UK 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 containers include a silver slopbucket for food waste, which is then tipped in to a larger, green outdoor food bin, a pink bag for plastic bottles, a green bag for cardboard, and a white bag for clothing and textiles.
Paper and magazines go in blue bags, garden waste in a wheelie bin with a brown lid, while glass, foil, tins and empty aerosols should go in a blue box, with a grey wheelie bin for non-recyclable waste.
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.
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33 comments:
Um, aren't all those containers made of . . . plastic?
Anyway, that is SO not happening here. We're done with the over-reaching PC power grabbers. Or at least I am.
In Korea we have six bins. It is the land of all Obamas dreams
That nightmare enviro whacko crap better not come here. That's just too ridiculous and controlling.
On the bright side of things, I just love the term "wheelie bins"! I think that needs to catch on over here! LOL
Many years ago the Wall Street Journal had a well-thought out article on hypocrisy of recycling. The energy, polluting and resources wasted on recycling. It was one article that I wished I cut out and framed.
I hope our local Greenies don't read your blog.It will give them ideas.
I've seen food vendors station "trainers" at their multiple bin recycling stations to teach customers how to correctly bus their own dishes.
One even has separate bins for different kinds of plastic bags. The customer is supposed to be able to tell the difference by "feel."
I keep flunking the lesson.
Al Gores wet dream
Happy Earth Day Nickie !
Rubbish!
I enjoyed your blog. Very insightful
Hope you will find blessings on mine
Jesus Lives, Bob West
http://westbob.blogspot.com/2010/04/line-upon-line.html
I’ve used the word Orwellian far too many times in one day; so I'll use something else for this comment section, Garbage Gestapo.
I've seen this on Penn and Teller's "Bullshit" where they debunked recycling down to it's underwear.
At one point they had about 9 bins outside someone's home or test area and people were there to evaluate the 'new system. Probably Californians.
Anyway, no one had any problem with it.
At my locale they charge for recycling so I don't recycle.
PS - Fuzzy, Great point. Once more illustrating how any liberal concept is at odds with itself.
Each bin contains a liberty the Brits USED to have, and they didn't have them very long.
What can you expect from nation(s)that reinstated feudalism with the EU? This is comfortable for them.
Heaven forbid that with the trash is sorted at the dump or recycling center. I'd refuse to do that and probably end up in jail.
What ever happened to the good old-fashioned chamber pot.
Yawn ..... I am in the UK and we have three bins, as do most people - recyclables, compostables and rubbish. It is really no effort to sort your own rubbish and surely ties in with concepts of taking personal responsibility for one's own actions??? We have 65 million people (probably more) in an area the size of Oregon - we don't have vast areas to dump our crap and forget about it and hope it pollutes someone else's backyard. You share this planet with another 6 billion people ..... deal with that concept, stop opting out and do something positive!!!
Perhaps anyone who doesn't want to take responsibility for the rubbish and waste they produce should be forced to dig a big hole in their own garden/yard, bury it there, and live with the results!!
Sorry for the rant but I have read some appalling posts this week in response to Earth Day and I am fuming ever so slightly ;o)
I really enjoyed reading the posts on your blog. Very informative and well written. God bless, Lloyd
Luckily here in North American we have "vast areas to dump our rubbish and forget about it an hope it pollutes someone else's back yard".
Following this was the regulation sermon from the virtuous enviro.
Under the mask of smiley faces, and can't-we-all-get-along tropes, CC is a pretty angry woman.
Sorry, CL, or Cambridge Lady. While I'm here, CL, what about the nine bins. Is it wrong?
Rhod - I am not a virtuous enviro - I point out on my own blog how I frequently fall short of my green ideals. But sorting a bit of rubbish is so easy, it requires a minimal effort, so yes I am angry when people can't see their way clear to do that.
When you live in a country that is running out of landfill it focusses the mind beautifully.
It's ironic that the very people who argue for taking personal responsibility for their actions are often the ones who NEED legislation to make them behave responsibly. If people acted responsibly through choice then half the red tape could disappear - I'd love that situation!
The smiley faces aren't a mask - I rarely allow anger and negativity to beat me - I see debate, compromise and conciliation as a better way forward.
The nine bins are a step too far but I'm not going to lose sleep over the likelihood of this being a national reality any time soon .....I source my information from other papers and media outlets..... :S
CL:
Stereotypes, stereotypes.
Who are these people in NEED of legislation to make them act "responsibly"? People unlike yourself, no doubt, but what you really mean is that these people need to be punished, coerced, to make them act in ways other than those which fit your Green orthodoxy.
This is simple objectification, and it fortifies the pseudo-benevolence of all oppressive administrative states. You take the blue ribbon for objectification in your first comment, where you divide the world between responsible re-cyclers like yourself and the cavalier polluters on the other side.
Is it true that only 9% of UK waste is domestic, and the rest industrial? Maybe your sources have the answer, and maybe they can provide a picture of how the same problem is handled in Spain or Germany.
You danced around the nine-bin step too far, but what is the proper number of bins? What number would your liturgy permit and your sources endorse?
The problem here is that liberalism is the constant discovery of the next human need - without examining or verifying the claims of that "need" - and the remedy that seems peculiar and excessive now is the norm of the future.
As I've said here before, people eventually get the governments they deserve, and I don't care what happens in the UK. Voting, I think, still matters in your country, but history will, in any case, sort things out.
Landfills in the US are often turned into golf courses as well as being tapped for methane gas to use for energy production. It's a Win-Win-Win.
It costs the US 8 billion a year to recycle, as opposed to having a ROI, according to P&T's expose, provides lovely low paying jobs of sorting disgusting waste to some number of Americans and by and large processes practically worthless goods.
All you need to know is when they start paying bums to bring in plastic and cardboard, and fill in the blanks, as they do with aluminum cans, then it's worth something.
Currently, recycling aluminum is the only kind of recycling with a ROI. But as P&T states throughout their program, recycling makes the folks 'feel good' and 'feel like they are accomplishing something', which is all that matters in any liberal state of reality.
I look forward to the day when there is no parking in front of my house. Just a long row of fifteen to twenty brightly colored plastic bins for me to discard items into.
If people want to park there, they can double-park on the street-side of the bins, where they will be cited by the local constabulary for illegal parking.
This orgy of regulation will result in orderly recycling, a more colorful neighborhood and revenue coupons (traffic tickets) being slapped under the windshield wipers of the unwary!
It will be a brave new world - a more perfect world - where all I need to do all day is decide where to put the crap I want to throw away and wait for the welfare check to be deposited so I can use that money to buy more stuff to put in the recycling bins.
oish lefties can even make garbage problematic..lol :)
I believe this is a worthy voluntary experiment. When it becomes a forced mandatory program because people resist it, it becomes a farcical program.
Unfortunately, the Britain of my youth has become a socialist farce.
Happy and glorious,
Long to reign over us:
God save the EU.
It's already happening here folks. Anybody remember when we could flush more than 1.5 gallons per load in the toilet? And stock up on conventional light bulbs now, we'll be forced to use those pigtail looking POS's in a few years. That last is thanks to G.W. Bush, for those of us wishing this to be just liberal idiocy. I know G.W. was a RINO in many ways, but he'll be the norm in just a few more years.
We're just a few years behind our Brit cousins. Phooey!
Rhod - the proper number of bins? IMO, three is probably just right - as I described earlier. Any more is OTT and people will sort badly so the waste will still need to be sorted at the collection point anyway.
I dislike extra legislation intensely but I observed in the USA that most people would only recycle cans/bottles if there was a financial incentive - otherwise it all ended up in the trash. Here we are using the stick rather than the carrot - we can argue all day as to which approach is best - but without it many people just won't bother to recycle - the environmentally aware from across the political spectrum being the exception. Our European neighbours used to laugh at us in the 70s and 80s because we were so lazy and did a minimal amount of recycling. In Germany and the Netherlands every neighbourhood had recycling facilities decades ago. I for one am very glad we are becoming more "European" in areas like these.
I have posted one of the biggest arguments for recycling on my blog today
http://cambridgelady789.blogspot.com/2010/04/how-can-we-treat-our-planet-like-this.html
Which bin is for crapping in?
I'm sure this will be coming to America very soon if we don't vote the socialist out.
Cambridge Lady we have pretty strict recycling laws in Korea. Don't you find it unsanitary to sort through your trash?
Hi Trestin - No not really, but there again my trash is very sanitary and I'm not at all squeamish ;o) Seriously though .... I just sort as I throw - so no need to delve into your rubbish - and we have a compost bin in the garden, which we use on our veggie plot, so the only potentially rotting food in the bin is going to be left-over meat ..... luckily the kids are going through a "hungry" phase so we don't have too much of that right now! We also donate all our used items to charity shops or Freecycle rather than dump them. I find it a more rewarding way of dealing with trash .... not a chore, or an inconvenience or unsanitary.
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