Town with nine bins for every home (to save the environment and EU Unions)

Telegraph UK ^ | February 17, 2011 | Louise Gray, Earth News

[Cincinatus' Wife]

The research found that in Newcastle-under-Lyme, residents are asked to sort their waste into nine different bins and bags.

A further 20 councils provide seven bins for food waste, different recycling streams and other rubbish. More than 100 town halls ask residents to sort rubbish into 5 or more bins.

Residents in these areas say it is impossible to find room in the house for all the different bins and complain that the system is “too complicated and complex”.

[snip]

In Newcastle-under-Lyme Council, north Staffordshire, residents are asked to dump food waste in a silver slop bucket for food waste, which is then emptied into a larger, green outdoor bin every week. There is a pink bag for plastic bottles, a blue box for glass, foil, tins and aerosols, a green bag for cardboard, a white bag for textiles and blue bags for paper and magazines, which are all collected on alternate weeks with garden waste and black bin bags.

Sylvia Butler, 59, a retired teacher and former councillor in the area, said many residents are just dumping recycling in black bin bags rather than bothering to sort waste.

“It is too complicated and too complex,” she said. “Other areas have three containers, we have nine, it is just too confusing,” she said.

[snip]

“At a time when council budgets are already under extreme pressure, councils will not want to spend money on unnecessary bins so that they can meet recycling targets and avoid being hit by heavy European Union fines.....

[Twinkie]

We live out in the sticks; have to take our own garbage off to the “recycling center” (I call it garbage dump). So far, they aren’t pushing the separation of stuff. They may get snotty about it, but it would be sort of hard to actually enforce; too many people are in there all at the same time. A few years ago, a guy working at the dump told my husband that they were just dumping it ALL in the same hole; that they were just getting people accustomed to separating it. That may have changed by now. I try to call it “recycling center” in front of the guys who work there for courtesy’s sake.

[stuartcr]

???

[Yardstick]

I’ve seen the short spots but never the long version of that. Truly laugh out loud funny!

[rlmorel]

I hadn’t seen it in a long time, but this thread made me go back and find it.

Someone told me the guy is a major league kool-aid drinking liberal, but...it is still pretty funny. Actually, that would fit perfectly with the recycling enforcement.