[Closed] Local Council Removing public Recycling points

Yes it sucks. No excuse but taking stuff to the tip is becoming harder and harder it's not surprising more people flytip. If the fly tipping is on private land the cost is born by the land owner so maybe the council think most of the fly tipping will be moved to private land so not their problem?

I'm also getting this, but then I have the same local council. Agree with you on the fly tipping and general littering. It always looks worse at this time of year because the vegetation is at its lowest, but it's been tragic to see the snowdrops struggling to get through the litter when I've been on road rides recently.

On the other hand, I'm not sure who the facilities that they are removing were actually aimed at. All residential properties have a fortnightly recycling collection, and if you were driving to the car park to recycle stuff anyway you can still drive to the main recycling centres. Perhaps the council is right that those facilities were just attracting dumping, or encouraging commercial waste producers to dodge their fees?

Does seem ridiculous

The dual carriage way into town near us has seen an explosion in litter in the last few months

Not sure if it is due to more flytipping as well as council not having litter pickers due to covid

All residential properties have a fortnightly recycling collection, and if you were driving to the car park to recycle stuff anyway you can still drive to the main recycling centres.

Council area I just left had stopped household glass collections, council area I have moved is apparently going to stop glass collections.

I assume its budget related?

Brown bin collection had to be paid for.

I was taking glass to Tesco car park when I did a shop. However other people were just binning it. Its going to cause issues, seems rather short sighted to me, however if a council has a limited budget, services they must provide, something has to give.

Our local council took the great decision to close all recycling centres every Wednesday. So now every Wednesday the people that can't get into the recycling centre go across the road to the supermarket and dump all their shit somewhere approximately close to the recycling facilities there instead.

I'm fairly sure it's budget related - My local council have started limiting the amount of plaster/plasterboard/rubble a homeowner can dump at the tip, and charging for it. Which I'm sure will have no effect on the volume of plaster/plasterboard/rubble being flytipped in the local countryside at all, oh no.

They literally blame "significant cuts by central government" on their website. While I'm sure this is part of the problem, the councils ability to haemorrhage money into while elephant schemes has something to do with it as well.

Why do you need bring banks when every property will be served by a recycling collection at the property of those materials? They are an expensive anachronism dating back to when recycling was not common but for some reason the public expect to see them as a visible touchstone despite barely using them and generally just dumping crap around them.

They will be a constant source of aggro for the council as they have to clear up mess usually under pressure from the land owners. They contribute SFA to recycling measures that they get monitored against but require a specific fleet for the collections and are prone to being fired losing any value that was in the sparse quantity of material within.

Just because people are scum doesn't mean it's the wrong decision and if it's any consolation even when you take them out people still tend to fly tip in the same place for a long time, it doesn't redistribute.

I'm not sure the link between litter in terms of cans/bottles in hedges and recycling places disappearing really works. Here in Sheffield I take a lot to the recycling points as the brown bin only takes a very limited range of items.

I could post on here a hundred photos of the bags of rubbish I've filled with the OH and our neighbour from local woods and fields and hedges, the council round here started removing bins from the streets but in reality that only gave sensible people nowhere to put rubbish.

The usual tramps still just dump their crap anywhere they fancy.

3 weeks ago I reported on the fly tipping page of the local council the latest flat bed transit load of crap at a regular spot, since then three more loads have found there way there, it's now a small hill.

We had a fire at the local recycling centre (run by SITA on behalf of Gateshead Council) the place will be shut for months I imagine as the whole thing needs removing and rebuilding.

I can only imagine this will have the effect that removing bins have had, the knock on might be that people now pay 'licensed waste removal firms' to dump it in the country lanes around the area.

It's absolutely budget driven. Councils are getting squeezed so anything they're not legally obliged to do will go. I've not been able to take building waste to the tip (for free) in the 6 years I've lived here, have to get a skip or pay commercial rates on the weighbridge at the tip.

My parents still use bottle banks. I have no idea why, they get recycling collected every fortnight along with everyone else.

It’s absolutely budget driven

Seems backward though. Surely it costs way more ultimately to clear up litter and fly tipping out all over the district than it does to clear the majority of it at a select few sites.

I don't think businesses shouldn't pay to process waste, but the current situation just really leaves everywhere open to fly tipping.
Is it not better to make it easier for irresponsible business owners to get rid of waste in a controlled environment, rather then the easy option being to dump it in a field entrance?

As for fortnightly collections versus recycling points. I can't really see that in a world where unfortunately we have more and more cardboard from deliveries etc, that it's such a bad thing to have a dedicated place at a supermarket that you're going to anyway, to drop some off and reduce the amount of crap that gets left out in the street to blow around.

The situation isn't perfect, but I don't think making it even less perfect will change behaviour.

I'm amazed at people who tut at a can in a hedgerow, but drive a 4x4 and go abroad on holiday three times a year.

I’m amazed at people who tut at a can in a hedgerow, but drive a 4×4 and go abroad on holiday three times a year.

Who was that?

Don't think I've ever used a bottle bank or cardboard bin since they started doing kerbside collections.

If I have too much then my neighbours oblige or I hold it over till next time.

Our tip run by a contractor charges for inert waste like rubble and plasterboard, but the neighbouring council run their own tip, which is actually closer to my house so I go there.

And we pay £30 a year for garden waste.

Councils are getting squeezed so anything they’re not legally obliged to do will go.

If only that was the case - the obsession with mowing, strimming and leaf blowing around here is criminal. There are loads of green spaces which are scalped several times a year. IN december a work gang of half a dozen guys was leaf blowing leaf litter away from under trees into a pile which they then just left.

It's a heady mix of local petty politics, poorly qualified managers, and a unionised workforce that has evolved a culture of poor motivation / jobsworthyness.

Don't. Get. Me. Started

Not sure how councils save money by cutting recycling considering the costs to put stuff in landfill. Last I checked you can't burn glass either.

I’m amazed at people who tut at a can in a hedgerow, but drive a 4×4 and go abroad on holiday three times a year.

Oh **** off!

It’s a heady mix of local petty politics, poorly qualified managers, and a unionised workforce that has evolved a culture of poor motivation / jobsworthyness.

There is probably an element of most these points affecting many councils although you don't need a union to be poorly motivated or a jobsworth.

The bottom line is that councils have been chronically underfunded for years and for many it is approaching crisis point to the extent that with reduced revenues due to Covid some are at risk of actually going bust. Councils are not going to be able to take financial decisions that make better sense in the bigger picture - it is going to be about the bare legal minimum and we will all suffer to some extent.

a unionised workforce that has evolved a culture of poor motivation / jobsworthyness.

I cordially invite you to **** off as well.

Maybe if more workers had a union with teeth employers wouldn't get away with the practices that breed resentment and discontent. Unions have next to no power these days but still remain a handy scapegoat for shitty employmemt practices. Race to the bottom you say?

Why do you need bring banks when every property will be served by a recycling collection at the property of those materials?

Is complete recycling collection common? In Leeds we don't get glass collected so it either goes in general waste or taken to bottle banks.

Is complete recycling collection common?

Yes. It's within the WFD that paper, metals, glass and plastic need to be separately collected unless not TEEP.

That top pic is both horrific and utterly depressing.

Why do you need bring banks

I don't suppose we 'need' them.
My argument though is that lazy people and fly tippers will always seek the easiest option to get waste out of their hair.

Just seems that it would make more sense for that easiest option to be in a supermarket car park rather than in a woodland layby over the fence and down into a ditch.

This will surely increase fly tipping in the countryside.

I understand the frustration at the perception, however these genuinely get very little use and they're an expensive top up to the contract, as they require a separate round, separate vehicle etc. This currently has a very significant effect on most (and definitely your) local councils - they are hugely short of money, if you read some of the stuff going on at the moment with the sharing of services with Stratford, it's very significantly budget driven. To put it simply, there's no money in the bank, none is coming in from central Gov, who have cut their contribution year after year. I can't remember a time when they haven't been battling to meet a budget reduction. Their HQ is literally falling apart, and the constant battles that trying to relocate it have caused with the local residents who can't see the bigger picture.
Trust me, a lot of the people who work for WDC genuinely want to help make the District a better place, but there just isn't the money. 🙁

And not wanting to be contrary, but there have been quite a few studies showing very little relation between the removal of communal facilities such as this and an increase in fly tipping. Most flytipping is done by shady arsehole companies, and usually not by single domestic properties.

But I agree with you, trying to get to the recycling places is a nightmare - try getting rid of paint, for instance....

Not everyone has a front/back garden large enough to accommodate all these different recycling bins. Or if you have a family then one bin each of household refuse/recycling/glass is likely insufficient. That's before you take into account Xmas, Easter and other family gatherings, kids parties etc. The waste has to go somewhere.

Are you on the edge of a county? Perhaps the logic from the council is that people from your town will flytip in the countryside,  which a lot of will be the neighbouring county's problem. Quite cunning tbh 🙂

I once lived in a town on the edge of a county. The neighbouring county built a huge travellers site less than half a mile from the town, but in their own county... just. Not saying this was the same situation as everybody likes caravan enthusiasts.

Panorama bbc 1 last night and now on iplayer about countryside fly tipping, our local tesdcos took away most of the recycling skips and sainsburys cant be bothered to ensure theirs are emptied , numerous complaints to get them emptied, followed by the usual we have reported it to the team responsible.

Our two tip sites council owned run by private comapny other day one had 38 cars waiting, and the other about 20, over in liverpool buses had to be diverted as car parkers blocked the toad to the tip waiting to enter.

Just why do plebs have so much stuff, they can afford to just throw away instead of thinking do i really need that, and can i recycle /sell/give away or reuse stuff i do.

Not everyone has a front/back garden large enough to accommodate all these different recycling bins. Or if you have a family then one bin each of household refuse/recycling/glass is likely insufficient. That’s before you take into account Xmas, Easter and other family gatherings, kids parties etc. The waste has to go somewhere.

But none of this is exceptional, the Council's will have considered this within the design and planning. There will be consideration for both storage limited households and large households. Constraint of capacity is designed as a behaviour change driver it's usually only applied to residual waste if they ask they almost certainly will be allowed additional recycling capacity. And there obviously must be storage space in the houses because the stuff was stored before hand waste doesn't come from nowhere.

I’m fairly sure it’s budget related

This, very much this. If manager A doesn't have to spend on glass recycling then manager B has to spend on collecting the fly-tipping (the pic in the OP is fly-tipping too).

What neither A nor B realise that all that money comes from the same pot, our pockets. They all need a good slap and told that they need to consider the big picture and the consequences of their choices on OUR money.

It's a cop-out to say that money is tight, it doesn't excuse the waste caused by off-loading the problem to another department.

But none of this is exceptional, the Council’s will have considered this within the design and planning. There will be consideration for both storage limited households and large households. Constraint of capacity is designed as a behaviour change driver it’s usually only applied to residual waste if they ask they almost certainly will be allowed additional recycling capacity. And there obviously must be storage space in the houses because the stuff was stored before hand waste doesn’t come from nowhere.

Thanks for your response @mrhoppy and take your points. There's obviously been a huge change in shopping habits over the past year which presumably has resulted in more recycling of cardboard boxes from Amazon and the like. I'd like to see this tackled with boxes being repurposed or re-used, there has to be a way surely.

To be fair to the District in question, I beleive there's a possibility of the water scheme moving to a weekly recycling collection at some point in the future, instead of the current fortnightly one, so there should be less hanging around. 🙂

If manager A doesn’t have to spend on glass recycling then manager B has to spend on collecting the fly-tipping (the pic in the OP is fly-tipping too).

Except manager A and B will be the same person in the authority and the decision will have been taken based on an assessment of financial, performance and environmental assessment. This will have undergone a reasonable level of scrutiny, it's not done on a whim.

I was talking to the waste manager at a large Council when they withdrew their bring banks. They got pilloried because everyone used them extensively and couldn't cope without them. In the preceding 5 years they averaged less than 100 tonnes/year through the entire network, in comparison they collect around 35,000 tonnes/year at the kerbside.

Come down to sunny Hampshire
Recycling centres are by appointment only
In a vehicle registered with the council, within the county
Only 3 vehicles are allowed to be on site for any 30min booking window
This means week plus booking delays as all the sites are pre booked
Leading to a greater amount of fly tipping
£3 for a bag of rubble, no ta. I will hoof it in a lay-by, all 8 of them.

The local scum fly tippers got their Transit tipper stranded pn an earth bank whilst tipping out a huge cage of collected crap. They then had the front to say they were changing a wheel and not fly tipping do demanded their van back
Fortunately some friendly person set fire to it to side step that ever happening

That's great if you have kerbside glass recycling in your authority, not everyone does. I'm not convinced that the thinking is as joined up as posited.

As an example our local recycling centres won't take plasterboard from householders nor any more than 2 bags of hardcore (that is charged for). Strangely there's been an increase of fly-tipped bags of hardcore and plasterboard off-cuts locally. I doubt the saving at the recycling centre/landfill covers the costs of the vehicles and operators to collect the hedgerow detritus that is then taken to waste-transfer for sorting and disposal. The householder's did all that stuff for free (sorting/collection), contracting out doesn't seem to be working for us.

In a move that seems to be bucking the trend described here, my local council are this month expanding the kerbside reycling collections. Granted, they've been woefully behind up until now, but given that everyone else seems unable to afford to sustain their commitment to refuse/recycling collections, it is a pleasant surprise.

From this month they will be collecting glass and a much wider range of plastic. Currently we have to take glass to the bottle bank with fingers crossed that it's been emptied in the last fortnight. The only plastic they'll currently collect is plastic milk and drinks bottles. Soon they'll be taking pretty much everything. I will however now have 2 wheelie bins, 2 recycling boxes, a food waste caddy and a heavy duty recycling sack. I am however curious as to how they expect either of the lightweight boxes, or the recycling sack to remain at the front of my house on a breezy autumn/winter/spring day until I get home from work, once emptied. I suspect I'll be getting better acquainted with neighbours further down the road, as I retrieve boxes and sacks from their hedges/trees/windscreen.

The access to recycling centres still infuriates me though. I live within a district council area, but right on the boundary adjoining a city council. The city council's recycling centre is about 5 miles from me. The district council's centre is over 12 miles away. Of course, since I don't pay council tax to the city council, I am not permitted to use their facilities. Several years ago they invested in ANPR cameras to be able to prevent use of the facilities by people who don't pay their council tax to the city council, and regularly turn people away who try their luck. The geography of the two council areas mean that there are also city council residents for whom the district council facilities are closer and more convenient. Given their investment in the technology, you'd think that they'd be able to come up with some kind of reciprocal arrangement whereby at the end of the year, they tot up how many visit's they've had from each other's residents and work out who owes who for the services provided. The current situation just seems to encourage inconvenienced parties to fly tip.

@oldtennisshoes I did a FOI last year. If memory serves the local council spent £500k cutting verges.

Whilst I absolutely agree in principle @mrhoppy this:

But none of this is exceptional, the Council’s will have considered this within the design and planning. There will be consideration for both storage limited households and large households. Constraint of capacity is designed as a behaviour change driver it’s usually only applied to residual waste if they ask they almost certainly will be allowed additional recycling capacity. And there obviously must be storage space in the houses because the stuff was stored before hand waste doesn’t come from nowhere.

If we moved to a low-waste economy and everyone was on the same page this would work.

But it *doesn't*. Demonstrably. As shown by the massive uptick in fly tipping and rubbish thrown at council collection points etc. etc.

A certain reality needs to dawn on local government thinking. And pragmatism needs to rule - we need to see the world as it is, not as we *want* it to be.

Local government idiocy and unwillingess to deal with reality is resulting in trash everywhere.

To give an example: I live a very low-consumptive lifestyle with my partner (who at one point was an ecologist). No kids. In the Conwy Valley.

I'm burning rubbish because the collection facilities and home disposal are inadequate for the two of us. They closed the local recycling points so it's an hour's round trip to the council tip - where you have to book your slot and there are severe restrictions on what you can dispose of. Even as a householder.

Burning rubbish. Not recycling. Through lack of reasonable choice and council utopian idiocy. And everyone's at it - if you ride through our tiny village of a weekend you'll see three or four fires on the go. And it's not just farmyard burning - but household stuff.

Of course, Conwy council is patting itself on the back for meeting or exceeding it's recycling targets. Which it does, with aplomb.

Unfortunatley the targets are bunkum and made of this utopian thinking that means every ride I have to stop and use the clearwaste app.

This is nothing new. We knew what the problem was in the 1980's when fly tipping was rife. The solution was to make council tips free to all and put recycling points everywhere.

Now we've started charging again restrict where people can dump their crap. Fly tipping is again rife.

It's unconscionable. We know the solution - fund all refuse disposal through general taxation. Waste creation is an unfortunate part of our current human lifestyle - we need to cater to the reality.

No whining about commercial waste getting a free ride - all of this needs to be priced into goods, baked into products up-front - and taxed that way. NOT enforced on end-users.

Council disposal facilities should be plentiful, free and take *all* waste.

Nothing else works. Period.

And not wanting to be contrary, but there have been quite a few studies showing very little relation between the removal of communal facilities such as this and an increase in fly tipping. Most flytipping is done by shady arsehole companies, and usually not by single domestic properties.

I was going say this..... I'm pretty sure that the people doing the fly tipping are not doing so because the recycling facilities have been removed from their local Tesco car park. They are doing it to avoid paying for the disposal of trade waste. I don't think "enforcement" is a practical solution to fly tipping (I wish it was) - making trade waste 100% free is the only way to reduce fly-tipping as much as it's possible, but there will still be people that do it. But "reducing as much as possible" is still a desirable outcome - but it all depends what price tag you are willing to accept for that outcome.

I'd 100% agree with @chevyChase above - this aim of driving change in peoples behaviors through whittling-back services is just an excuse to cut spending and disguise it as being virtuous. Even if you do give them the benefit of the doubt (that this why they are really doing it) that just makes them stupid/naïve rather than disingenuous.

In our house, we've seen a marked decrease in our general waste volume since we've been recycling soft plastics. There's a scheme over here (Australia) whereby you can drop these off at your local supermarket - but (perhaps by design) the collection point is actually INSIDE the supermarket, so maybe it limits abuse? Having seen the volume of plastics being recycled rather than ending up in landfill, it does annoy me that this isn't a curbside collection (even if it does need another coloured bin).

I fully understand the argument that recycling centers are not particularly cost effective - so ok: what are you using that same money for that is more effective, or makes it easier for people to recycle? Or are you just removing something (which IS being used) and replacing it with nothing?

From this month they will be collecting glass and a much wider range of plastic.

Excellent news. For a comparison and to underline my point of a lack of joined up thinking we are no longer permitted to put organic kitchen waste in our compostable bin. It has to go into putrescibles and thence landfill. That's a practical demonstration of Manager A saving budget but offloading the spend on Manager B.

I’m burning rubbish because the collection facilities and home disposal are inadequate for the two of us.

Quite simply you aren't living as low consumption life as you think or you are not using all of the options available to you. And if you do you should be considering your behaviours. You'll forgive me if that sounds blunt but I worked for many years responding to just those issues with residents and helping them. Unless you and your wife are both suffering from adult incontinence in which case there will be support measures in place.

It's not massively surprising that there are booking systems at the CA sites, it's a Covid control measure that has been put in place to allow the sites to operate.

Yes there are limits on what they accept and some things that are charged for but local government is getting to the point that it is having to make a decision on which statutory services can be maintained and which can be cut back to the bare essentials.

I don’t think “enforcement” is a practical solution

Oh it absolutely is, increase the fines significantly so those caught pay for the enforcement and clearing up the fly tipping. Use the increased revenue to fund more enforcement. The polluter pays. Unfortunately we don't have the will power to tackle this properly, same goes for road traffic offences, everyone moans about others who break the law and then moan about the speed van bejng purely revenue generating.

On the bring collections, they should all be removed, hang over from a past age. Recycling centres however have gone backwards with the charges for inert waste which has led to a direct increase in fly tipping. Doing a bit of tiling, what do you do with waste, a skip is overkill but to dispose of a bag of waste is £3. In the wheelie bin it goes which increases landfill costs, inert waste doesn't burn. A bag of clean sand for B & Q is £2, less than it would cost to bin it ironically. Covid has also been a massive excuse to restrict access to the center which are invariably outside, another example of council inability to think straight.

Councils still waste ridiculous amounts of money through poor governance and whimsical schemes that never see the light of day but eat up millions in consultation. Yes they've definitely had funding cuts but they are so inefficient, and that starts at the top with councillors and senior officers.

With regards to the enforcement not being a great idea, I kinda have some sympathy with that angle. My council occasionally announces that it was successful in bringing a prosecution against some flat bed driver for dumping tyres and mattresses etc in a local verge. Fine £200 cost of barrister £5000.

Ive seen this a lot, whats the point? The council still had to pay for the removal itself.

A lot of the charging for dropping at recycling centres seems counter productive to me. If the council or company running the place can realistically turn a profit on selling the recyclable stuff (garden waste for composting and bio fuel, bricks and stone for hardcore for house/road building) why wouldn't they accept commercial waste? Surely that would outweigh the costs of barristers for the 5 prosecutions a year they seem to carry out (against the hundreds of fly tipping cases)

I saw the piece on BBC breakfast this morning about using CCTV to collect data on people chucking rubbish out of car windows.

For a comparison and to underline my point of a lack of joined up thinking we are no longer permitted to put organic kitchen waste in our compostable bin. It has to go into putrescibles and thence landfill. That’s a practical demonstration of Manager A saving budget but offloading the spend on Manager B.

It really isn't.

If the council or company running the place can realistically turn a profit on selling the recyclable stuff (garden waste for composting and bio fuel, bricks and stone for hardcore for house/road building) why wouldn’t they accept commercial waste?

That if is doing some heavy lifting in that sentence. Composting is a cost, it's cheaper than residual disposal but it's still a cost. Inerts, unless it has been processed, is going to cost to remove too. And to allow that you potentially need to change permit and planning conditions.

The arse has fallen out of the recyclate market with the closure of a lot of the traditional routes for collected recyclate. And the stuff that has value (Metals and Textiles) the trades realise through sales so what they are doing is passing the cost of delivering their businesses back onto the population as a whole.

"My parents still use bottle banks. I have no idea why, they get recycling collected every fortnight along with everyone else."
Errr . . . maybe they don't want you to see all the empty wine bottles . . .

Fly tipping is definitely more prevalent right now, to the point where the tippers just do it without really checking who's looking. The local lanes and field entrances are full of crap so they're having to go further to dump stuff ironically!

Our tip run by a contractor charges for inert waste like rubble and plasterboard, but the neighbouring council run their own tip, which is actually closer to my house so I go there.

That was the situation at my parent's house, 6 miles to the one over the county border or 15 miles to their 'local' one. That has stopped now though as you have to show proof of residency at them to enter now, the one in their county actually checks the car is registered in the county too. Caused a massive headache when I was sorting out their storage after they moved back in following last year's floods. I had to take the stuff from their house to my local tip 40 miles away as they would not let me in the tip in my car (using a trailer I'd booked in with them) even though my mum was in the car with me. No mention of the car having to be registered in the county on the website I booked on, a few others were caught out too that day. All of the recycling bins did disappear from car parks a while ago but have been reinstated after local pressure, except the bins are half the size they were and are always full. The kerbside collections also have tight restrictions on the volume now too, the binmen actively apologise about it it's so tight.

My council require you to book a time slot and limit how many you can use in a year:

You will need to book a time slot each time you visit. ​
​ ​
1 visit per day
26 visits per year for cars
10 visits per year for vans
If you are visiting in a car, you can use your allowance flexibly but cannot visit more than once per day.
If you are visiting in a van or a car with a trailer, you can only book 1 visit per month.

Thankfully my block of flats had giant communal bins (no recycling, everything goes to the local incinerator) so I can get rid of my rubbish easily but the houses nearby regularly dump their rubbish in them as they have tight restrictions too.

The whole system is a mess.

A lot of the ones near me at supermarkets got pulled at the start of the lockdowns but so far none have returned. The ones that remain are always rammed full which proves teh demand...

TBH we're middle class as **** so there's not really been an increase in mess but I guarantee there's a lot of stuff going to landfill and a lot of hard taught behaviour being unlearned.

@mrhoppy:

Quite simply you aren’t living as low consumption life as you think or you are not using all of the options available to you. And if you do you should be considering your behaviours. You’ll forgive me if that sounds blunt but I worked for many years responding to just those issues with residents and helping them. Unless you and your wife are both suffering from adult incontinence in which case there will be support measures in place.

It’s not massively surprising that there are booking systems at the CA sites, it’s a Covid control measure that has been put in place to allow the sites to operate.

Yes there are limits on what they accept and some things that are charged for but local government is getting to the point that it is having to make a decision on which statutory services can be maintained and which can be cut back to the bare essentials.

If we want to stop fly tipping then it doesn't matter why people (or companies) want/need to get rid of waste. We need to make it as easy as possible.

Money's a made up construct anyway. Spend on ensuring ALL waste is centrally gathered and recycled. Trying to do it other ways is clearly not working.

I don't know why they don't allow fly-tippers access to a single field where anyone can dump anything free of charge. Then, every year on bonfire night, set fire to it. Hey presto! Problem solved. No rubbish in the lanes, no hassle of recycling etc... Everyone loves a good burn-up, young and old alike.

But none of this is exceptional, the Council’s will have considered this within the design and planning.

Our council stopped collecting plastic in pink 'bin bags' a few years ago, and gave all households a big pink mesh bag insteasd. It's just about big enough for my family of five most of the year - not Xmas, Easter etc. However what the council didn't think through is the lack of a properly closable lid in a coastal city that has regular high winds . This means that plastic flies around the streets for hours on end until the bin lorry arrives and ignores the loose rubbish, just taking whatever is left in the mesh bag.

And there obviously must be storage space in the houses because the stuff was stored before hand waste doesn’t come from nowhere.

Genuinely laughable. Is this an example of council thinking?

white101, thats why fines need to massively increase. At the time the EPA came out in 1992 the in phrase was the polluter pays.

Ironically the UK and EU both got their approach to recycling wrong at the same time. Tax people producing the rubbish who in reality have little control over it rather than tax virgin raw materials punitively which would have driven industry to embrace recycled materials much more quickly and created a market for the collected materials.

Policy failure all round leading to fly tipping and large amounts still being burnt / landfilled.

I don’t get it - we don’t get any glass collections so we rely completely on bottle banks for recycling. WTF are we supposed to do if bottle banks are removed? It is, quite frankly, an imbecilic idea. This kind of nonsense WILL lead to more fly tipping, and that is exactly what is happening in my area...

Fly tipping isn't generally wine bottles and jars, it's plasterboard and builders rubbish or house clearances. Also where do you think the glass you put in the public recycling bins goes? If it worked out cheaper to recycle than landfill the council would be doing kerbside collections to keep costs down. If all the collections they do are car park bins it's window dressing only and probably isn't cost effective or making any difference environmentally.

With regards to those suggesting the carpark bins are pointless in Leamington, this is not the case. I used to take all of my tetrapacks and black plastic to be recycled on my weekly shop as the kerbside collection doesn't take them. Now they would all have to go to landfill as **** making a booking at the tip to recycle them. I know most people in Leamington are unaware of this and I'm definitely unusual in going to those lengths but it winds me up that something so widely recycled now has no reasonable solution. The council website does say the kerbside recycling scheme is being overhauled in August 2022 but the fact is the council has declared a climate emergency yet is reducing recycling efforts. I know they're not quite the same thing but still...

However, I've just moved to Sheffield which means I've swapped an inability to recycle tetrapacks to plastic bottles being the only plastic we're supposed to put in the recycling bin. Wish they would define the recycling marking rather than catering to the lowest common denominator and just saying "bottles".

There is actually 'some' money in UK recycling. The first bottle banks were introduced from a private glass-making firm in Lancashire, who wanted low cost raw material.
Same is true of aluminium, paper and soft plastics: they have a value.
Composite items like plasterboard and fluroescent tubes are harder to recycle
Whether the entire process can be left to the private sector, I don't know, but certainly the materials like glass, paper and metal will be more valuable than wood or water.

I think the other key point many are missing is collecting doesn't equal recycling and recycling doesn't equal reuse. If there is no market for the recycled materials they just get stock piled. The sad truth is we generate far more recyclable material than can be reused. Much of what was collected in the boom years was simply sent abroad to the far east where some got recycled, lots got burnt and lots just got dumped. This was done on the pretence of recycling and was cheaper than dealing with it properly in the UK where at least there are standards in place for these unenvironmently friendly practices.

So sorry if you can't recycle your tetrapaks but it's not very sensible to do it just to make you feel better if all that happens is if gets stockpiled with no chance of being reused. We need a fundamentally different approach, recycling needs to be a consequence of generating demand, not stockpiling rubbish to make ourselves feel better.

There is actually ‘some’ money in UK recycling. The first bottle banks were introduced from a private glass-making firm in Lancashire, who wanted low cost raw material.

But they aren't in it now though. Current glass prices are between £15/tonne (clear glass high) and -£2/tonne (green glass low for colour separated glass (letsrecycle.com Feb 2021 colour separated prices). Those bring banks hold 2-3 tonnes of which 50% typically is green as that's what the UK generates most of, based on average prices (~£7/tonne) you might make £14-20 from each one you collect. Typically takes around an hour per lift on average (depot to depot) using a vehicle driven by an HGV qualified driver. You're pretty much making a loss before you consider fuel, vehicle depreciation, container maintenance/repair, cost to transport to reprocessor and general overheads. Good quality mixed paper is maybe £30/tonne, soft plastics you can't get away, PET/HDPE has value, metals are worthwhile. Yes it's cheaper than disposal costs but don't go kidding yourselves that there is much in the way of money here.

On the issue of food waste - whether it is accepted for "composting" depends on who has the contract for disposal. Most commonly these days it seems to be feedstock for anaerobic digesters and what you can put in depends on the site licence regardless of if it would work. So whilst one site might accept food scraps another won't and another again might take food contaminated cardboard from takeaways. There needs to be a lot of streamlining to these systems if we are ever going to fully realise their potential.

Another missed opportunity is animal waste, huge potential there as it can be digested and then either used as fertiliser or burnt in an energy from waste plant. Still better than landfill.

Our previously allowed food/kitchen waste was all organic material plus egg shells. No meat derived products allowed

No consistency at all is there?

We have 4 240l bins emptied on a 3 week rotation (the garden waste gets done fortnightly), we can manage to skip an empty, sometimes two but then there are others who don't understand that you can fold boxes and crush bottles to make room and struggle with 3 weeks. No idea what they are doing tbh, we're a family of 3 fwiw. I could see the point if it was the daft wee boxes but we now have 3x the capacity with effectively the same collection frequency.

As for the supermarket skips, just abused by "man with a van" and folk that cant be bothered seperating. Would be nice if the tip was in town or at least not 2 miles up a ten percenter followed by a blind national road.

I cordially invite you to **** off as well.

Maybe if more workers had a union with teeth employers wouldn’t get away with the practices that breed resentment and discontent. Unions have next to no power these days but still remain a handy scapegoat for shitty employmemt practices. Race to the bottom you say?

There's unions and there's unions and there's good and bad union reps too.
Having been involved in change initiatives where you are trying to improve processes to help tax payers money be better spent and come across significant objection because of 'reasons' and no we weren't looking at reducing head count, just trying to change the way some things were done, move away from job rates and get people working together as a team more.
Good union reps are great for their members, bad union reps are crap for their members and often the customers their members work for.

@oldtennisshoes sorry, bad day. Got my jag the day before, felt like crap and was taking umbrage at everything.

Don't disagree with what you say there, your first post just came across a bit anti-union was all.

Thank god we live where we do. Council tried a few method for kerbside recycling and went from the teeny box/mesh sack method to finally the big grey wheelie bin. All recyclable waste goes in the one bin and gets collected fortnightly. I think they worked out it was cheaper to collect in bulk and separate centrally rather than spend the time doing it at the kerb and relying on the public separating correctly.

Charity recycling bins round here have not been getting collected due to COVID and have clear signs not to leave any bags, but hasn’t stopped anyone. One at local leisure centre surrounded by bags of old clothes which will now probably just have to be dumped after sitting in the rain and snow all winter.

None of this stuff works unless you make it as easy as possible for people to do.
Only way to stop fly tipping is to make disposal free and have centres open longer.

and no we weren’t looking at reducing head count

<cynical head on>

Not on that occasion possibly. Many union people know their managers and you're on a poor wicket if they haven't been treated properly in the past by that cadre. Any changes asked for are usually to reduce cost, reducing cost will normally have an effect on quality of life, jobs or wages. Like HR departments, managers aren't there for workers benefit, union reps sole purpose is to ensure their members get the best deal possible. (To use the business psychopath's excuse of choice, 'it's just business').

</cynical head>

@squirrelking no worries

@sandwich reduce costs possibly, improve quality probably, improve VFM for the tax payer definitely.

As for the supermarket skips, just abused by “man with a van”

Abusers gonna abuse...

My point is, isn't it better to have the abuse in a tarmac location or two in an urban environment, rather than down an embankment into a stream down a singletrack lane.
Removing these facilities will undoubtedly lead to more of the latter. Really upsetting to see.

VFM for the tax payer doesn't make it onto the radar for the workforce. They are there to put a pot of jam on the table, the inter-connectedness does not even register.

I feel your pain. I struggle to find glass recycling bottle banks where I am. My local Kirklees council made the decision about 6 years ago, to no longer give out blue crates for glass bottles, further removing the incentive and ease of ability to recycle. I don't know what on earth they were thinking of, and they have the brass nerve to talk about how they want to improve recycling rates whilst making it difficult for the public to do so.

I've heard other councils have similar issues. If they want to tackle the problem they need to stop punishing people for recycling, and stop being so restrictive when it comes to recycling bays at the tip. It's no wonder flytipping is so common these days.

My point is, isn’t it better to have the abuse in a tarmac location or two in an urban environment, rather than down an embankment into a stream down a singletrack lane.

Unfortunately [and I realise this is really location specific] the supermarket referred to backs onto a burn (more a small river at that point tbh) that flows into the firth about 200m away. The leisure centre bins aren't much better, a wind heading offshore would have a similar effect. And round here it does get windy.

Personally I'm not really sure what the answer is but if households didn't get charged *checks NAC site* "For up to 5 items - £25.20, extra items £5.04 each" then I dare say man with a van wouldn't be making as much cash and dumping shit everywhere. Even if you could get a commercial bin/dumpster left for a reasonable charge that would be an improvement.

There they remove glass recycling bottle banks, online they let retailers pay for used packaging material (referring to the German Packaging Act, which applies also to marketplace retailers!). I'll never understand all these measurements...