TOT household rubbish

[Fredxx]

If it modifies your behaviour to reduce waste and recyclable matter, it all sounds a good thing.

Otherwise pay the price of inconvenience.

[NY]

Yes I'd have thought that all of those except fruit and veg peelings/cores could be recycled in an anaerobic digester, rather than needing to go into landfill.

We used to compost veg peelings etc along with grass mowings and plant prunings. Even with intermediate layers of cardboard or newspaper, and with occasional watering in dry weather, it took ages for the waste to be composted down. We had three "daleks" (*) on the go, and there were times when all three were full and we had no more room for a few weeks until it had rotted down.

(*) Conical plastic composting bins with lids, obtained from local council.

[NY]

I'm all for encouraging people to recycle rather than landfill, by carrot rather than stick by making it easy to recycle rather than difficult/costly to landfill. But expecting people to reduce the *total* amount of waste is ludicrous. If something comes boxed, you have to get rid of the box - and you don't have the option of saying "supply this item in clean, pristine, undamaged condition but with less packaging" - the packaging is the means of making sure the item is clean/undamaged.

[Fredxx]

Then modify your buying habits to include items with less packaging or suffer the consequences and so we suffer your moans.

I have never had an issue with size of bins, even when our children have been in disposable nappies.

If this is making you consider your lifestyle choice, so be it. It can only be a good thing.

[Robin]

I was citing what can be put into the bin for *food waste* (not garden waste). Their treatment of food waste is different from that for garden waste - but neither goes to landfill.

It sends some waste to one - but not food waste.

[Richard]

Radical underwear there.

[Andy Burns]

Indeed, the best step they took here was to get rid of the plethora of bins for this/that/the other and the list of banned items (yoghurt pots, butter tubs, tetrapaks, window envelopes, cardboard with sellotape on it) and just take all the recycling in one bin ...

[John Rumm]

Indeed, but I can take several cubic metres of them off the lawn in one cutting when its growing fast... they really ain't going in the bin! (not to mention it would mean manually handling them up into the bin after the mower dumps em on the ground)

[John Rumm]

Alternatively they have taken the time to read what things their local composting bin collections will take...

Indeed, from our district council's web site:

Compostables

The compostables bin is green with a yellow lid and is for food and garden waste only.

Please put items into the bin:

Loose Wrapped in a sheet of newspaper or In a 100% compostable bag

Carrier bags, black sacks and bin liners are not accepted in this bin.

Items you can put in this bin include:

Fruit and vegetable peelings Raw and cooked food Meat and fish (including bones) Plate scrapings and leftovers Eggshells Teabags, tea leaves and coffee grounds Bread Dairy products Garden cuttings Grass Flowers Leaves Branches (less than 30cm in diameter)

Please do NOT put soil/compost/sand, dead animals, pet food, animal bedding, treated wood or animal/human faeces in this bin.

[John Rumm]

The difficulty there is that the various recycling facilities around the country do not all have the same capabilities. So you would be in danger of reducing the range of things that can be collected everywhere to a small common subset of recyclable items.

[alan_m]

Ground up heat treated bone is commonly applied to gardens.

I once watched a TV program where the commercial company claimed that could almost compost anything organic from the food industry. The programmed showed their operation where one heap was the waste from chicken processing including feathers. They had gigantic heaps on the runway of a disused airport and the heaps were turned and mixed with the help of bulldozers.

In council collections the food waste (including all the things you believe cannot be composted) does not go to landfill. My council states:

[quote] Once the food waste is collected from the blue food waste bins it is bulked for transportation on to its reprocessor.

In vessel composting (IVC) and anaerobic digestion (AD) are two technologies available for reprocessing food waste into a valuable end-product. Due to the controlled nature of these processes all types of food waste can be safely reprocessed - from fruit and vegetables to bakery, dairy and meat products - to develop a product that can be used as an agricultural bio fertiliser and soil improver. AD also produces biogas which can be used to produce renewable energy. [/quote]

Unable to compost is not the reason. I believe that this type of waste cannot be guaranteed to have been heat treated to the required high temperatures and it's not economic to do this on a small scale.

Some people don't buy their carrots pre-packed in a supermarket and even then some "organic" branded carrots sold in supermarkets often are sold with the leaves.

I was lead to believe that many root vegetables had a longer shelf/storage life with the greenery removed as once picked the dying leaves suck moisture from the root.

[John Rumm]

Has it occurred to you that your local council's provision may be very different from NY's?

The pilot scheme our council ran for a couple of years had a blue plastic create that took a smaller range of stuff, and separate bags for paper and card. They made recycling some things significantly more difficult than the current scheme with a large wheelie bin that takes pretty much any recyclable.

[John Rumm]

In our area they *do* collect that kind of waste with all the other compostable waste.

I thought he said the recycling bin was 240L, not the food waste one...

[dennis]

It does not need to go to landfill, the council runs a composting service for bones and other food waste. It does not go into the green waste for composting. One chicken carcase will fill half the bin so it doesn't take many meals to fill the waste container.

[dennis]

The garden waste bin is not a food waste bin. They do not get composted in the same way.

[dennis]

As long as you mow frequently they are better left on the grass anyway. When you start cutting inches off then they become messy in the wet.

[spuorgelgoog]

What's the difference between a dead animal and raw food? Apart from a few minutes with a gutting knife.

Owain

[Tim Streater]

People have no problem depositing all sorts of stuff at our local tip. Mostly because all the bins are marked and there are people to ask.

[Tim Streater]

For what? Putting the bins out the previous day? Fuck that.

[Tim Streater]

Assuming you have a garden.

No, here it goes in the food waste.