Just seen the binmen - immediate thoughts !

Sometimes that happens because the items which can be recycled depends on the requirements of the local processing plant, which can vary depending on where you are. eg postcodes B1-B10 use XYZ plant which accepts mixed recycling, while postcodes B10-B20 use ABC plant which requires them separated.

People complain that recycling is 'too complicated' and every town has different rules. The way to simplify it is to get residents to apply a standard set of rules and stick to them. Then you can tailor the collection/distribution based on the local plant's requirements, rather than force residents to learn the minutiae of whatever the plant wants (which may change if the contract later goes to another plant).

It's also possible the insert has some other function - eg keeping paper dry rather than swilling at the bottom of a wet bin. Perhaps the plant won't accept wet paper, or worse it contaminates the whole load. There's quite a bit as to what can and can't be recycled that consumers don't get exposed to.

There's a company converting old bin lorries to electric, which will make them quieter and much more efficient. I suppose you could fit a remote control so you can make it crawl forward from outside, but the driver likely has the best visibility in the cab (given there are operatives swarming around it all the time). I don't see the actual dragging of bins around people's front gardens being automated any time soon.

Theo

The noise from the bin lorry doesn't come so much from the engine, as from dumping half of Majestic Wines into the back ...

True, but you have to rev up the diesel engine while inching forward and when powering the hydraulics. It takes that bit of noise away, and possibly using electrics rather than hydraulics will help a bit more. For some kind of load (eg garden waste) the actual waste isn't so noisy, although the rattling of the compactor may still be.

Theo

I saw this many years ago with glass. Large bins in a public car park, one for plain glass, one for brown and one for green. Along comes a truck, lifts the plain glass and dumps it in the back, followed by the green and brown bins. The result all types of glass mixed up.

Around my way we have mixed recycling bags which can have plastic, glass, milk cartons, cans of any kind etc. This goes to a processing plant that has been designed for sorting of mixed recycling. I think that paper and card goes by the same route although the council's refuse contractor would like us to put it out separately.

In the states they seen to have a lot of one man operated lorries were a semi-automated arm picks up the equivalent of a wheelie bin, lifts it up and dumps the content in the lorry's container.

The UK probably has too many urban roads with cars parked on each side and where the rubbish is left in gateways or the pavement in a random fashion. When my rubbish is collected there are a gang who practically sprint down the road picking up multiple sacks and throwing them into the back of the dust cart which is keeping pace with them. This method of collection ensures the dust cart blocks narrow roads for as short a time as possible. I also think there maybe an incentive for the workers in finishing work as soon as their allocated rounds are complete. We have two collections on the same day. One for general rubbish and the other for anything to be recycling.

A handful of the bin lorries that MK procured for the new contract last September are all electric - traction, tail lift and compaction. So far I've only seen them on the green bin round, food and garden waste, which as you say isn't so noisy in itself.

They are much quieter.

nib

Locally the commercial waste is collected early morning, sometimes at

In message <aCF*WB+ snipped-for-privacy@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk>, Theo <theom+ snipped-for-privacy@chiark.greenend.org.uk> writes

Crikey. When was the last time a binnie dragged a bin around a front garden? SOP is bin at the kerbside or it is not emptied.

Some houses don't have a kerbside - front garden wall, footpath (1m wide), road. SOP is to keep the bins in the front garden, from where the binmen collect them. Any further forward would block the footpath.

Similar variations on a theme. The streetscape is not regular enough that it would be possible to put them somewhere a lorry-robot could pick them up, because there are footpaths, verges, droppped kerbs, council flowerbeds, etc that need to be navigated.

Theo

There's a ton of videos showing mechanised collection vehicles trashing wheelie bins, you think they'd be better at it without a human?

Part of the problem is that the punters are being asked to do things to their *rubbish* (when all is said and done, it's rubbish) before it can be recycled - tin cans washed out and ideally squashed flat, cardboard torn up into pieces that will fit in the bin or the bag. With the threat that contaminated rubbish will all have to be discarded.

We are doing them and the country a favour by recycling as much or our rubbish as possible. It is up to the council to make it as easy as possible, with as few rules. Having to wash something that you are throwing away as unwanted is absurd. Let them wash it if they want it to be.

Our recycling (in East Yorkshire) is very good because they accept all recycling (glass, paper, cans, hard plastic) in the same bin, without the punter having to sort it in the house and then transfer those sorted piles into separate bins on bin day. So we only need three bins in the house: recycling, non-recyclable and food, corresponding to three wheelie bins.

The food waste and the garden rubbish go in the same wheelie bin (it all gets anaerobically digested and composted) which works in our favour. A few months ago they started trialling weekly collections of food waste as part of a national scheme. And a side-effect is that we get our garden waste collected weekly as well, so I can avoid having to take any excess garden waste to the recycling centre, whereas previously I was making a trip most weeks, especially when there were a lot of weeds (bloody rose bay willow herb and nettles) to pull up. Even weekly garden waste is a problem with the amount of RBWH that I'm pulling up at the moment. Damn stuff gets everywhere.

Where we lived before, tin cans and plastic had to be placed in a small crate with an ill-fitting lid which blew away. Cardboard and paper had to be put in a plastic-hessian carrier bag which was so small that no only did you have to "flat pack" cardboard boxes (which is fair enough) but then you had to rip those sides into small enough pieces to fit in the bag. What a hassle. The only full size bin we got was for landfill. The council seemed to want to make us produce less *recycling* by giving us a small bag and a small box.

:-)

Hasn't the 'beep beep' type of warning now generally been superseded by a much-less-annoying sort of 'fart fart' noise?

And if they 'self combust', the contents will not add to the fire :-)

It doesn't even come from the lorry here, they collect teh bottles in a wheely bin, and often smash them to conserve space.

Our recycling is in plastic sacks which we are allowed to put plastic, metal and unbroken glass. Once the sacks are thrown in the back of the dustcart the compactor crushes the content and presumably smashes any glass.