The wife and I try our best to recycle wisely, but our local authority doesn't make it easy. It was only last summer that the buggers started accepting kitchen plastics for recycling at all - until then, it had been plastic bottles only. Not a good start. Nowadays we're quite alarmed at the rate at which our plastics bin fills up - and somewhat sobered by the thought that, until last year, most of it was going to landfill, by order of the council. So now it 's probably going to west Africa or Indonesia, of course. Problem solved, and give the county council a pay rise.
Then there was the cardboard waste. Our council still won't accept card for recycling if it's been in contact with food at any time, so that theoretically puts paid to pizza boxes, frozen fish boxes, or the card wrappers that come with all sorts of prepared foods. We openly break the rules (shock horror) by tipping boxes that may have contained confectionery or packs of yoghurt, but promise you won't tell anybody?
Electrical goods have become a nightmare. Are they electrical, or do they contain copper (of course they do!), or maybe other metals? That's three separate bins, if you don't mind - or four if you count the time when I got bawled out for dumping a piece of pipe into the copper bin when it had a brass fixing attached to it. "
Oi, I could fine you for that," the cheery operative said, just before I rammed a lump of lead pipe down his gullet. (All right, maybe I only did that in my imagination.....)
Printer toner cartridges? Fine, as long as I unwrap each one individually before I put it in the skip. But god help me if I try to protect my lungs (and my car's interior) by keeping the filthy spent cartridges in their plastic wrapping or their cardboard sleeves (see above).
And don't even get me started on garden waste. According to our council, if I put my prunings from the flower beds into the green bins (for which we pay £50 a year per bin, BTW), then that's all right. But if I cut a bunch of daffodils and put it in a vase in the house, then it's kitchen waste, and it goes into the landfill bin because it isn't garden waste any more. Same with veg from my garden. If it's got earth on it, it's garden waste, and if it hasn't then it's food waste, which the council doesn't collect so it goes to landfill. "It's more than my job's worth, mate. I could fine you for that..... "
In case you're wondering, yes, we do keep a compost bin, but not for fresh food which will only attract the rats that the council doesn't exterminate any more.
BJ
