recycling.....

I feel just the same gerry86, I didn't cause plastic to become such a problem nor did anyone I know, including on here!!! and yet it is us who are being finger wagged and made to feel excessively guilty, which up to a point I do, BUT, manufacturers bear the greatest guilt over the years as they, together with governments should have been well aware of the dangers that lay ahead regarding uncontrolled plastics, and not be behaving as if they had no idea of the damage that was being caused in order to shift the blame! - so bl###y dishonest!

I have tried to cut down on plastic as much as I can. Buy cans of drink, jars, packets.

The trouble is I shop online. When I order fruit and veg loose it comes in a plastic bag!!! I don't want the plastic bag, just the paper bag the plastic bag is put in!!!

Widgeon are you for real, surely you don’t eat banana skins unwashed?

I recently had to order something that my small branch of Boots didn’t stock. It was in a plastic bottle with a plastic label in a plastic bag wrapped in bubble wrap in a plastic delivery envelope!!! Grrrr!
Agree with all of you that we are doing our individual best but the manufacturers need to do the same.

Manufacturers should be compelled to use recyclable materials and Councils should be compelled to accept all recyclable material. The list that our Council won't accept is larger than the list of what they will.

There was a case a few years ago there was a case where a man was fined £1K for putting his bins out a day early. They had not been able to contact the man but he was fined in his absence. Common sense tells you that the man was moving the day before and put his rubbish out so it wouldn't rot before the new resident came in! We are being made the scapegoats for the Authorities/manufacturers incompetence!

Elegran reusable produce bags are already available and have been for well over a decade, when I first got mine.

Here is a sample of what you can get on Amazon. www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_8?sprefix=Produce+%2Ckitchen%2C232&crid=2BZ0EEZFEEQLT&tag=gransnetforum-21&url=search-alias%3Dkitchen&field-keywords=produce+bags

Sue I have made some produce bags from left-over bits of dress net, they work well but being polyester net will outlive us all. Those on Amazon are polyester too. What is really need is ones made of cotton net, which will eventually rot down. Cotton net appears to be either unobtainable or it is expensive and too thick to scan bar-code labels though. Old-fashioned net curtains would come in useful!

It's gone beyond hasn't it? Put your own bins out front way (so unsightly), sort it, wash it etc, if in wrong bin, bin not emptied. If in doubt, I put it in a black bin liner, into general waste, (black bin in our case), blue bin for recycled objects, brown bin for garden and food waste, all alternately emptied fortnightly, which is mighty smelly, especially in Summer, but surely this fear of getting it wrong, therefore bin not emptied, is defeating the whole object. Bring back dustmen who just came weekly down our back alley ways and just emptied the rubbish. as Jim Royle, (The Royle Family) would say, progress my A...e!

We’ve recently been to Norway which apparently only allows four types of plastic to be used in its bottles and containers so all can be recycled. Where we are everything to be recycled goes into one bin, glass, paper, everything, which is great, but knowing what goes in is more difficult. Food trays can go in except for black ones. Why not black ones?

Our council is about to send us new black bins, about 30% smaller than the present ones, but sticking to the same two weekly collection. However they still won't collect plastics, saying they remove them from the normal waste. So I collect my plastics separately and take them to the collection point at Asda, but that means finding space to collect them in my little kitchen!

Don’t all councils give you the possibility of bags instead of gigantic wheelie bins?
I insisted on bags and I only put out one household rubbish bag and one blue recycling bag each two or four weeks. It’s ridiculous that old people living alone are supplied with hideous great bins which must take a couple of months to fill.

Reading all these responses it is clear that we all feel strongly about recycling and our environment. Some of us go to tremendous trouble to make sure we recycle responsibly.
I would still like to see some consistency across the country for councils to collect and recycle the same things, including plastics. I would also like to see the makers of packaging taking more responsibility for producing plastic that can be recycled easily. I would like to see supermarkets making huge efforts to reduce packaging by insisting their suppliers comply with this. I would like to see non recyclable plastic banned-an example is the dark meat trays that meat is sold in.
I despair when I read the list of items that are not allowed in the recycling bins. How have we come to this? Plastic is unavoidable in our lives. We can use paper bags and our hessian shopping bags for many things but what can we use for bleach or shampoo or washing up liquid. Maybe we should start the gransnetters recycling movement to get things changed

While each council makes make its own arrangements with the firms who re-use the recycled stuff, there will always be differences in what they decide is worth the expense of collecting and selling on. There needs to be co-operation over larger geographic areas to get the best prices and services.

Apparently the only thing that stops black plastic trays being recycled is that being black makes them invisible to the scanner eye on the sorting machines. So why do food firms use black plastic anyway? Do they use recycled plastic in mixed colours and dye it black because it comes out a weird blotchy colour? Or is it because it doesn't show the dirt?

that is exactly the point elegran. when companies produce an item that they know cant be recycled-the black plastic tray, why should we, the consumer have to deal with it. we are at the bottom of the chain here, washing, sorting, organising, worrying about each piece of plastic that ends up in our shopping. i said before i think that the ones that really drive me insane are the bottles where the bottom can be recycled but the top cant be. this is madness. the choice is throw the whole lot into the general rubbish or risk injury as you attempt to prize off the lid. this sort of poor design and manufacture stuff needs stopping at the source, not be left to each one of us, in our kitchens

I’ve been thinking long and hard about what I can do here. So I’ve made a plan
1.Write to my MP. Not hopeful there though. She writes a great fob off letter.
2.Write to the big supermarkets and ask them what their policy is on recycling, do they specify that products are delivered in recyclable materials-the meat tray for example, what their plans are for improving the situation, what about the shop floor and the amount of plastic waste there.
3.Write to my local council and try and find out what guidelines and legislation they work under and how much flexibility they have in interpreting the rules
4.When writing to the council, I will ask how much of the recycled waste is rejected and why. And how much the rejected waste costs to dispose of. Also, apart from issuing constantly updated lists of does and don’ts of recycling, what steps are they taking to reduce rejection of waste
I’m sure I will think of more steps as the day goes on but I must get off the laptop and get on with something useful

I wrote to my council asking when the food waste buckets which were supposedly being 'rolled out' across our district, would reach us. The reply was that there wouldn't be any more due to government cutbacks. I rather think it's an excuse.

Elegran these are cotton and there are others, too. www.amazon.co.uk/Reusable-mesh-produce-bags-drawstring/dp/B01M5BFFTM/ref=sr_1_12?s=kitchen&keywords=produce+bags&tag=gransnetforum-21&ie=UTF8&qid=1519247998&sr=1-12

I don't worry too much that the bags I use are polyester. I've had them for well over ten years and so that's a good multiple use rate. Cotton bags may have worn thin in that time plus they're heavier so you'll have paid more for your goods.

I think it's the single use plastic that is truly concerning, really. I've got plastic items in my house that I've had for over 40 years and that still have years of wear in them such as spatulas, Tupperware boxes (better than plastic bags!), a general purpose bowl for small cleaning jobs and so on. By the time I'm done with them, they might end up as collectors items!

Back to plastic bottles. This water-bottle refill scheme now has over 1600 points acr4oss the country.

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