After almost a year of waiting, some significant changes to the management of household recycling are coming to our area. In some ways it's long overdue, and in others there's a strong feeling amongst some that it's just going to generate more problems.
I've long been a quiet advocate of recycling, and within our immediate family (myself, my wife and two adult children still living at home). Ever since home recycling collections became a thing, our authority (
Vale of Glamorgan) has had co-mingled recycling in place. Effectively this means any household rubbish that's potentially recyclable all goes in one or more blue bags (no wheelie bins here). The exceptions are food waste and green waste and general black bag waste which are collected separately. Generally, it works fairly well although there are one or two challenges which I'll come on to in a minute. In a household of four adults with a schedule of alternating fortnightly collections for black bag and garden waste, and weekly food and general recycling we generally end up with two full blue bags each week (co-mingled recycling remember), and one to two bags of black bag waste destined for landfill a fortnight. I'll leave green and food waste aside for the moment.
The main problem starts on collection day, or rather the night before collection day. Many people on our estate start putting their rubbish out in the middle of the day, the day before collection (we put ours out late evening). This means that if they haven't secured their bags/food waste caddy's securely, by the morning there could be rubbish strewn everywhere courtesy of gulls, and probably cats, foxes, rats and other loitering animals.
On the day, the waste management team empty the containers and then discard the empty food caddy's and blue (or green) recycling bags. Generally they just get left (thrown) on the floor. Despite assertions from the Council on social media that their staff take great care not to just throw these down I've seen this happen repeatedly. In their defence, it's a hell of a job to have to do and they've got to empty hundred if not thousands of containers per shift - not a job I'd fancy, but at please take care. The upshot of this can result in bags and caddies everywhere, and it's even worse on windy days when the blue and green waste bags, despite being weighted can still sail off in the wind like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, never to be seen again. The plastic caddies are not immune either, and these can often be found on windier days scattered across the road, where they create hazards to traffic - I've seen more than one accidentally run over and smashed to pieces and have on occasion stopped my car to get out and move one safely to the side of the road - whilst others carefully swerve around them.
All this can create some angst as householders go looking for "their" containers. We, along with many others have written large on ours our house number, so it's not too bad. We also benefit from a small number of immediate neighbours who collect up everyone's and leave them outside our doors depending on who's first to the scene in the morning (...thanks neighbours 👍)
From next week though we will have a new system of separated recycling. The most immediate sign of this are our new containers. Now we will have to separate our paper (white bag); cardboard (orange bag); bottles and jars (big plastic caddy); other recycling - plastic tins etc (blue bag) as well as the usual food waste (green caddy), green waste (green bags) and general household waste (black bags). Whilst no doubt helping the recycling centres sort the waste more easily, it creates some further obvious immediate and potential challenges to those I've already mentioned.
Firstly, where do you put all these containers? We're lucky (I suppose). We have a small porch which until now has been kept clear and tidy but is now full of the various recycling containers. I could put it in the garage but it's a faff to go out every time to put something in it. I could leave them outside but the aforementioned wind might take them away or at the very least get bags with paper and cardboard very wet and soggy when it rains (yes the bags have covers, but frankly they're not wholly efficient). But what about people that don't have the room in their house or live in a flat? It'll be a nightmare to be honest.
Secondly, whereas we only had to worry about chasing blue and green bags and food caddy's down the road after they've been emptied, we now had to add the challenge of getting the white and orange bags plus potentially the glass caddy. Recycling collection mornings are likely to look like armageddon on windy, wintry days, and it may need a while to find everything.
I'm sure this system will be better in the long run (at least I think I'm sure if I didn't have a deep lingering suspicion that all that all our environmentally conscientious recycling effort goes out the window as Councils end up either sending most to landfill or half way round the world to thrill world economies to deal with).
Is there a better system? Well I suppose it's long overdue the time that we all (and I include manufacturers in this) started being more conscientious about the amount and type of packaging used, and more careful about what we buy. It staggers me that just our household fills two co-mingled bags every week which generally is mostly cardboard (much of which comes from online deliveries - Amazon (and others) looking at your packaging strategies) and plastic packaging from foodstuffs. and this in a nutshell is the problem. As a population we are looking at solutions for the symptom, not cause. Deal with the packaging up front, and recycling would be far less of an issue.
Wheelie bins might stop bags floating down the street, but come with their own issues - storage, effort to get them to the collection point, unsightly, and so on.
Anyway, answers on a postcard please!
