A Rubbish Idea

I have to say I find it rather amusing that councils want to charge us by the bin to collect rubbish. I realise we should all recycle more and that charging us may make us do it (but, as stated in the article, probably won't, and besides, it's the people who can afford to pay the extra rates who'll probably be generating the most waste), but they already do charge us, for a declining service. Now our rubbish is only collected once a fortnight, with recycling collected in between, it has to be in sanctioned bins only, they won't touch anything outside, or in another bin (they leave a nasty note). We also have a completely separate collection for green waste, that can't go in the normal bins.

We recycle in our house, within reason anyway. For example, in their infinite wisdom, our council does not collect glass. Strangely, the council you belong to changes part-way up our street (don't ask me why, it's stupid and inefficient frankly), so the houses at one end, who belong to another council, do get their glass collected, just not us and our neighbours (we're not talk one or two here). We also have strict guidelines for what can and can't be recycled, and let me tell you they ignore a lot of what can, starting with glass (in fact, the people who are part of the other council have a completely separate collection for glass). If you put in too much of the stuff they don't like you get a nasty letter. Yes, we could take it to the bottle bank, but that means a separate trip, wasting fuel solely for the purpose of recycling it, and that's if you can get it in there, because it often full to overflowing.

So, instead of trying to force us to recycle more, why not first increase the range of things you can recycle! Starting with glass, which is probably one of the most recyclable materials. Next, practically any type of plastic, rather than just the handful we're allowed and why are we not allowed to recycle things which have come into contact with food? Surely when they melt it down it can be skimmed off or simply burned away? If you want to help people recycle you need to make it easier for them to recycle, not have to spend 20 minutes looking at a chart trying to figure out if they can or not.