The Four-Bin Recycling Challenge?

Phone your council and make a complaint. By adding the food waste into the recycling bin they have contaminated it so that the whole lot is unfit for recycling. Where in surrey are you? as my husband is the waste recycling manager for part of Surrey. So I can give him a call now if you wish.

No garden waste bin? Weird. I'm guessing that you are wasting your time. I would write to my local councillor to get it cleared up.

Up here, they introduced recycling about 2 years ago. We had to separate plastic and metal from paper and card and everything else went in the ordinary bin. I had to buy a special bin for the kitchen, because or flat is too wee for all the extra bins.

Last year they changed it, so that all the plastic paper and metal can go in the same bin. So I wasted my money buying the special recycling bin.

It sounds like the rubbish pick up employees are defeating the purpose.

The food waste bin sounds like a good idea if you use it exclusively for vegetable waste and then add it to a compost heap in your garden or dig it into the garden soil during the warmer times of year. That will add nutrients to the garden, reduce the amount of garbage pick up, and allow you to dispose of that waste before garbage day.

Some recyclables actually have value -- like aluminum cans. Some charities and organizations like the Boy Scouts collect them so they can cash them in for the money. So you might want to keep those separate and when you have a quantity get a bit of money.

The Recycle Liker In It is going, Use it Later Later Gator- Recycle & it's going to come back! Shove It (In)...Get It returned! Recycling, Recycling, Whyfore are not Thou Recycling?! the place's All That Junk...All that Junk that could desire to be in this Trunk! Get Off Your **** and Toss on your Junk! Use It, Reuse It, No Excuses! bypass green or Later, we will not Be seen! The Bin of Win! Recycle To stay

You have more than we do

We have a black bin for general waste, which is only collected every 2 weeks so in theory we should have a council reduction!

A green bin for cardboard and garden waste

A blue box for tins and plastic and glass

A blue bag for newspaper and envelopes (without the windows in!) and no cardboard at all

Yes you should complain, whats the point of you wasting your time sorting them out and them just dumping them all back together?

you bring up a very good point,but has anyone noticed that in our attempt to be green we produce more plastic bins that require more vehicles on the road to pick up the contents of these bins on different days of the week and some of the contents of these bins have to be washed by us before we put it in the correct bin,also in my area sometimes if the bin that's to be picked up on a certain day and/or the bin is so full that the lid is open they will not empty lt.so much for reducing our carbon footprint!

My colleague worked on site at the head office of a major retailer (who have more money then sense, and are for shoppers with more money than sense), and they had this system with multiple bins and a so called 'bin of last resort'.

Anyway he stayed late and noted the 'environmentally friendly bins' were emptied by a man in an electric cart who dumped everyhing into a single bag on the cart then drove off in it, of course using electric power made mainly from fossil fuels.

yeah that does sound pretty stupid. I think the bin men are just trying to make life easier for themselves. I'd give the council a ring or send them an email to ask what's going on. You don't want your good efforts to be wasted.

apparently so I heard was that the council have not enough staff to sort the recyling rubbish out so it still gets disposed the old way

yes we are wasting our time and effort washing said items and telling the kids off when they have put them in the wrong bin!

All depend on the contract between government and contractors.

You need some special contractors to do recycling.