please empty your brain below
I wonder what Mr Recycle More thinks about all of this?

martin | 16.06.17 - 7:09 a.m. | #

In my town, the pknk sacks are delivered every so often, but we always need more whicn are given witb a smile from libraries or parish council offices. As a result, we put out three pink sacks to every non-recyclable sack.

Your council is cutting, not saving.

They would have been better off not employing someone to come up with daft 'improvements' like Idea Store instead of library and have avoided all the cost of rebranding.

Malcolm Dobell | 16.06.17 - 7:15 a.m. | #

Hmm my Council is still at the "originally" stage, where rolls of bags are delivered, but blue here. Your post is a glimpse of what the future might hold here. Honestly if they expected me to go there to collect the bags that wouldbe the end of most of the recycling for me, sadly.

Jon Combe | 16.06.17 - 7:30 a.m. | #

This is an example where the 'customer' incurs extra costs, so the 'government' saves money.

I wonder how many went to an Ikea store to ask for bags?

Still anon | 16.06.17 - 7:34 a.m. | #

Local councils pay lip service to recycling as only a minority do it . The houses in my road have good sized gardens but I bet under 10% have a active composting bin .Ironically in the past the council has given these out for free. Getting your hands dirty is not welcomed by most and a well tendered garden unfashionable. Green bins are now emptied fortnightly but,as in some boroughs eg Harrow, I expect this soon to be cut completely .

chicker | 16.06.17 - 7:38 a.m. | #

Flimsy bags: double bag the stuff.

Ardent recycler | 16.06.17 - 7:48 a.m. | #

If you look at locations where recycling rates are high and have a similar demographic, those areas are successful because barriers to recycling processes are minimal. As soon as barriers rise - such as only using a certain container, having to wrap cardboard in biodegradable string and so on, more and more people move to stuffing it in their main waste. Service provides increasingly forget they are providing a service along with all that entails.

The Legendary Zelda | 16.06.17 - 8:02 a.m. | #

Local authorities have had their grants cut hugely first under the coalition and then under the Tories. This impacts upon recycling in estates, and generates madcap schemes like this. In the light of the fire, readers might begin to place this into a different context, and apportion blame differently. Here in Waltham Forest, we have a more effective recycling system, but fewer high rise council estates. No one has ever really thought very deeply about the practicalities of effective recycling in large estates nor, for that matter,about anything else to do with them recently.

Brian | 16.06.17 - 8:11 a.m. | #

This sounds bonkers - ID for rubbish bags?

Here in Belgium you buy the various bags you need at supermarkets. They're hardly expensive and you get what you need.

Green bags - garden waste / Christmas tree...
Orange bags - food waste
Yellow bags - paper / cardboard.
Blue bags - plastics
White bags - everything else

Collected twice a week during which time the street looks like a garbage rainbow but it works!

Kevin | 16.06.17 - 8:16 a.m. | #

In Southend, they thought that stopping the delivery and distribution of black general waste bags would increase the recycling, and deliver only flimsy pink bags for all recycling, many in protest at having to purchase black bags now only put all rubbish in the black bags as a protest and the recycling rate in the borough has gone down, DOH where do these councils get their ideas

Peter | 16.06.17 - 9:10 a.m. | #

A lot of residents in Tower Hamlets don't even need pink bags.

Our small block of flats got three pink wheels bins delivered to go next to our black wheely bins. Now I just empty the recycling bin straight into the wheely bin.
If there is a pink bin available it is actually preferred that waste is not bagged before it goes in to the bin.

Jon | 16.06.17 - 9:16 a.m. | #

Lambeth' recycling arrangements have a similar history, though at one stage when collecting from the library you had to sign for the roll of bags. Recently our block of flats had a delivery of rolls, one per flat.

VeeJayEm | 16.06.17 - 9:18 a.m. | #

I like the carefully staged photo showing a bottle of Becks and a box of Creme Eggs.

Michael Churchill | 16.06.17 - 9:19 a.m. | #

Unless the cost of collecting it, sorting it and recycling it is covered by the value of the recycled material, you have to ask what the point of recycling is. There is a glut of recycled material on the market because the targets are on collections, not reuse.

Whilst frontline services are being cut in councils, those cuts don't seem to be going up the org tree - far too many middle and senior managers are still in place despite a reduction in services.

Jimbo | 16.06.17 - 9:29 a.m. | #

Jimbo,

It still costs money to send rubbish to landfill or incineration. So even if we aren't making money from recycling the cost may not be any worse than landfill. Also digging more holes and filling them with stuff isn't really working any more as our little island isn't that big. We need to try and reuse our materials.

Jon | 16.06.17 - 9:38 a.m. | #

In Lambeth we have gone from large clear recycling sacks to plastic wheelie bins. Many people hate the bins - they are unsightly and they are difficult to navigate from garden to pavement. Our food recycling sacks used to be provided free but now we have to purchase them from a supermarket etc. I wonder whether there has ever been a study which looks at which refuse / recycling models work best in terms of for residents, councils and society.

Victoria | 16.06.17 - 10:52 a.m. | #

Lambeth moved from bags to green bins (deliberately bigger by default than black bins) which, although explicitly stated as a cost saving, was actually an improvement - animals ripped open the bags even though there was rarely anything very nutritious inside.

Either the people of Belgium are more civic-minded than here or the authorities persist with a broken scheme because, if people here had to buy their own bags and sort their own rubbish, few would bother. Even food waste has a very low collection rate - from what I see most people have given up.

dezincify | 16.06.17 - 11:06 a.m. | #

In the future, historians will treasure DG's blog because it offers snapshots of life in London and England in the early 21st century - he provides the sort of detail that is missing from the history of times past.

For the future historians, then, there needs to be a mention of the unofficial but highly efficient metal recycling service that has grown up whereby householders leave their unwanted metal objects at the front gate and these are collected for scrap.

The usual collectors are guys from Eastern Europe in off-white vans, but here in the Deep South (Sutton) a man with a horse and cart clip-clopped past the house the other day.

RayL | 16.06.17 - 12:08 p.m. | #

So I'm not the only one exasperated at the failure within LBTH to look at the big picture and just fixate on the budget for pink bags....
Paradoxically, pink (or rather clear) bags were delivered (without prompt) to properties on the isle of dogs last week.

IslandDweller | 16.06.17 - 12:43 p.m. | #

Seems to me it is LBTH's choice of refuse contract/contractor that is at fault. In our area we are not permitted to place glass in the clear recycling bag...this goes in a tub (a council issued one or your own). We have seen minor tweeks to the system employed over the years which seems to relate to the methods used by the wastes collector/processors in separating different elements in that waste. Higher automation = you have to separate more. Everything in one bag suggests the processor is using expensive humans to stand over a moving belt picking through your crap.

b | 16.06.17 - 1:25 p.m. | #

But why isn't the Councils' focus on getting those who make the recycling - mostly supermarkets - to reduce their unnecessary packaging? Charging 5p for a plastic carrier bag is not the end of what needs doing.

Madness.

Here in a non-urban area, our recycling rate is above 50%.

Our flat-dwellers (not many admittedly) get communal landfill and recycling bins. But madness even here - there is no recycling for trade waste, only paid landfill.

Looking at reducing packaging is the only way forward. It is clear that recycling does not work as envisaged, for many good reasons.

Blue Witch | Homepage | 16.06.17 - 2:20 p.m. | #

Ditto the comment above, live in a block in tower hamlets and we just keep our recycling in a separate plastic bin in the kitchen and empty it into the big pink bin outside. No need for the pink bags at all.

One thing that has always troubled me with recycling is whether the resources used to recycle the used items is greater than just making new things. Can't we create energy from burning waste?

Lumma | 16.06.17 - 2:48 p.m. | #

I'd love a pink bin.
We're not allowed a pink bin.
So bags it is.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 16.06.17 - 4:20 p.m. | #

I think you are missing the bigger picture here.

What is really happening is that by rolling back the stifling grasp of The State you've been empowered to adopt nimble, citizen-led solutions to today's important environmental concerns.

Those concerns will also be rolled back once we liberate ourselves from EuroRedTape and we can proudly, once more dump our crap all over the Great British landscape.

drD | Homepage | 16.06.17 - 4:40 p.m. | #

Having seen a close quarters how recycled material is sorted and processed at a number of MRFs, I'm astonished that bagging such material at source is encouraged because it is hugely labour intensive hand-picking all the plastic bags and wrapping off the huge sorting belts. All such material is discarded, allowing more profitable items to be recycled.

* MRFs - Material Recycling Facilities.. filthy, noisy, hot, but fascinating places. Hellish to work at from what I've seen.

Frank F | 16.06.17 - 6:07 p.m. | #

" we can proudly, once more dump our crap all over the Great British landscape."

Trust me drD, following restrictions on what council 'tips' will take, and how many times each vehicle is allowed to go there per month, there is a huge amount of fly-tipping in quiet rural lanes.

Which costs much more to clear up than if these needless restrictions were lifted.

Just as DG was saying in this post really....

Blue Witch | Homepage | 16.06.17 - 6:53 p.m. | #

Aren't bean counters wonderful? Seems that cheap cladding that's banned in the USA because it's a fire hazard saved just over £40 per Grenfell flat.

So each victim's life was not thought to be worth £70.

When life is that cheap, that sort of robotic thinking means that improving rubbish recycling rates won't be a priority for many councils.

Gerry | 16.06.17 - 7:26 p.m. | #

@ Brian - what we have in Waltham Forest is a plethora of bins outside every residence. Even with shared bins for maisonettes there are 7 bins outside my flat covering 4 flats. We also have the bin men having to come round 2-3 times a week to empty each type of bin - once for recyling (non food/garden), once for general waste, once a fortnight for food and garden waste. I dread to think how "green" all those lorry visits are when multiplied borough wide. To be fair (!) to the council we have been through a silly phase of having to use recycling boxes that were liable to damage and attack by urban foxes with all the attendant mess. The bins, while unsightly, are an improvement.

While we may not have many tower blocks we are gaining lots of new blocks of flats - umpteen going up at Blackhorse Rd with more to follow, a load on Billet Rd and even more at Walthamstow Stadium. There's also those on Fulborne Rd which replaced out factory buildings. I'm sure there are plenty I've missed elsewhere in the borough. One can only hope that the needs of refuse collection and recycling have been properly considered and integrated into those new developments.

PC | 16.06.17 - 10:31 p.m. | #

Here in Hertsmere, just outside London, there is no recycling from blocks of flats - at least not on my road with 200+ residents.

I have to drive two miles for the nearest glass or card recycling.

Plastic and cans can be put into small roadside bins, but they're not really designed for household recycling and I suspect these are just sent to landfill or incinerators.

M@ | 17.06.17 - 12:05 a.m. | #

@PC - our bit of Waltham Forest, the same lorry collects the landfill and recyclables - it's divided lengthways so different bin lifts end up in different hoppers.

@Blue Witch - it's not just rural areas that get flytipping. Have a wander round Walthamstow and marvel at the mattresses. I had a broken microwave to get rid of, so used the council's free collection service. This meant making an appointment and staying in between 9 and 5 on that day so I could sign for it. It's no wonder people just dump stuff.

martin | 17.06.17 - 5:42 a.m. | #

Standalone homes in Tower Hamlets have the option of food composting as do some flats owned by social housing organisations but privately owned developments don't.

The pink bag scheme is ridiculous. Since the council instructed blocks of flats not to use pink bags, as mentioned above, many flat owners are popping their recycling in normal carrier bags before putting them in pink bins.

I remember Newham, which is another council with poor recycling rates, introducing a similar orange bag scheme. It invested in machines that could remove the bags. A few years later the orange bag system ended. Perhaps they were too similar in colour to a certain high street supermarket's. Newham still doesn't collect glass recycling from domestic properties. You have to take glass to a bottle bank.

I often wonder how many homes used pink or orange sacks to save money on buying regular bin bags.

Eastman | 17.06.17 - 10:31 a.m. | #

Building on Kevin's point about Belgium, I mentioned that we get free pink sacks in my town but one has to pay for black bags. I'd happily pay for pink sacks too. They aren't expensive but because they're free and readily available, supermarkets don't stock them.

Malcolm Dobell | 17.06.17 - 9:45 p.m. | #

Newham bizarrely reintroduced their orange bag scheme. I live in a block of flats and a roll was supplied for each flat some weeks ago. However I observed the full bags being compacted with the rest of the rubbish in the collection vehicles, so I can't see how the contents can easily be subsequently separated. The Council's attitude to glass continues to amaze me.

Tim | 18.06.17 - 10:20 a.m. | #

@martin: Lambeth Council used to pick up "large waste", including mattresses, up to four times a year for free.

Then they introduced a charge of £20 per pickup.

That was about three years ago and I think I have seen the official "pick me up" labels stuck on rubbish about twice since then. Everyone now dumps their "large waste" up to 52 times a year and the Council collects it on the spot as, otherwise, the streets would quickly fill up with mattresses and cheap broken furniture ...

dezincify | 18.06.17 - 3:51 p.m. | #

Another Tower Hamlets resident, again in flats with pink bins alongside the normal waste ones.

The main barrier to recycling more seems to be people's laziness - they'll often lob their rubbish in the nearest bin (when they don't just dump it on the floor) so you end up with the bizarre sight of a recycling bin full of black sacks, and a general waste bin full of cardboard.

Moogal | 19.06.17 - 1:31 p.m. | #











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