How do you rate the recycling service in your area? Are they some things that you think they should take that they don't?
We get a weekly recycling collection so that is pretty good (though we only put the box out fortnightly if that) - but they don't take cardboard! Yet for businesses there is a cardboard collection so why they can't collect cardboard from everyone else as well I have no idea! Cardboard is probably the most commonly recycled item in our house aside from the milk bottles. A lot of plastic things they don't take either even though they can be recycled and neither does the recycling centre so they end up having to go in the bin.
Millie & Fly the Border Collies
Here in North East Lincs we have 3 'crates' for recycling glass, tins and paper, and a wheelie bin for garden waste and cardboard - these are collected alternate weeks (crates one week, bin the next). They also used to collect plastic but we now have to take these to a recycling bank.
It's very interesting hearing what other areas do (or don't do). You would think by now that there would be a more national system!
One thing I found out recently about recycling plastic was that just because the plastic has a recycling symbol on it, doesn't mean that it will be accepted by all recycling banks (and indeed can 'pollute' the system if put in the wrong bank). This seems all wrong to me, as plastic is one of the worst pollutants of all. A lot more could be recycled if there were proper facilities for doing so.
Make the boy interested in natural history if you can; it is better than games [Robert Falcon Scott]
We are only allowed to recycle plastic with the number 1, 2, or 3 within the recycle symbol.
Here in Dumfries and Galloway we have a normal weekly "rubbish" collection. We also have a fortnightly blue box collection - paper only. The local tip (sorry, "recycling centre") has spaces for cardboard, glass (brown, green and clear), rubble, milk cans (no other plastic), garden waste, cans, batteries, electrical goods ... so OH loads up the car about every two months - it's not very far to drive. There are various tales of all of it getting mixed together after householders have separated it - hopefully just rumours. However the council has a plant in Dumfries called ECO-DECO whic is apparently a European invention, and can separate everything there. They have announced that Eco Deco does not get enough paper through it, so they are stopping the separate paper collection in April 2010! Since that is about the only recycling effort of a large proportion of the population (because they only have to drop it in a box and put it outside fortnightly), there will be many households doing nothing!!!
We have our own large garden storage box (such as used for patio cushions etc) outside the back door with separate bags/boxes as appropriate in it for different recycling materials. When they are full they get moved to the garage until the next trip up the road.
Ospreys Rule OK, but Goldfinches come a close second!