What a waste!

[Gob]

Families are facing a nightmare future of recycling confusion.

In a regime set to spread across the country, residents are being forced to juggle an astonishing nine separate bins.

There has already been a storm of protest with warnings that the scheme is too complex and homes simply don't have the space to deal with the myriad bins, bags and boxes.

The strict regulations have been introduced as councils come under growing pressure to cut the amount of household rubbish they send to landfill. However, they go far beyond anything previously expected from householders and families.

Retired teacher Sylvia Butler is already being forced to follow the new rules. She said: 'I'm all for recycling and used to help educate the kids about it during my geography classes but expecting us to cope with nine different bins and bags is asking too much.'

Pressure on councils to enforce recycling schemes includes rising taxes on everything they send to landfill and the threat of European Union fines if they fail to hit EU targets from 2013 onwards. Compulsory recycling is commonly enforced by bin police who can impose £100 on-the-spot fines for breaches like overfilled wheelie bins, extra rubbish left out, or bins put out at the wrong time. If people do not pay the fines, they can be taken to court, where they face increased penalties of £1,000 and criminal records


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z0lyUtLKGw

[The Hen]

OMG.

I prefer the Ozzie way.

We have three (max) bins. One for mixed recycling (such as paper, cardboard, glass, tins, plastics etc). One for crap that you cant recycle and one for composty stuff and garden shit. (Gob and I don't get that one cause my Government is cheap, so our general crap one contains stuff that could be composted.)

We then employ people to sift through the mixed recycling to get it into the piles it should be. So it employs people and is also easy for the householder to comply with. You just need to know what you shouldn't be putting in there, which isn't much.

Stuff like the clothing, is the responisilbity of the dissatisfied owner to take to a charity of their choice.

This makes it simple and relatively easy for high compliance.

It is going well where I live, but the composting option would make it better.

[kristina]

We have three bins:
The grey one (and it's the smallest) is for garbage.
the big blue one for recycling (and they even take plastic bags, but you have to bundle them together)
the big green one for compostables (yard waste)

We rarely fill the grey bin, as I compost all the kitchen scraps I can, including coffee grounds and paper filters, tea bags, veg peels and all the veggies that migrated to the back of the fridge and morphed into something unrecognizable...

In San Francisco, you could put ANY food waste into the green bin, including bones, meat, cheese, even pizza boxes. The y have some sort of high tech/high temp composting facility that turns it all into usable soil.

[Sue U]

We have the same three-bin system in my town. All recyclables go into one, all non-recyclable trash into another, and all yard waste into a third. (Elsewhere in the county paper products are collected separately from glass/metal/plastic.) We have a couple of good-size compost piles that all kitchen scraps (except meat products) go into. Which reminds me, it's just about time to plant the tomatoes.

[Guinevere]

Two bins for me, a regular trash bin for non-recycleables and a blue bin for mixed-stream recyclables. I do segregate my paper, but all the paper goes in one paper bag, that I sit on top of the blue bin. No compost for me at the new digs -- but I have a disposal, so I suppose that is a form of composting

[Crackpot]

4 bins for me 3 paper cardboard and plastic (glass and tin cans sit on top of the bins) I set aside an take to the recycling center. The other well that's business as usual.

[Jarlaxle]

I have no trash pickup, so I could just have one barrel for everything. However, I do separate out metals, which go into drums to be sold for scrap. The dump has a separate area for recycling plastic, glass, and paper, so i sort that, too.

[Gob]

Lynne Doyle has just been through six months of hell.

The 59-year-old grandmother was interrogated in front of customers at the shop she runs, threatened with a heavy fine and dragged to court to answer for her actions.

Her crime? To wedge a cardboard box between two recycling bins because it was too big to fit in the slot.

Council officers pored over CCTV footage to identify her before accusing her of dumping 'controlled waste'.

It was only when the case finally came to court, and her lawyer advised her to opt for a jury trial, that the local authority suddenly dropped the case.

'They acted as if I dumped a body at the recycling centre, not a cardboard box,' said Mrs Doyle, who runs a fancy-dress shop in Wickford, Essex.

'Why on earth have they got cameras at recycling points? They are quite happy to take photos of law-abiding citizens and use it against them in court but not where fly-tipping is a real problem.

'They are only interested in chasing people when they think they can get money out of them.'

Mrs Doyle's problems began on October 3 when she took the box from a new washing machine to the recycling point at a nearby supermarket.

A few days later she received a letter from Basildon Council demanding she contact it about 'an incident'. Two weeks after that, two environmental health officers arrived at her shop.

'He started reading me my rights, saying I had the right to remain silent or that anything I said would be used against me. I said, "What is this? It's only a cardboard box".

He said I dumped it but I told him I placed it very carefully so it wouldn't blow away. He seemed to think it was from work but we don't have any rubbish from work, we re-use everything.
Mrs Doyle, 59, was hauled in front of magistrates and endured 'six months of hell' before prosecutors finally dropped the case

Mrs Doyle, 59, was hauled in front of magistrates and endured 'six months of hell' before prosecutors finally dropped the case



Caught on camera: Lynne is seen sliding the cardboard box between two bins

'Then he said he had video of me chucking it on the floor. I don't know how many customers I lost when they turned up and saw me being interviewed and me crying.

'It went on for about three-quarters of an hour. He was asking for my National Insurance number and my date of birth.'
Pugh This Is The Police.jpg

The pair handed her a notice of a £300 fine, which she threw in the bin before ordering them out of her shop.

On March 22, she received a summons to attend Basildon Magistrates' Court on April 9 for 'depositing controlled waste'. There, she elected to have the case heard at crown court.

Last week she received a letter telling her the council was dropping the case. Mrs

Doyle said: 'There is no apology and no explanation why they dragged this out for six months.'

Councils have been fitting rubbish tips with spy cameras for several years in case families whose bins are emptied only fortnightly take refuse there which should be recycled.

They can record car registrations and what rubbish people leave and how much - believed to be the first step towards enforcing pricing systems on home collections and tips.

Basildon Council said: 'Mrs Doyle declared in court that this was not commercial but domestic waste. We then decided not to pursue the case any further. Mrs Doyle could have easily avoided this action by using our kerbside recycling service.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z0mFn483px

[dales]

We really are on our way to hell.

San Francisco has "stalinized" trash pick up to the point that people can be fined hundreds of dollars for not recycling properly.

Meanwhile - - - The City is plagued by out of control crime and is fisically bankrupt.

[Gob]

A grandmother aged 95 was threatened with prosecution after putting a plastic butter tub in the wrong recycling bag. Relatives of the woman say she was left horrified by the 'scary' legal notice, which they claim could have triggered a heart attack. Her granddaughter, Karen Walters, 42, said: 'It is scary and ridiculous - she is a really law-abiding citizen. If she had seen the warning, she would have had a heart attack.


Households in West Cross, Swansea, where the woman lives, are supplied with a black bin for non-recycling waste, collected fortnightly; a green bag for glass and tin and another for paper and card; a pink bag for plastic; and dark green sacks for garden waste.

They are also given a kitchen slop bucket, and a container for slops to be kept outside, which is collected weekly.

Mrs Walters said that her grandmother had washed 15 tins and put them in a green bag for collection - but had mistakenly added an empty butter tub, which should have gone in the pink bag. After spotting the container, binmen left a legal notice advising why they had not collected the bag and warning that mixing up recycling can lead to prosecution.

The 95-year-old, who has asked to remain anonymous, said: 'It is ridiculous. It has put us all off recycling.'
Over the past five years, local authorities have introduced increasingly draconian powers to fine households which fail to obey recycling rules.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z0oLzy2kLy

[The Hen]

Mad.

Employ people to sort the rubbish back at base. It is simple really.

[kristina]

Why not just leave a friendly reminder? Something along the lines of "Ooops, please try to separate the plastic from the tin? Thanks for your help."

We just have the one recycling bin, so I'm guessing that our garbage company does hire people to sort stuff. I really should read all the little missives they send with the bill!

[Sue U]

I really should read all the little missives they send with the bill!

Nah, just throw them in the recycling bin!

[kristina]

I really should read all the little missives they send with the bill!

Nah, just throw them in the recycling bin!

[Gob]

Why not just leave a friendly reminder? Something along the lines of "Ooops, please try to separate the plastic from the tin? Thanks for your help."

Too many "Jobsworths" in the UK.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jobsworth

[Gob]

A green-fingered businessman was stunned when he was hit with a £100 fine for fly-tipping - when he left flowers in parking space for a work colleague.

Financial adviser Stephen Mayes, 56, brought two plants from his garden and left them in a colleague's parking space so she could load them into the boot of her car when she arrived at work a few minutes after him.

But within moments of unloading the plants a council warden pounced on Mr Mayes, cautioned him 'like a policeman' and slapped a £100 fine on him for fly-tipping.



Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z0rGBicgMA

[Crackpot]

fly-tipping?

[Gob]

fly-tipping?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly-tipping

Dropping amounts of houshold waste in unauthorised places. Basically dumping your garbage "on the fly", usually in rural locations, rather than pay a disposal fee.

[rubato]

Santa Cruz is one of the first places to have curbside recycling pickup starting in the early 80s.* We've used 3-bins for a long time now. Trash, yard waste, mixed recycling. >5 years ago they had a divider in the recycling bin and one side for paper and the other for everything else which was taken out.

On the whole people like recycling and are happy to do it.


yrs,
rubato

* Rolled out in Live Oak in 1984 and then across the City in 1986.

[Gob]

Binmen have been banned from taking rubbish out of dustbins following a barmy health and safety ruling.B



ill Craig, 80, has used a wheelie bin to help him carry one small black bag of rubbish to the end of his drive every week for the past two years. But the pensioner was stunned when bosses from Colchester Borough Council left him a warning note saying he was using the wrong kind of container for his rubbish. Officials told a bemused Mr Craig that binmen could no longer lean in to the wheelie bin to take away the black bag - in case they injured themselves. And astonishingly the council will now use a specialist team to go to the former fisherman's semi-detached house in West Mersea, Essex, to collect the rubbish instead.

Mr Craig, who has had a heart attack and suffers from chronic back pain, said: 'This is officialdom gone barmy - the council is being held to ransom by health and safety rules. 'You could lift our black bin bag out using two fingers - it is not heavy. 'I was amazed when they told me that they would come and collect it specially - it's only a few food scraps.

'There are only two of us here now so there is not much rubbish but health and safety has gone barmy and you cannot argue with them. 'Considering the state of the country's finances - surely it would be better to try to economise rather than create more costs. 'When I was a kid, the dustmen used to come to the back of the house and collect the dustbin - there were ten of us yet they could still collect it and take the rubbish out to their cart.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z1FUxZ6PFh