Here’s a New Year resolution Bath and North East Somerset Council would like us to adopt in an effort to reduce the amount of general household rubbish they have to collect.
They want us to put recycling high up on our 2018 agenda.
Most people – they say – recycle paper, bottles and cans but according to the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) only 12 per cent of households are recycling all they can.
More than half of us are still not regularly recycling everything we can from the bathroom and the average UK household only recycles 270 of the 480 plastic bottles they use each year.
Here are Bath and North East Somerset Council’s top ten list of items you might not realise you can recycle …
With your tins and cans and plastic you can recycle …
- Aerosols – empty deodorant and hairspray, furniture polish and air fresheners
- Biscuit tins – metal and plastic biscuit tins can be included with your plastic and cans.
- Cleaning bottles – including bleach bottles and bathroom cleaners
- Liquid soap bottles – empty, rinse and remove pump dispenser (throw that in the bin)
- Shower gel, shampoo and conditioner bottles – rinse, squash and replace the lids
With your cardboard you can recycle …
- Empty tissue boxes please flatten
- Empty boxes for dishwasher tablets and washing powder please flatten
With your small electrical items you can recycle …
- Broken electric toys – if they’re small enough to fit inside a plastic carrier bag you can put them out next to your green box for recycling
With your clothes and shoes you can recycle …
- Bedding – sheets, pillow cases and duvet covers (no pillows, duvets or other stuffed items). Please put in a labelled bag to keep dry
- Clothing accessories – including hats, bags, belts and jewellery
You can also line your food waste caddy or bin with an everyday carrier bag (such as a plastic carrier bag, bread bag or vegetable bag) so if you haven’t already started recycling your food waste make sure you order your food bin now – it’s clean and easy to use.
Cllr Bob Goodman (Conservative, Combe Down), Cabinet Member for Development & Neighbourhoods said: “If we all recycle as much as we possibly can that means we need to throw away less in our rubbish bins. Please make sure that you only put your rubbish in your wheeled bin or re-usable rubbish bag – do not put out any extra rubbish.”
To find out more about Bath & North East Somerset Council’s recycling and rubbish collections, please go to www.bathnes.gov.uk/wasteservices or contact Council Connect (councilconnect@bathnes.gov.uk 0
Thanks Richard,
Effective recycling is indeed something we all need to do properly… and there is more…
As a species we need to reduce massively our use of plastics, …. a “time-bomb” only now starting to be recognised as a threat to all life forms, from micro-organisms to the great whales… and us too.
The packaging industry and stupidly excessive Brussels food hygiene regulations are responsible for a vast quantity of unnecessary plastic being produced and, almost immediately, thrown away. Government could so easily DISCOURAGE the use of plastics and ENCOURAGE the use of other, truly biodegradable materials… but, as things stand, the plastics and packaging industries have a powerful and well-funded lobby.
The answer to this is for people to organise and force politicians to ignore the greed of those big corporate interests in favour of what matters… the environment and our long-term future.
… and, while I am ranting… just one more thing…
There is a massive fudge currently being visited upon us all by lazy and corrupt politicians and local authorities working hand-in-glove with another part of “Big Business” to seize a fortune in profits for the long term future.. at the expense of the public purse AND public health… It is mass incineration of waste. Giant incinerators are springing up all over the country, all built and run by a very small group of BIG companies which are being paid handsomely for the privilege of doing nothing more than burning as much waste as they can lay their hands on. The excuse is that the waste would otherwise have to go to land-fill… which, of course, is NOT a solution… just a lazy public servant’s answer to a challenging problem.
These incinerators are already starting to pollute our air… not just with millions of tonnes of CO2 (which our planet REALLY doesn’t need right now), but also producing poisonous particulates, noxious gases and “CFC’s” from plastics and heavy metals, which the big companies say they can filter out to within current safety limits but which, in reality, will inevitably cause massive long term damage to public health, since, having to some extent by-passed the loudly advertised filters, they are just dumped into the air we breathe.
Other countries have already realised just how serious it is, and they have acted. Cancer clusters have been identified around incinerators in Italy, East coast USA and Canada. More forward-looking bodies like the state of California have already recognised the danger and outlawed mass incineration of waste.
The soft sell which the big companies use, (apart from the half-truth of filtering out toxins and so-called toxic “fly-ash”) is that they use the heat of the furnace to generate electricity. This is technically true, but it also conceals a brazen lie… The amount of electricity produced is tiny, because the systems are extremely inefficient compared with purpose built power generators. In short, the power generation story is just a handy piece of “PR” for the deep-pocketed Big Business corporates who, it turns out, are thoroughly “in bed” with a number of powerful politicians and public servants, who are using their power to “rubber-stamp” ever more incineration projects, all built at massive public expense.
Take a look at what has happened with the Cardiff incinerator…. It actually REDUCED the amount of combustible waste sent for re-cycling… because the furnace operators made it cheaper to burn, since it gives them the heat they need to make their electricity generation story even begin to be true. The result… much more CO2 dumped into the air and much less re-cycling achieved.
… and finally… the plastics, which form the vast bulk of what will be burned. We don’t really need those plastics. We just use them because they are so “convenient”.
Let us start doing the right thing, get rid of plastics from our lives wherever we can, and start looking a lot more carefully at the highly questionable relationship between Big Business and politicians, both local and national.
The biggest builder of incinerators in the UK is Balfour Beatty and, surprise, surprise, that some giant corporate also just happens to be a major funder of the Conservative Party… which ruthlessly pushes through decisions to build incinerators UK-wide.
We have seen this web of corruption operating in plain sight in Gloucester, where a giant incinerator is now being built next to the M5. Others are already operating closer to Bristol and it has been calculated that the UK will soon have more incineration capacity than we need… which, with Big Business calling the shots, means only one thing… The UK is going to become a net importer of waste… much of which will end up as fumes and toxins being dumped into the air which we and future generations must breathe.
I am sorry this is such a long story… but it needs to be told !
JP