Grow Your Own Magazine

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Diary from the middle of nowhere

Saw this and thought of you guys n gals.....makes you realise that whatever little contribution you make to saving the planet, it's all worth it

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Live for something or die for nothing

Wow, great article. Thanks Everdream.

It's really depressing what our lifestyle is doing to the planet. I went home from the office just now to pick up something I forgot, and people's bins were out along a few streets (12 hours too early, but that's another story). Anyway, I would say less than one in ten had put out a recycling bin. Just piles of black bags, at east two or three per household.

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Resistance is fertile

thanks for the link, a real wake up call, the butterfly effect in action.

Paul, I guess your area doesn't have fortnightly collections then, we have two bins, one black for residual waste and one blue for recyclables, collected on alternate weeks, the one thing this does do is force people to think about what they are throwing.

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Kernow rag nevra http://www.cornishnotenglish.com/

The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits
Albert Einstein

Just be ordinary and nothing special. Eat your food, move your bowels, pass water and when your'e tired go and lie down. The ignorant will laugh at me, but the wise will understand
Bruce Lee

Not sure if this is the same place, but I saw a programme once where this woman collected various plastic items from a beach, and then grouped them in similar sorts/types (hair combs, lighters, toys etc).

She then laid them out on the beach and it was truly shocking.

I'm pleased to say that we now have more in our recycling bin than our normal bin - and we too have the alternate week collections.

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A simple dude trying to grow veg.

http://haywayne.blogspot.com/ - Updated 30th November

http://tickers.baby-gaga.com/p/dev036pr___.png

Nope

I wish they'd introduce it here but Colchester Council isn't exactly progressive. I think I'll write to them this afternoon - you never know who you're going to reach.

It would even be better if we had weekly recycling collections and bi-weekly black bag collections, rather than the reverse (which is what we have now).

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Resistance is fertile

The downside is flies and maggots. We tried pretty much everything to reduce the likelhood of the fly problem (closing bags, wrapping stuff (which somewhat defeats the object of reduction), disinfecting the bins as often as possible, keeping the bins out of direct sunlight, etc etc) but we still get maggots and flies.

I'm considering (although I hear from my friend at the council recycling department that things may already be afoot) a bokashi system to help things further.

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A simple dude trying to grow veg.

http://haywayne.blogspot.com/ - Updated 30th November

http://tickers.baby-gaga.com/p/dev036pr___.png

Here in Chorley, we have fortnightly collections, this week recycling. My husband and I are keen recyclers, they normally collect today but with the Bank Holiday, it'll be tomorrow. It was nice to see that people had kept their recycling things in their garden until this evening.
Chorley won an award as majority of Chorley folk recycle!
The only problem is the bin men, just leave things.....allow cardboard, newspapers, plastic bottles to float around......then another van appears cleaning up behind them!

I do wish though that they would empty my green waste recycling bin every week as during summer it smells. We live near a canal and last year noticed Rats in our gardens!
There is a pilot scheme for this happening, I hope, as a lot of others do, that they would hurry up and spread it to our area.

We have no facitilities to recycle plant pots, so I make plant pot men out of them and give them as pressies to allotment holders!

This is what we get in Swindon. Fortnightly collection of a wheelie bin which is essentially the land-fill stuff. The bin must have the lid closed and if it isn't, or there is extra next to it, it doesn't get taken. We have only ever had a problem with maggots in it once in storage because the lid wasn't closed properly.

On the same collection day they will also take plastic bottles, and any non-compostable garden waste.

In addition, there is a weekly collection of all other recyclables - paper, cardboard, tins, cans, foil and glass of any colour.

They also do subsidised purchase of water butts and compost bins. The council has also issued a statement that they will never ID tag the wheelie bins and monitor disposal weights.

Seems this is pretty good compared to a lot of others!

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Veni, Vidi, Velcro.
I came, I saw, I stuck around.

Blimey - that looks like the benchmark so far Doc!

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Resistance is fertile

our local council has also made a similar statement, they basically said that the levels of recycling within the borough was at a sufficient level to not have a pay-as-you-throw scheme.

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Kernow rag nevra http://www.cornishnotenglish.com/

The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits
Albert Einstein

Just be ordinary and nothing special. Eat your food, move your bowels, pass water and when your'e tired go and lie down. The ignorant will laugh at me, but the wise will understand
Bruce Lee

Our local system is 3 bins: all with closed lids.
Fortnightly collection: week 1 non recyclable
Week 2 recyclable: split tins and bottles and plastic/cardboard and garden recyclable..plus separate newspapers.

Subsidised daleks, free sink tidy for kitchen waste for recycling.

Is Colchester in a time warp of the Dark Ages?

No smell, no flies (closed bins) and if you need them bigger bins.
No spills in road either.
Don't comply and it is not collected.

There are recycling points in town centre and various schools as well. Plus local tip/recycling point.

It could always be worse I suppose! We do have a fortnightly glass/paper/metal collection, and on the other week in the cycle they pick up green waste (not that I let them have any of mine!) and plastic bottles. They are just starting (April I think) to collect other plastics too. We have subsidised Bokashi bins, and a free plastic box if you register at a new address, but nothing in the way of wheelie bins or daleks.

The problem is, they take black bags every week - so if people can't be bothered to recycle there's really no incentive. If they were to take black bags fortnightly then the lazy gits would run out of storage space!

You must have inspired me Everdream - I've written to my MP (see attached) and also to the head of the relevant department at the council. If any grapes want to copy the body of my letter and send it to their own MP I would be delighted!

Attached Files

Bob Russell - recycling.txt (1.1 KB, 17 views)

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Resistance is fertile

Blimey *blushes* I normally just send people screaming for the hills!

Oh, and please call me Ed

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Live for something or die for nothing

Spoke to my friend this afternoon, and she told me that we will soon be getting a kitchen caddy and a small bin for food waste. This will be collected weekly and sent to an anearobic digestion plant where it's turned into energy. Her estimates are that it will increase recycling by a further 10% in the area.

It is being bought into place to help combat the problem of rats, flies etc that many residents suffered with in previous years. (us included, even though we tried hard to avoid them)

Not sure if there are any subsidised water butts, or bokashi bins, but they did do a subsidised dalek scheme for a while.

They also provide green reusable "sacks" for green waste (2 sacks per household) but as Paul has said, I rarely use them for anything other than carting mine down to the plot.

I know some water authorities provide subsidised water saving devices (but that's another topic I guess).

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A simple dude trying to grow veg.

http://haywayne.blogspot.com/ - Updated 30th November

http://tickers.baby-gaga.com/p/dev036pr___.png

We've got round the problem by not putting out waste food. At all. I only cook as much as we will eat (we're both on diets anyway).

If I do have scraps of fish bits, fat off a joint etc, I go and put it in the street bins, which appear to be emptied daily.

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~ What do I think of Western civilisation? I think it would be a very good idea ~ Gandhi

Did anyone see the report on BBC tonight on the same story? Don;t mind admitting that I sat here and sobbed when I saw the poor little albatross chick unable to feed as it had a plastic hook stuck in it's throat. They also showed speeded up footage of half an hour's clean up on one section of beach - the pile of plastic they gathered was nearly 6 feet tall!

I despair of the human race sometimes, I really do

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Live for something or die for nothing

Jeannine tells me that each year in the UK we throw away food worth £400 per person. That must be something like 25% of the food we eat!

Things like this need legislation - the work of the good souls among us just isn't enough.

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Resistance is fertile

Paul

Check their recycling targets I think it has to be 40% by 2010 (Should be 80%, like Germany) but they should be well above 20% by now. If not let them know of their obligations as they will be fined heavily if not achieved and it will be you the council tax payers who will have to foot the bill. Our local council are running scared now, as they are not reaching their interim targets and I think they have seen the amount of the fines could be, so now they are having consultation evenings and such like, asking for our views.

I am afraid MP's and such like are scared to death of making radical decisions about waste, they all sit on the fence in case they do not get voted in next time, went to a council meeting about waste, they should of been the ones to be recycled as they were always going on about setting up a committee to look into it, more costs and even more pats on the backs.

Their biggest worrying is of course flytipping which if they made hugely expensive when getting caught, would soon give the message, not a £1000 but £10,000 and they have to remove it with a Shovel and wheelbarrow.

What gets me is that the Government always gives companies several years to reach targets if they said by the end of this year you have to provide 50% of your own energy and recycle 60% of your waste or you will be fined £1,000,000 pounds they would soon do it.

Furthermore, they can make supermarkets liable for plastic waste now, but do not, if they said to Tesco and others you had to accept all plastic waste back or collect it (free) and recycle it (Free) or face fines of £500,000 per incident, how long do you think it would take to change their packaging, years, months or weeks.

All new Buildings being built now can be eco friendly but they do not have to be for several years WHY? doesn't make sense. A local builder I know wanted to do it, would of cost only an extra £3000 at cost but the council would not give him permission as they do not want windmills all over the place, yet you can add a satellite dish that is of no use accept for the Sparrowhawks and electricity suppliers, unless your watching Gardening programmes of course ...

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For a look at what comes out of councils here is a reply from my local ones to the 2000 government bill.

and this from our local Environment committee in 2007 a communication strategy to talk C***

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