Cardboard Recycling made me think

There used to be a "Bits and bobs" initiative in my town, and I think in other places as well. They would collect manufacturing waste from workshops and factories, and make it available to people running nurseries, playgroups, craft groups, drama classes and so on. You could join (free, I think) and buy a supermarket trolley full amount for a very nominial cost, just enough to keep them funded. They also welcomed donations from individual people of fabrics, wool, paint, cardboard tubes - all the things that someone else could use. I have accompanied someone round their store-room,storage building. It was a crafter's dream! Bins held part rolls of shiny coloured plastic, round punched-out pieces of metal about a quarter-inch across in mixed colours, perfume-sized bottles (empty), offcuts of wood, polystyrene, fabric of all kinds, flattened cardboard boxes in all sizes, tins of house paint, boxes of pencils, rolls of wallpaper. They also held crafting sessions for children and adults, using the donated materials, and would visit and give talks on recycling to anyone who would listen.

I haven't heard anything about them for a long while. The big problems with doing anything like this are premises, volunteers and funding. Volunteers do marvels for nothing, but premises cost money, and funding is hard to get and can take up more volunteer time.

I am sure there are lots of uses for a lot of what we are currently recycling, but there is a limit tonhow much time one has to sepend looking for suitable places to reus e goods rather than recycle them.

Fortunately most waste is burned in incinerators and used to generate electricity with the limited solid waste at the end of the process used to make building productss like breeze blocks and insulating materials.

I wnet round one of these waste plants a year or two back and was absolutely amazed at how well they worked. Their emissions are closely monitored by the Environment Agency and they are always well within limits.

6ft roll of cardboard, the card is nearly a centimetre thick

Our local community hub would love this for their craft classes

We are currently doing up a house and this does generate a lot of very large cardboard.

Today we unrolled some vinyl flooring. In the centre is a 6ft roll of cardboard, the card is nearly a centimetre thick and neither DH or I could even begin to fold this down, it would need a saw to cut it into pieces. Not a problem for us, we have an estate car and it will go in and we will take it to the tip. But not everyone has a car big enough, or any car at all

Where we used to live large cardboard boxes, flattened, could be left beside the bin.

While these huge criminally organised dumping is outside the domestic sphere. The area we moved from six months ago one hand was complaining about increased flytipping, small quantities left by the road size, while at the same time making using the tip both difficult and expensive.

Until COVID, you just drove to the tip and put any waste in the relevant recepticle, but then they started charging for some materials and banning others. Any thing defined as 'rubble' was charged at £1.50 a bag, so when i dug up some broken bricks and big stones in the garden, I was charged for disposing of them. Then they made anything they defined as DIY waste as chargeable. We took an old kitchen cabinet that had been used in our garage for storage to the tip and were told it was DIY waste and had to be paid for.

Now we have heard that all visits have to be booked. Understandable possibly at busy times, but during the week, there was rarely a queue, and never more than a few cars.

We had a garden containing trees and surrounded by trees, in the Autumn, I would sometimes do three trips to the tip in an afternoon with two big builders sacks of leaves. All very last minute depending on whether it was windy or not, whether the leaves were wet and how much energy I had.

Then they complain about flytipping.

Calendargirl

I can’t understand people who have bins overflowing, but you can see it has never occurred to them to flatten boxes.

Our bin men are only supposed to take what’s in the bin, but often see stuff piled up next to it. Not sure if it gets taken.

I was once startled to find that a presumably highly intelligent temp co worker (Oxford classics student) thought the only way to flatten cardboard boxes for the recycling was to stamp on them.

I saw light dawn as I showed him how to take a sharp knife to the joins!

I'm just glad to see recyclable things recycled according to local authority guidelines. If those guidelines don't specify that cardboard should be folded down or otherwise presented in a specific way, I am not going to judge a householder for failing to go beyond what was asked of them. Well, within reason, obviously!

We always have a lot of cardboard boxes. I make them into flat pieces with a Stanley knife. It doesn't take long, and when we have enough we take it to the tip.

Allira

Cardboard can be used in the garden as a weed suppressant.

That's what we do with ours usually. We sometimes relieve our neighbours of theirs as we don't get a lot delivered. In the Spring before we put the bark down we layer the cardboard. It all breaks down within the year. In the meantime we hoard it in the garage.

Isn’t it funny how every county area seems to have different colours how much easier if the whole country followed the same colours
We have blue for paper card recyclables, squashed plastic jars, bottles, tins etc etc
Green for green waste paid for, similar price to already quoted
Black bin for rubbish
Next year we are apparently having food waste I rarely have any between me and my seagulls
And glass which at the moment I bag up for my daughter to take in the car to post in the glass eating thingys
I don’t find it at all time consuming or bothersome

Maremia

Now that you Recyclers are here, is there anywhere to put old DVDs and metal paper clips? TIA
I manage to recycle just about everything else.

is there anywhere to put old DVDs and CDs

In boxes, nice ones - in old record cabinet, under the TV.
Everywhere! Oh, in the car too.
They're like yarn, they multiply.

Now that you Recyclers are here, is there anywhere to put old DVDs and metal paper clips? TIA
I manage to recycle just about everything else.

I don't understand people who don't flatten plastic bottles, including plastic milk bottles, and then complain that their bins (pink here for hard plastics and tins) are too full! It doesn't take long to stand on them and put the lid back on.

If not of. I must train myself to proofread properly before posting.

Allira

No, not boring, * Babs03*, as I said, all Local Authorities seem to have different methods.

We can only trust that they are dealing with our recycling competently and efficiently too.

What, though, happens to all these plastic bins, tubs, polypropylene bags when they break or develop cracks or holes or the LA decides to change the containers?

I think the wheelie bins themselves are recyclable - of they are not, they should be. I once smashed up a broken recyclables bin and put the bits into its replacement - they took up a lot of space!

I’ve just seen you have a thread on this query already, with some helpful replies about clinical waste.
I’m wondering if your LA would be able to supply extra general and recycling bins for you - at an extra cost. I know a friend who pays extra to have 2 garden bins.

I shop online a lot so always have plenty of cardboard boxes to be disposed of; I squash them flat before putting in the recycle bin but often have more than will fit in the recycle bin - which is only emptied once a fortnight.

I live in a first floor flat with very limited storage space inside my flat for surplus recycleables, so I'm seriously considering buying a garden incinerator ti burn anything burnable that can't be firtted in the recycle bin outside.

Has anyone else tried this? Obviously if I was one of the few people who still has an open fireplace I'd burn the surplus recyclebales/other burbable rubbish; fireplace ashes would then be easy to dispose of and take up less room in my wheely bins,

green for garden waste (costs £50 annually)
Yes, we have to pay the same for each garden waste bin.

No, not boring, * Babs03*, as I said, all Local Authorities seem to have different methods.

We can only trust that they are dealing with our recycling competently and efficiently too.

What, though, happens to all these plastic bins, tubs, polypropylene bags when they break or develop cracks or holes or the LA decides to change the containers?

Not boring at all Babs03

Babs03

I just realised that mine is probs a very boring post. 😬

No it’s not.

Interesting to see how different areas do things.

I just realised that mine is probs a very boring post. 😬

We have strict recycling rules. Pink lidded bin is for plastic containers but no plastic wrappers, also includes tin cans, tin foil and glass jars/bottles all must be put loose in the bin not in a bag. Paper, mags, and cardboard, all boxes must be flattened, are put out in a blue lidded bin again it must be loose. The black lidded bin is for everything else - not food, and must be put in a black bag in the bin. These bins are collected on the same day but different lidded bins are picked up on alternate weeks.
Takes some doing. Washing all the containers for the pink bin because otherwise it gets smelly and dirty. And getting family who stay sometimes to keep to the rules.
Some are just shoving everything in the black lidded bin rather than sorting it.

My cardboard goes in the blue bin for recyclables with paper, but tissues and kitchen roll go in the green bin for compostable waste. The council instructions are that excess cardboard will be collected if it is flattened and tied or taped into a stack that will fit in an empty wheelie bin, because they empty the bin as normal, then put the stack of cardboard into the now empty bin for the truck to tip it in, they don’t just throw the stack into the truck.

We have black bin for general, green for garden waste (costs £50 annually), purple for paper and cardboard, grey for glass, plastics. Soon to have food caddies and bins.

We take soft plastics to Tesco for recycling.

Fortnightly collections, paper and plastics alternate.

Just need to be organised to keep on top of it all.

Allira

One thing that is evident from this thread is that every Local Authority seems to have different methods for recycling and waste disposal.

Absolutely they do. We are lucky to live in one of the few areas where soft flexible plastics, e.g. clingfilm, cereal bags, bubble wrap etc. are collected at the kerbside. Soft plastic bags are provided to keep it all together. That's aswell ascard, paper,tins glass and hard plastics. The main waste bin is collected every three weeks but is often pretty empty. Recycling is collected weekly and our bin men are generally very tidy.