Anyone else think/feel the same?!

We don't compost as we have nowhere to use it, but i may see about getting a small composter in the summer just to reduce our waste as i do feel guilty when i throw the veg peelings etc in the bin (the stuff that the rabbit can't eat anyway )

Honestly, I thought this too, but having had a grass mulching corner in our garden for all the grass cuttings etc and seeing how quickly (& to how little) it mulched down too, we decided to give it a go with our food waste too, albeit in a wooden enclosed composter to stop our cats getting at it.
As it turned out, when our neighbour realised what we were doing, he came round to see if we had any plans for our compost & when I said no, he asked if he could come round with his wheel barrow to relieve us of it and put it on his veggie plot!

I also wish that our recycling bin could be picked up weekly too (currently the collection alternates between the recycle bin and general bin). It does fill up a lot quicker than our general rubbish bin & this was a bit of an issue when it wasn't emptied for 4 weeks either, especially over Christmas with all the boxes and paper etc. But all we did was fold/compact it all down so that it all fitted into one cardboard box and put it in our shed up until a recycling collection had been made & we could put it all in for recycling

I guess I should make some New Year's resolutions on this too. There's still more we could do, I know. Maybe I'll look into getting another composting bin. We also have chinchillas (as well as cats) and I could probably compost down all their cage cleanings (sawdust & newspaper, & droppings, of course!) which currently goes into the general bin And maybe we could compost some of the newspapers, rather than putting them into the recycle bin.

Ktinkley, good point about the milkman I've noticed that a couple of my neighbours have their milk delivered, so maybe next time I see the milklady (in our case) doing her rounds, I'll ask her about pricing & delivery etc. Those plastic bottles, although recyclable, do take up a lot of bin space

Dooby x

We tried getting our milk delivered as i wanted to save waste and also it made me a bit nostalgic thinking of my childhood and the milkman coming round for his money (he was a lovely Irish bloke whos surname was Kelly, so he always used to say we were related, even though its my christian name ). But it was a complete diaster He was always late, so if we were running low dh would have to go and buy some from the shop anyway for his brekkie and tea in the morning. He never came for his money, and wouldn't leave extras when we asked for them/delivered when we'd said we wouldn't need any. The last straw came when, after numerous phonecalls to tell the company he hadn't been round to collect money, we got a sh*tty letter from them saying if we didn't pay they would take us to court etc. Then when we phoned yet again we were told we couldn't pay direct, it had to go through the milkman. But they had no answer when we asked how we were supposed to pay when he never called round to collect and was so unpredictable on when he deliered So we went back to buying from Tesco

not read all 4 pages but....

not everyone has a car to take bags to the dump (...imagines the amt of trips to the dump using buggy tray on bus then walk from nearest bus stop to dump......)

Living in a flat you are limited too. We are not allowed to compost in the shared grounds and I have asked the council to collect my compostable waste (as I use a veg box so there's lots of things that are already cut off if you buy veg in a supermarket like stalks and stuff) and they said "use a friend's garden"

Have also heard people complain about people who don't just store it in their garage rather than on the street - erm an average income would not get you a property with its own garage round here!

our recycling is collected fortnightly too and we only have one small box. Again not everyone has cars for trips to car parks. There are loads of types of plastics that our council will not take.

I hate throwing stuff out and reuse all kind of things that others would dump, use washable nappies, recycle everything that's recyclable but still have an overflowing bin as a result of the snow (well it was collected this week). What more can I do? it is unfortunately a very wasteful time of year too.

Shame about the milkman, we have a fab one - it is always on the doorstep when we get up at 7am, I think I hear him sometimes about 5.30am! I change my order and pay online and have also ordered other things like yogurts and butter. I love that I give the bottles back, because of course re-using is even better than recycling

Wormeries are smaller than a composter if you haven't got much space - haven't got one, but they sound like fun. wrigglywigglers.com is a fab site.

We've got a slimline composter and it's quite skinny - and it drops so fast in the summer, you don't really need to do anything with the compost unless you want to. I had one for four years at our last house, with a bigger garden than we have now and never emptied it - and when we left it was only half full!

I'm sure there's more we could do too - go back to cloth (if DD's awkward bum would allow ), stretch the budget to the milkman, I guess it's not really people that are making an effort that are causing the problem - I passed several houses on the walk to school today which had piles of rubbish bags int he front gardens - some really smelly - and you could clearly see that there was recyclable stuff mixed in with non recycled.

Scariest thing was the other day in the car - turned a corner and there was a dead rat lying in the middle of the road - massive thing, must have been brought out into the open by the rubbish.

My Dad is a retired EHO, who specialised in infectious diseases. When we first went to fortnightly collections for our household waste he was a frequent writer to the local press saying how this would increase pest populations, bluebottles etc. He was right. I see more rats now than i have ever seen in my life, often in the summer i can open my bin and have loads of flies fly out (the lifecycle is around 10 days, so they have chance to lay eggs which hatch before the next collection day). Seagulls are more rife than ever, as are foxes. All very good reasons to try and cut down on the amount of household waste in the bins imo

infact i often end up filling my bin with stuff that ought to go in the recycling bin but if thats full they wont take extra bags of recycling so i tend to have to throw it into the normal bin (which i hate doing) but otherwise i would end up with a backlog...

Can you ask the council for a second recycling bin? That's what we've done. It's for card, paper, certain plastics and tin cans. Not glass, which is a pain as we have to take bottles and jars to the bottle bank. Tetrapaks can be taken to the recycling facilities at a big Asda near us so we do juice cartons that way.

We spent a couple of days at my SIL's over Christmas and they have pretty much everything collected including all food scraps. They have to buy their own liners for the caddy though which apparently are quite expensive. We compost at home but can only do fruit and veg peelings etc, any cooked food goes in the general waste which is a pity.

And going back to the 'certain plastics' bit, our council will take those marked with 1, 2, or 4 which is fair enough. Except about half of plastic packaging doesn't tell you what type it is. Or unhelpfully says 'recyclable - check locally' without providing the details you need to check locally . Moan over.

we can't get a second recycling bin. there is literally no space for it - there's a tiny alcove amongst the cars and they're all piled up there as it is. if we lived in a house with our own garden - no probs! but its not an option for us. We take what we can in terms of over flow to the car park collection points but my DH is away with the car most of the time so its difficult. It needs to be weekly, not more bins!