TOT household rubbish

[alan_m]

How much rubbish for collection does the average household generate?

It's rubbish collection day today and I note that my household and my 4 nearest houses on my side of the street put out a total of 6 general rubbish sacks and 7 recycling sacks.

The 5 houses opposite put out 24 general rubbish sacks and 10 recycling sacks (one household seems never to split rubbish for recycling).

The number of people on each side of this portion of the street is nominally the same and the ratio of rubbish between the two sides of the street is about the same every week and it's not just one household making up the large difference in waste.

[Andy Burns]

I have a 240l recycling wheelie bin and a 120l rubbish wheelie bin, the former is generally getting 'fullish' after 3 weeks, the latter is generally only half full by that point, but I put them both out together every 3 or 4 weeks.

[Tim Streater]

The two of us here can often go a month without needing to put the landfill bin out. The recycling bin goes out every two weeks which is just about OK.

[Andy Burns]

At the moment we get weekly collections of both wheelie bins (I choose to put them out less frequently) but I gather the collections are due to alternate between recycling and rubbish later this year ... might bother larger households.

[John Rumm]

The alternate week scheme operates here (with a green garden/food waste bin collected every week). It seems to work for the vast majority. ISTR the council can supply a larger general waste bin if required[1], but I see very few of them about.

[1] Although I don't know what hoops need to be jumped through for those

- so it might just be they make the process so onerous that few can be bothered!

[Andy Burns]

With the announcement of alternating collections, they have introduced a charge for larger bins.

As soon as they started their consultation on changes, I swapped to a larger recycling bin as there was no charge at that time ... and it was fairly obvious the way the "consultation" was going to go

[soup]

We have the larger bins. Initially it was just the general waste bin as youngest son has special needs and learning difficulties and is still on nappies at night. When the re-cycling uplift was introduced we were to use the general waste bin as the recycling one and got a new (still large) bin for landfill.

Getting the larger bins was easy all we did was write to the council (can't remember if we did it or one of the 'carer charities') following that we had a visit from some council employee to ensure we were eligible . This was an at the door interview which lasted all of 15 secs (perhaps they were just ensuring we did exist). Can't remember but don't think at anytime we had to provide proof. IF one of the 'Carer charities' had contacted them perhaps that was taken as the proof required .

The initial 'bin getting' was a long time ago so memories are a bit hazy Oh this is for Edinburgh city council, any other council, YMMV

[Steve Walker]

If it is anything like where we are, they'll have a system to cope with larger housholds.

Our normal system is:

Green bin, 240l - food waste (plus garden waste if you pay an extra £40 a year) - collected weekly.

Grey bin, 120l - non-recyclable waste - collected fortnightly.

Blue bin, 240l - carboard and paper - collected monthly.

Black bin, 240l - plastic bottles, tins, cans and glass bottles - collected monthly.

Leading to the green bin, plus one other, being collected every week.

For households with 5 or more residents, a 240l grey bin can be requested instead of the 120l one. Additional blue and black bins can also be requested.

SteveW

[dennis]

I frequently fill the 240l recycling bin every week.

The smaller landfill bin is about 25% full after a week.

The food waste bin is full most weeks. It really is waste like peelings, etc.

[cpvh]

Our council used to collect rubbish AND recycling each week.

They recently wrote to tell us that Weekly collections would continue (Hurrah!)

One week they would collect rubbish, the next they would collect recycling!

I suspect we are going to start using the tip more.

[Rob Morley]

We (2) have three 240 litre wheelie bins, for landfill, mixed recycling, and garden waste. They're collected every two weeks. If I forget to put a bin out we can normally last until the next collection, so that would be one bin-full per month, although I do occasionally need to jump on top to pack everything in. It's easy to reduce the recycling volume just by cutting up plastic bottles, and putting all the flattened cardboard neatly together, but we've not had to do that since we got a bin (rather than a crate) for recycling.

[Tim Streater]

Why?

[Tim Streater]

I'm sure I saw an article in the Times asking us not to do that, because it confuses the separation machine at the recyclers. I was flattening the bottles until I saw that, so I could get more into the kitchen recycle bins (before emptying those into the wheelie bins).

[Bob Eager]

Similar here. Household of 5, three of which are in early 20s and a bit wasteful - I have to nag them about recycling.

360l landfill bin, on average nearly full avery 2 weeks, so about 170l a week. 150l cardboard/paper bin, about 50l a week I guess. 150l tin/plastic/etc bin, about 70l a week.

Small food waste bin, probably 10l a week.

[Bob Eager]

Just looked; the 150l ones aren't; they are 240l.

So 100l cardboard/week, 110l tin/plastic/etc a week.

[Bob Eager]

I flatten the bottles so that I can get more into the wheelie bin! The young 'uns generate a lot of those.

I've just ordered an aluminium bottle for carrying water. Or, as it says on it, a "DHMO containment unit".

[alan_m]

I'll bet the first thing that happens to the plastic waste when collected from your property is that it gets well and truly compacted in the back of the dustcart. A lot of recycling is transported perhaps a hundred miles to central locations and it makes no sense to transport light weight material un-compacted.

It's much the same as being allowed to put glass into our recycling sacks BUT it cannot be broken glass. This also gets compacted on collection.

[Tim Streater]

Carrying that around, better watch out for the SWAT Team or whatever we call it.

[Tim Streater]

Well indeed. A bit of a puzzle.

[Michael Chare]

Where I am at the moment in Anglesey the black landfill wheelie bin now only gets collected every 3 weeks. Previously it was every two weeks. The change was made in order to reduce the amount collected. Would anyone expect that to actually happen?

We have 4 bins for other recyclable rubbish and a bag for old batteries which are collected weekly. A green garden waste bin which is collected every two weeks is the only one that is full.