Recycling

If you use hard fats, you can stir in bird food and put it outside for them, then there's no waste at all.

If you can be arsed you can make pemmican with melted fat and dried, ground meat like the Eskimos did.

Another thing I do is wipe round wok or frying pan with kitchen paper and then use the oil-impregnated paper as a firelighter in the stove.

Oh yes, we do the birdfood cakes as well, in the winter mainly.

Never thought of that, B - Good tip.

Walnuts make v. good firelighters, if one happens to have a glut and can no longer face cracking yet more.

Our dishwasher blew up about a month ago. Haven't missed it and not going to replace it. Rather pay a little more on water and electrical bills, which will be minimal compared to the cost of a new one.

The kitchen paper tip...

The very thought of washing up cans (eek), the very thought sets my teeth on edge, and I can't be arsed to wash out jars........

The very thought of NOT washing out tins, cartons, milk bottles, etc makes me feel sick. Imagine the smell by the time the next fortnightly collection comes round. YUK

Think the modern dish washers use much less water...but electricity, not sure?

I just do it at the end of the washing up ( there is always washing up, even with a dishwasher) and if you don't like touching the items use rubber gloves and one of those sponges with a handle that you can fill, with WU liquid.
Our plastic tin and glass all gkes into one, so someone has to sort it and it can't be very pleasant if it is stinking and going mouldy.

I have a large drawer under the sink that contains a food waste bin and a one for recycling. I save the resealable, dishwasher tablet bags for disposing of oil or grease.

Yes Bags I also use any hard fat e.g. that has come out of sausages, for feeding the birds and wipe round frying pan with kitchen roll and either re oil the pan after washing or use to light the fire. We never seem to have anything to go in our waste food bin as the cat gets any meaty or fishy left-overs and vegetable waste, cooked or uncooked goes in the compost bin, except for potato peelings which go on the fire to help clean the chimney. All plum, apricot and plum stones also go on the fire. (This week 3 cooked sausages, forgotten at the back of the fridge, also provided a good blaze, but shh don't tell DH)

Okay - here goes: in the kitchen we have a three small bins, one each for un-recycleable rubbish, for cooked waste and for compostable waste. Outside the back door we have shelving for: re-usable jam jars and glass bottles; cardboard; egg boxes (for return to our egg supplier); two boxes for ordinary recycling and one for tetra paks; a bin for teabags and coffee grounds; a compost bin; an ash can and of course next to the shelving is an alcove for the big black rubbish bin. My husband watches over us all like a hawk and heaven forfend if one of us should put something out for the rubbish that can be recycled!!!!

We have large nylon bags supplied by the DC for paper and cardboard (we compost a fair bit of this anyway), glass, metal and plastic recycling. The large green wheelie bin is for garden and kitchen waste (we compost much of this too) and we could also put animal waste in this bin if we were so inclined.

Then of course the grey wheelie for anything else.

Between the compost, the dogs and the chickens there is almost no food waste.

Granny23 I do miss our real fire and it was great for burning things like chicken bones.

Our council leaflet asks you to rinse cans/jars etc. it makes the job of the bin men more pleasant if nothing else.

I have a waste bin in the bottom of the sink cupboard where we chuck cans/jars. I have waste bins in most rooms - a habit left over from when the kids were at home - and just have an extra one in the dining room for paper.

Glass has to be taken to the bottle bank still. We had the option for house collection but it was turned down as the local town council gets the money from it (instead of it getting absorbed into the District) which comes in very handy. It's paid for play equipment which we wouldn't otherwise have and stuff like that.

Reading back, it seems that Norfolk is lagging behind here. We don't have food waste bins and can only recycle plastic bottles not yoghurt pots and such.

Cheshire East has silver bins for all recyclables - paper, card, cans, glass, most plastics, foil - and these go to a modern waste separation plant beyond Chester. Paper goes to a paper manufacturer owned by the same company.

I should add that what we don't have yet is a food recycling scheme but I compost what I can.

All our food waste, veg, meat and bones can go in with the garden waste. I hope the composting system gets it good and hot.

I live in a small first floor flat with no garden, or outside space. My recycled tins and plastics are not only washed out, but plastic bottles and containers are jumped on and squashed flat before joining the newspapers etc. I try to avoid as much packaging as I can, but still end up with two large plastic bags full. I start by hanging one from a hook in the kitchen until I can no longer walk past it when it goes into my shower cubicle until collection day. It's not only smells that result from not washing out food containers, but maggots too.

I do feel that the packages should be tackled at the other end and that it is totally unnecessary to have bubble packs enclosing fruit, meats, toothbrushes etc. etc. etc. Maybe large fines would deter suppliers from using these packs in the first place.

Pet hate....cucumber tightly wrapped in polythene inside another cellophane wrapper....why?

Our council has supplied us with FIVE bins. Three wheelie bins - one for gardening, one for recycling and one for stuff that can't be recycled. There is also a small brown caddy type bin which has a bucket inside it. You are supposed to take the bucket out of the caddy, keep it indoors to put food waste in and then take the food waste out of the bucket and put it in the caddy on collection day.The caddy is kept outside alongside the 3 wheelie bins (are you keeping up?). You can line your bucket with bin bags but these have to be bio-degradable and you have to buy these yourself. So at the front of our house we have 3 wheelie bins and a caddy which look most unsightly. Oh and the wheelies have different coloured lids, one of which is blue. Last week the council replaced all the blue lids with new blue lids as they were deemed to be 'not blue enough'.

Trust they recycled the faded blue ones?

Where on earth can you find room for FIVE bins?

Aka - we can't find room. It's ridiculous. As I said three are big wheelie ones but they (and the bloody caddy) have to be kept at the front of the house. When they replaced the blue lids, a white van came along and 2 lads took the old lids off and put the new lids on. They left the old lids on the pavement and then another white van came along an hour later and 2 more lads picked all the old lids up and took them away. It is farcical.

Never thought the day would come when I would be discussing bins!

I'm exhausted KatyK, must go for a lie down.

Ours is similar, but they provide polythene bags (surely not eco friendly?). Tins, plastic and glass in one, paper and card in another, a third for general waste. Then there are the bags which we have to pay a levy on annually for garden waste, the small food recycling bin lined with biodegradable bags which goes into the larger food recycling bin outside. Oh, and the clinical waste bags for nappies and other incontinence necessaries. So if you don't have babies in the house all the neighbours know if you have a problem with incontinence as they are brightly coloured!

They changed the colour of the garden bags last year so most people have a load of very large bags made of polypropylene hanging around; we had just bought some new ones and then they changed the system. OK if you have the space, you have to devise other uses for them.

Rose - I have heard that some people have to pay to have garden waste taken. We haven't been charged yet but I won't hold my breath. I remember being on holiday in Devon a few years ago in a holiday cottage. The owner lived next door and came around to make sure we put this in that bin and that in another bin. He was most concerned that we got it right. At the time we only had one bin at home. In the end we were so confused that we put everything in a black bag and took it home! I said to DH I couldn't be doing with that palaver. Little did I know what was coming. When we first had all these bins I was really annoyed. Strange how you get used to it though. And we are all in the same boat around here.

We have a big box with divider for glass and cardboard. One day the baby must have gone out with the bathwater, as we had no divider! DH rang the Council and a very helpful lady told us to use the box either for glass or cardboard, and put the rest in the ordinary bin as we were going to be given separate boxes soon!

That was three years ago, and no one in our road has a divider left - it's a farce!