Topic ID 7231
For some reason, I actually flicked through the "Link" magazine from East Herts council this time and saw that, joy of joys, we are going to get another full-sized recylcing bin for cardboard! I'm not sure where we are going to store this as we have enough trouble with the current set. To add insult to injury the article goes on: "We know that some of you will be concerned about the space needed for the bins and boxes. So to save space you can choose to replace your kerbside box for paper with an inner paper box that will sit inside your new wheelie bin." Great, so they are going to "save space" by replaced the thing that doesn't take any space as it will stack on top of the other box! Maybe we should look up where the East Herts Councillors live and store our new bins in thier front gardens! [:(!]
Reply ID 94314
I must be one of the few who is looking forward to the new bins. Our recycling far exceeds the blue box capacity and have at times driven to the dump to recycle. I am lucky though as I do have room....just about to store another bin, but I do appreciate not everyone has that luxury.
Reply ID 94315
quote:Re-reading the article, maybe both boxes can be got rid of completely although it doesn't state this explicitly and the graphic still has the blue box in it. This wouldn't be quite as bad but still would take extra space and would be more cumbersome.
Originally posted by Stargazer
I must be one of the few who is looking forward to the new bins. Our recycling far exceeds the blue box capacity and have at times driven to the dump to recycle. I am lucky though as I do have room....just about to store another bin, but I do appreciate not everyone has that luxury.
Reply ID 94316
Newcomer from my reading of the article we're getting a new bin that can take all of the plastic/cans/glass and with a separate compartment at the top for paper if its required - I always put cardboard into the brown wheelie bin with the compost. This will be excellent for me as Mrs G will recycle anything and I'm fed up with crushing and packing plastics, aluminium and tin into the blue boxes and we frequently have much more in the recycling than in the dustbin - on a windy day its also awful to see the plastics blowing around the street where people haven't taken the care to cover the box. Like Stargazer though I do have space for the bin and appreciate that many won't and I hope the council have considered this aspect.
Reply ID 94317
My recycling boxes have gone walkabouts sometimes so I just email the council and ask for replacements and you can ask for more boxes than just one each so I now have 2 green boxes and 2 blue boxes. To be fair I have never over filled the green one but usually on two blue ones now. Didn't get the lids or netting though and these have long gone (hence might be my stuff but I do try and mitigate as much as possible. I am also lucky that I can easily store more but if you have the space, just ask the Council for more boxes.
Reply ID 94318
It's all getting rather confusing, isn't it? Makes you wonder why there was no forward planning in the first place by those in charge of policy at EHDC....the blue and green boxes were never going to be big enough in the first place, were they? ...and what on earth is the total cost of several thousand new ones ? ...and I trust that EHDC has insisted on a good 'quality' guarentee for this new lot - so many of the brown bins have had to be taped up because of splitting.
Reply ID 94319
We've sort of done this before on this forum but I am happy to say it again. East Hert's (not unlike many councils) have to be seen to be "investing in recycling". This investment seems to take the form of buying more and multifarious bins for us to carry out a large element of the recycling required by their targets. Councils have a statutory duty to collect and remove household waste. As soon as this waste is classified as "recycling material" by processing (the act of sorting into different bins counts as pre-pocessing) they can be more choosy about how they treat their customers. In some authorities (and most other countries seriously addressing recycling) the investment goes into equipment and labour to process recyclables after collection resulting in the householder having two or a maximum of three "bins" one for general waste and one or two others for recyclables to be sorted industrially (and more efficently and hygenically) at a proper facility (rather than in the "client's" back yard/garden). Local dumps/or civic amenity sites have been renamed "recycling centres" for much the same reasons allowing them to employ Recycling Stasi in hi-viz jackets who appear to delight in rejecting anything which might be considered general waste and making us sort it "on the spot" into it's constituent recycling fractions. These places are becoming less civil and amenable. Be thankful for the generally cooler summer - we will again be plagued by Greenbottles when it warms up and they can complete their life cycle within the 14 days between bin collections! East Herts advice - keep the lid closed and use pesticides. I generally have little time for petty self interest groups like the "Tax Payers Alliance" but we do not appear to be alone and should think ourselves lucky we don't live in Newcastle-under-Lyme - (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12489559).
Reply ID 94323
http://www.eastherts.gov.uk/media/pdf/k/b/p_6-7.pdf Link to the magazine article as well as photos of the new bins..
Reply ID 94324
What a fuss some people make. Two bins and two boxes replaced by 3 bins which means just about the same floor space taken up as now if the 2 boxes are stacked and less if they are not. It will also mean no more rubbish flying out of the blue box on windy days as happens now. Plus tetrapaks and foil are being taken as well for recycling. As for the fly argument any food waste, if you generate it, has and will continue to be taken away weekly as it always has been.
Reply ID 94325
quote:Point taken and marginally conceded. I still think East Herts agenda is to get us to do the recycling and keep their costs lower rather than invest in some more robust recycling facilities or, dare I say it, incineration (to recover energy of course)! [;)]
Originally posted by Andrew
What a fuss some people make. Two bins and two boxes replaced by 3 bins which means just about the same floor space taken up as now if the 2 boxes are stacked and less if they are not. It will also mean no more rubbish flying out of the blue box on windy days as happens now. Plus tetrapaks and foil are being taken as well for recycling. As for the fly argument any food waste, if you generate it, has and will continue to be taken away weekly as it always has been.
Reply ID 94326
quote:Yes the extra recycling types are a good thing and also increased space for "blue box" recycling (however I'm not sure how you put the glass in the big bin without it smashing...). I think the article could have been better written. [:I]
Originally posted by Andrew
What a fuss some people make. Two bins and two boxes replaced by 3 bins which means just about the same floor space taken up as now if the 2 boxes are stacked and less if they are not. It will also mean no more rubbish flying out of the blue box on windy days as happens now. Plus tetrapaks and foil are being taken as well for recycling. As for the fly argument any food waste, if you generate it, has and will continue to be taken away weekly as it always has been.
Reply ID 94327
quote:So you cannot have both by the looks of things. So someone who works from home and has a lot of paper to throw away may not benefit either? I've only brought this up as recently I have been considering moving back to the UK and I work from home and the work I do generates a LOT of spare paper work that eventually ends up as rubbish.
We know that some of you will be concerned about the space needed for the bins and boxes. So to save space you can choose to replace your kerbside box for paper with an inner paper box that will sit inside your new wheeled bin. You can choose to keep your existing box for paper or you can have the new inner paper box instead. We will be asking you to register to receive an inner paper box if you want one, at the beginning of August when we’ll write to all residents with more detailed information.
Reply ID 94328
quote:Wrap it in cardboard/paper to stop it breaking (like we used to do)- [:)][:D]
Originally posted by newcomerquote:Yes the extra recycling types are a good thing and also increased space for "blue box" recycling (however I'm not sure how you put the glass in the big bin without it smashing..)
Originally posted by Andrew
What a fuss some people make. Two bins and two boxes replaced by 3 bins which means just about the same floor space taken up as now if the 2 boxes are stacked and less if they are not. It will also mean no more rubbish flying out of the blue box on windy days as happens now. Plus tetrapaks and foil are being taken as well for recycling. As for the fly argument any food waste, if you generate it, has and will continue to be taken away weekly as it always has been.
Reply ID 94329
Recycled plastic is lower grade and has limited uses. Most of it is used to make recycling bins, which is probably why they want to give us more of them.
Reply ID 94330
Personally I think it will work better for me, I could fill one of those bins just with plastic, much better than the two VERY overloaded blue boxes I put evey collection day. It looks like we wont have to keep the cans and glass seperate as we do now but not sure how that will work, with it all mixed up together.
Reply ID 94356
quote:Easy - http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddy_current_separator
Originally posted by gemipicorn
Personally I think it will work better for me, I could fill one of those bins just with plastic, much better than the two VERY overloaded blue boxes I put evey collection day. It looks like we wont have to keep the cans and glass seperate as we do now but not sure how that will work, with it all mixed up together.
Reply ID 94387
Some further information on the recycling has been put up here: [url]http://www.eastherts.gov.uk/index.jsp?articleid=27296[/url]
Reply ID 94389
My home is 12ft wide. The frontage of my home is about 7ft wide, allowing for access, i.e. the ability to enter my house. Accomodating three bins and a box will be challenging. Why has the council not considered communal storage?
Reply ID 94392
Despite my earlier comments (as I do have some views/history when it comes to complianing to and moaning about East Herts recycling policies) this actually makes some sense and makes recycling more straightforward with less of the kerbside boxes which need to be kept tidy and have unattached (and so in our household missing) lids. I do empathise with Ewoowar as we still have to find space for all this stuff but hopefully it won't be changing every five minutes for a while now so we can plan our back/front yard/pavement arrangements. Perhaps the council would consider a "sharing" scheme where neighbours with less demand could use one bin (of any type) to cover two or more properties? It might be hard, under these circumstances, to identify who excactly was putting their used batteries and aerosol canisters in the brown bin though.
Reply ID 94859
Just got a leaflet through. The new bin is coming on October. However they are NOT taking away the old boxes! They suggest it would be better for the environment is we "re-used" them for other purposes around the house! I will have to dig out the full patronising quote later... I go back to my original suggestion of dumping them on a councillor's front lawn! [;)]
Reply ID 94861
The council should really give us another recycling box to put the old recycling boxes in so that they can be recycled........[:D]
Reply ID 94862
The Mercury is carrying a story about Broxbourne's scheme and the delay due to the fall in price when selling on the mixed recycling materials; it also states that a significant amount of the current composting is sent to landfill due to problems with the cardboard contamination - I assume tape/staples etc. Linking this to another current topic of recent fires in waste reclamation sites where hundreds of thousands of tons of recyclable materials are stored is it fair to assume the bottom has dropped out of the recycling business? I'd assume some of the materials are worthwhile - cans/glass for instance - but others are having problems. Don't get me wrong as I'm 100% behind recycling (actually that's a lie as I firmly believe we don't need much of this packaging in the first place)but it does seem as though there is a problem with the ultimate re-use of the materials. http://www.hertfordshiremercury.co.uk/News/New-bin-collection-scheme-put-on-hold-20130801160948.htm