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Post by zoe on Mar 25, 2009 10:42:03 GMT 1
Why do I get sucked into buying cheap bin bags at the supermarket? I do it every time then spend the week cursing that they split and have to use another one over the top. Am I on my own here? or does everyone else buy the more expensive ones? Also while I'm on the subject does anyone have any tips on storing stuff to be recycled? I end up with huge piles everywhere which drive me loopy
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Post by Claire on Mar 25, 2009 18:51:10 GMT 1
zoe i have been discussing this very matter with a few people (yes my life IS that exciting lol) and the consensus of opinion is that they are making them thinnner. I have been getting the same bags at the same place for years and they are def thinner than they use to be and split more. Also free carrier bags are the same. They split if you put anything heavier than a feather in them. No doubt more companies cost cutting. On a similar subject does anyone else live in a council area where the bin men only come once a fortnight instead of once a week? Its a right bloody pain, especially if you accidentally sleep in and forget to put the bin out in time! Another example of councils pretending to be green when in reality its just to save them money! After all a lot of the rubbish is just now dumped and not recycled anyway.
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Post by sarah on Mar 25, 2009 20:20:13 GMT 1
Our bin men come one week for 'rubbish' and plastic/can recycling and the next week for the green bin and the paper recycling. You can recycle plastic/glass/cans at tesco, but they stopped (for no apparent reason) their cardboard and tetrapak recycling.
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Post by zoe on Mar 25, 2009 21:23:18 GMT 1
I just take my separate "heaps" to the local tip for recycling - I think that is where I go wrong as I inevitably forget some weeks and end up with mountains! Once a fortnight collections seem ridiculous - cheapskate councils it must be a nightmare Claire.
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Post by kunuma on Mar 25, 2009 23:03:25 GMT 1
;D Rubbish day at casa kunuma has to be seen to be believed - since I can't lift the black sack once I've filled it and I have to get it up to the end of the drive, I load up the rubbish in the car in individual little bags and fill the sack up at the end of the drive - what a performance! I'm a great supporter of recycling, it's how I furnish my house!! I'm forever diving into skips and coming up with something useful! It's where my computer came from!! Amazing what you can build from old baked bean tins and string! ;D
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Post by zoe on Mar 25, 2009 23:32:29 GMT 1
;D you make me laugh Kunuma, I too have a fondness for other people's rubbish I hope the bean tins were heinz ones - they have a faster internet connection
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Post by garej on Mar 27, 2009 22:21:57 GMT 1
I buy the more expensive ones because simply they last longer. I do buy the cheaper ones too though - simply because all I am putting in them is the (used) cat litter in.
Don't bother buying Poundland's ones - they are even worse than the cheap supermarket ones. I used to buy them and I had to double bag them. All they contained was the contents of one litter tray and even then they split.
Re: supermarket carrier bags. Yes I have noticed that they are getting rubbish, as someone who has to carry the bags a fair way (I dont drive), that I end up using several. Fortunately Tesco has the self service checkouts which I always use, so at least I dont have to go through the strange looks when asking the checkout staff for yet another carrier. I would probably use less if they were stronger.
My local council comes once a fortnight to collect the non recyclable rubbish. It was annoying where I used to live as my wheelie bin had to be locked in the garden shed. If I didnt do it, all the other neighbours would come and dump rubbish in my bin. Result is that a) I would have no room for my rubbish and b) I would injure my shoulder trying to move the darn thing because it was twice as heavy. But like Claire if you forgot it was annoying, especially as mine was actually locked away (the rest of the residents used to leave them at the end of the alleyway).
Where I am now, because the block has a lot of elderly residents (and is next door to an sheltered accommodation block) it is registered as "assisted collection" block. Which means that the bin men come and drag the bins to the alleyway, load them onto the truck and put them back for you. All you have to do is put your brick back (all the bin lids are weighed down with a brick) on your lid. So at least I dont have to worry, but yep I feel your pain Claire.
Also I have for tins, bottles, cans (we dont recycle tetrapaks) is a plastic box, and every week they come to collect that. Again the bin men come and collect that, so instead of putting it at the end of the alley, all you have to do is shove it just outside the back entrance to the block. For newspapers, magazines, yellow pages, catalogues etc we have a plastic sack which you just place inside the box. So really unless you forget to put your box outside the back entrance our block does not have to get up early or worry about missed collections. I am fortunate.
Also, the week they dont come for the wheelie bins they collect your green bins (just a standard wheelie bin painted green) but that is for garden cuttings. Been as I dont have a garden, I dont have one.
I dont have any tips - I just shove everything that is recycleable in the green box, but my parents have just ordinary (albeit coloured) bin bags (they are a different council) for their recyclables, and my dad has to store them in the garage in the meantime. Where they live, the ordinary rubbish gets collected every week, and the recyclable stuff once a fortnight. The best bet is to store them in a shed (if you have one, that is).
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Post by Claire on Mar 27, 2009 22:35:41 GMT 1
Yes, your council sounds like mine garej, I think more and more are getting like that. It is a bit of a pain at the mo. To get my bin to where the bin men pick it up I have to roll it off a quite high concrete block thing, down a long garden, thru an extremely narrow gateway (about 2mm clearance on either side!), down an extremely steep very narrow alley way, and then past someone else's bin unless they have moved it (again about 2mm clearance!) and to top it all it rests on a very steep back lane where if its windy its really hard to stop the bin just rolling away. This rigmarole is extremely hard for someone like me with muscle problems and especially as its heavy with 2 weeks rubbish in and I dread bin day! I end up exhausted
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Post by garej on Mar 27, 2009 22:57:42 GMT 1
Yes. Because my shed (at my old flat) was not level I had a rather steep drop and a short space to turn it around (because my garden fence was in the way). So I feel your pain, because it was rather heavy, though it was a lot better than leaving in the garden. It used to take me two weeks to recover from the shoulder injury it caused. Unfortunately I was not elderly or disabled enough to be eligible for a registered for "assisted collection" so that was the only alternative.
I did complain to the council because I knew who it was, but their attitude was "as long as it ends up in a bin then it is ok" rather than caring for someone who was actually physically injuring themselves each time.
The alleyway was rather narrow where I had to go down, and like yours, a steep (because it was - and where I am now - is on the side of a mountain) slope.
That is why I am glad that they are nearly all elderly (one flat is occupied by an non elderly person, but I am the youngest person there), they were brought up with a different set of values and respect each other more than the people I was with. Though not horrible people (I lived next door once to drug dealers) at my old flat, when it came to regarding the rubbish in other people's bins and keeping the block tidy they just didnt care.
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Post by zoe on Mar 28, 2009 14:46:55 GMT 1
I think I'll stop moaning after hearing your palaver (sp??) with your rubbish, Claire and Garej. Sounds a nightmare!
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Post by garej on Mar 28, 2009 21:13:26 GMT 1
I think I'll stop moaning after hearing your palaver (sp??) with your rubbish, Claire and Garej. Sounds a nightmare! Yeah it is annoying with the fortnightly collections. It is even worse during bank holidays because they dont always publish details of when your bin is going to be collected next (all they do is say "check your bin sticker" but where I am now and where I was there was never one on mine) which means that sometimes you have to squash a month's worth of rubbish in one. Also it was a bit dodgy sometimes with the snow. My parents council's system of collecting the ordinary rubbish once a week and the recyclable rubbish fortnightly is much better. It also creates the problem of people dumping rubbish into others. It's rude and disrespectful. Unlike other councils mine does not fine people for not recycling. Where I was before, some of the other residents did not bother doing so. That meant that their bins got full in the week and the consequence was that single people/couples got their rubbish dumped in. Not to mention the culprits at my old place actually frequently dumped (even when theirs was empty) 7 pints of gone off milk - not even bothering to dump the contents down the sink. So you can imagine after 2 weeks the smell would be like. So after it happened twice I had no other choice to put it into the garden shed (so it was behind a padlock). When I moved there they hadnt started recycling in our area (though they were doing it in the county) so they collected the bins every single week. So the only rubbish that went into the bin was what I threw away. Though I doubt that the fortnightly collection actually saves them money. Last June the council looked into the way rubbish was collected and most of the county (including me) had their bin collection days changed. They said that it would save money as they would be able to include more households. They started it in July - in October the local newspaper reported that they were £1 million already over budget! The cause: the change in bin rounds! You really could not make it up.
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lily
Pony Trekker
Posts: 60
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Post by lily on Mar 29, 2009 15:44:58 GMT 1
I'd say we put out rubbish rubbish once a month. The bin lives outside and we add to it from the kitchen bin. Recycling goes out every two weeks. What you need is two bins in your kitchen, and you can just sling your recycling into the appropriate bin. That's what we have in college, and it works just fine. Unless you have to separate your recyclables? That'd be fiddly...
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Post by garej on Mar 29, 2009 21:14:29 GMT 1
What you need is two bins in your kitchen, and you can just sling your recycling into the appropriate bin. I have an plastic box and that lives in the kitchen, so it is not too bad. However this week I am expecting an kitchen table to arrive, so I have to find a new home (the table will be in the way) for it. The litter tray lives in the same corner, so I may have to find that a new home.
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Post by zoe on Mar 29, 2009 21:26:33 GMT 1
I separate my recycling and take it myself - I'm a bit sceptical about the mixed recycling bags the bin men take, does it go where it's supposed to?
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Post by garej on Mar 29, 2009 21:32:25 GMT 1
I separate my recycling and take it myself - I'm a bit sceptical about the mixed recycling bags the bin men take, does it go where it's supposed to? I dont know about bags. Like I said I have a plastic box where either tins, cans, plastic bottles and glass jars go into. The recyclable bin lorry is divided into 3 compartments (one for plastic, one for glass and one for metal), so the bin men physically throw the stuff in the appropriate compartment. Also if there are stuff which cant be recycled (once I shoved a tetrapak in it) they just leave in the box for you to throw into the ordinary bin. I am not sure what happens with newspapers etc as this goes in a really thick plastic bag, not the box. But for mixed bags, it cant be done quite so easily.
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