigwend]

I think an 'un-named' council in Hull used to require you to do : 'A'

Then amusingly put it all 'B' style in one big lorry when they collected it....

I suppose it gives 'someone' a job at the sorting end

 

[threebikesmcginty]

c) set fire to it in a stolen shopping trolley in the back yard.

 

[Arch]

I think an 'un-named' council in Hull used to require you to do : 'A'

Then amusingly put it all 'B' style in one big lorry when they collected it....

I suppose it gives 'someone' a job at the sorting end

Yeah. well, that's councils for you... Luckily, we're not the council.

There are rare occasions when for reasons of space we mix Plastic and Cans - when the waste merchants haven't come to empty the designated plastic skip in time, we have to mix them in bins. The same merchant collects them anyway.

But everything else stays separate, and for that reason we get 6 to 7 times the money per tonne for our waste than the council get...

 

[colly]

Me ? I would line all the different packets, tins and plastic containers up. Colour coded of course. Big ones at the front little ones at the rear.
And a flower in one of them just to brighten your day.

 

[Arch]

Me ? I would line all the different packets, tins and plastic containers up. Colour coded of course. Big ones at the front little ones at the rear.
And a flower in one of them just to brighten your day.

Bless you!

We do have many lovely clients. People who chat, and arrange their recycling neatly, and generally treat us like humans. But we also have the flipside....

 

[ianrauk]

I am constantly nagging my wife to crush boxes, plastic bottles and cans but she never bloody does.

 

[annedonnelly]

Are people aware that it needs to be sorted at some stage in the process?
I am very keen on recycling, but it is very confusing with different councils able to recycle different things. I thought it was pretty standard that paper & cardboard could be recycled but at work the cleaners have to remove all the cardboard boxes from the recycling and the paper has to go in on its own. As for the different types of plastic with the different number codes... who knows... I can't figure it out but I'd hate to think that I'm sending stuff to landfill when it could be recycled.

My solution is to buy as little as possible in the first place