bygjohn's blog

Much to my amazement, Cheshire East council has actually come up with a sensible recycling scheme.

The previous Crewe+Nantwich one has been a strangely defective mess (eg no glass collection, incomprehensible paper collection schedule, all sorts of limitations about what's suitable). Alternatives seem to result in a plethora of bins and an even more confusing collection schedule, but our new scheme actually expands the range of stuff we can recycle at the doorstep to nearly everything but textiles and food waste and does it with just three bins.

They seem to have cottoned on to the fact that if you want people to do this stuff, it needs to be easy. So we have a bin for garden waste, another for non-recyclables and the third for all recyclables. These get sorted at the depot, mostly by machine, and don't need to be over-processed - ie rinsed, not completely cleaned, labels and lids still on. This appeals to me as I'm firmly of the belief that machines should be doing the work, in fact we should all be sat by the pool while the robots do everything by now... :-)

The recyclables bin will take nearly all plastic, paper, cardboard, glass, cartons, cans and aerosols. I reckon about half (maybe more) of what I currently have to put in the non-recycle bin will now be in the recyclable bin, and for the first time there should be more recyclable waste than non-recyclable.

All this, and a simple collection schedule: recyclables and garden waste one week, non-recyclables the next, alternating fortnightly on the same day.

What I really want to know now, is why it's taken so long to come up with something this sane.