Black blue and green

 Our local council has implemented a new recycling scheme starting in April and today was delivery day for our new bins.

From April our normal black bin waste will be collected every two weeks.  I have no problem with that I only put it out every two weeks anyway.  We will still use our blue bag for paper and cardboard, again every other week, same as before. There is a yearly fee for our green garden waste bin, (which we pay) and that is collected every two weeks.  But now we have a blue 240 litre bin for plastic, cans and glass, again to be collected every other week.  I can't see me putting this out every other week, it's going to take us ages to fill even half way!

We also now have waste food bins.

The smaller one is supposed to be kept in your kitchen for food waste and then emptied into the larger container which will be collected every week.  

Like many people posting on the local FB page I will not be using either of these two food waste bins.  For starters we don't have a big kitchen so nowhere to put it, there is just enough room under my sink for the waste bin and some general cleaning things, so it can't go there, and in any case we have very little food waste.  There has been valid concerns raised over attracting rats in the garden with the food bin. 

 They are locked by putting the handle down, but, my smaller one came with the side bent meaning the handle doesn't go down, good start, but as I said I won't be using them anyway.  

Having all these bins is all well and good, but less packaging on items would be even better, and our council only actually recycles 35% of collections, way below the national target.  

The food waste scheme was rolled out in other boroughs and the take up was so little that it was abandoned not long after.  So perhaps council money could have been put to better use?

There is also the problem of storing all these bins!  

We have side gate and luckily enough room in that walk up to the garden to store them, but there are a lot of terraced houses here in the UK which do not have side entrances and bins are kept on the pavement, (looks awful and unsightly), but other than pull the bin through the house what do they do?

I'll probably take the larger of the food bins down the allotment, it'll come in handy to store my gloves and trowel in 🤭

What does your council do in the way of waste and recycling collections?

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