TOT: shredded paper recycling

They need to bring back weekly collections (as opposed to one week landfill and the next week recycling) to avoid people needing such large bins. No matter how much you recycle, the *total* amount remains the same. I've seen some people claiming that we should be producing less waste, *even of a form that can be recycled*. With more and more good being delivered by mail order, that's a lot of cardboard. Liquids (milk etc) need to be delivered in some sort of container, whether it's plastic or glass.

supply each household with several cans of spraypaint?

Well... in my father's day on a dairy farm, the milk went out in churns in a motorcycle side-car and was measured out into the customer's containers. But yes, unlikely to work so well these days!

nib

Milk to the doorstep possibly started to die off when in two adult households both went to work during the day. Milk left on the doorstep all day went off.

Our deliveries were getting later and later in the day and so became useless for fresh milk for breakfast. I recall birds pecking through the foil top and getting some of the cream!

I think it was well and truly killed off when supermarkets starting to sell milk at half the price due to the Milk Marketing Board being disenfranchised.

(top-posted for Brian)

Some shredders just cut the paper lengthwise into longs strips. Fibres across the paper will be cut, but the ones along the length will be fine.

More secure shredders cut it up into little bits. There can be no long fibres left uncut.

Andy

I've seen the local milk float driving around doing deliveries at 1am. Works as long as you remember to bring it in in the morning.

Theo

Forcing every council in the country to re-issue all the bins to a standard set of colours would be enormously expensive. That ship has sailed.

Andy

Oddly they seem to be making a comeback in some areas. We have Creamline

Dave

We have a holiday cottage in a tiny village in the Yorkshire Dales. The dairy farmer was not allowed to *sell* us milk, but she was only too happy to give us milk, fresh from the refrigerated tank in the milking parlour where it was stored until the tanker lorry came round. It was unpasteurised, but it was guaranteed fresh - sometimes only an hour old. I can remember taking a jug along and her filling it for me from the tank.

I'd gone over to buying milk from the supermarket back in the 80s, but when I moved to a new-build house, a milkman came round touting for business from the new customers.

He lasted a few weeks before everyone told him to stop delivering because he could not deliver milk in time for people to have breakfast. He also wanted each house to commit to a fixed number of pints on each day, with no changes, which was ridiculous. He didn't deserve to stay in business with customer service like that.

So different from the milkmen in Leeds and Wakefield in the 60s and 70s when I was a child, for whom nothing was too much trouble.

Unpasteurised milk is dangerous. I am nearing the octo mark, and can say that milk here, as in the parts of Angland (!) I was in, that is the case as well. I had a friend, a vet, that contacted brucelossis and was in pain for the rest of his life. Not funny.

Or the local sparrows discovered how to peck the tips from the bottles and from that, how to peck through the cartons and let the milk spill.

I remember when I first worked in Newport, Gwent, in the mid '50s, it was the first time that I saw housewives shopping before going to work.

Some areas don't have bins! Plastic sacks are easier to collect when parked vehicles are nose to tail on both sides of the road. Around my way a few refuse collectors on foot collect the sacks and pile them high every 10 houses or so. The refuse vehicle comes along, stops at each pile where they are swiftly thrown in the back. This method also has the advantage of the refuse truck only blocking narrow roads for the minimum of time.

You missed a step. Before recycling those plastic wrappers, you need to scrutinise each one (reading glasses and good light definitely needed) to find and read/decipher the recycling instructions. Many say "Do not recycle".

My understanding was that central government doesn't supply funding for this work, they just fine the Local Authorities if they fail to meet the targets. Stick, with not a carrot in sight.

Ask not what you can do for your neighbours. Ask what your neighbours will do to you in revenge.

The local chapel here is well known for its good works and charitable actions. It's also the worst neighbour we've had in many years. (Bonfires being one of the major irritants.)

I suspect his employer was responsible for those rules, not he milkman himself.

Oh were that true!

Even if you can find the type of plastic/paper/foil/wrapping that you are dealing with then finding out if your council handles it is another problem.

Our council still has no mention of envelopes/window envelopes on their website for instance.

And I'd wager that our recycle bin ends up in landfill or gets burnt in the local heat producing incinerator anyway.