RE: Paper recycling
My local council introduced a new scheme about 18 months ago, and although I muttered a bit to begin with, garbage sorting is now done on auto pilot!
Once a week there's a collection of food waste and stuff for recycling. Other household rubbish is collected fortnightly.
For food, there's a small bin for outside, and a little caddy thing for the kitchen, with special bags made of cornstarch. No plastic is allowed because it won't compost. Some people just use the permitted old newspapers. What they do with the food waste is something I haven't enquired into too closely 😉 There was less to throw away when I had dogs.
They also take glass, paper and tins. All I have to take to the recycling centre is plastic bottles and cardboard.
I'm allowed four black bags for the fortnightly collection, as I don't have access for a wheelie bin. I seldom put out more than one, and the only worry is that it might get blown into the road if it's windy.
All in all, not a bad scheme, and I like to think I'm doing my bit. All 'free' apart from a few pennies for the food bags, though I believe there's a charge if I were to have a garden waste bin as well.
Holistic
RE: Paper recycling
Going back to killchar's post above - oh, to live again where there are vast, wide-open spaces, or great forests, such as the USA ...
It's hard to imagine, and such a burden by comparison, that much of Europe is now so crowded that we're living so bunched up in places, and that there's no land left for anything! People are still immigrating into the UK, so many more homes must be built. Yet where? It must be hard for Americans and Australians to understand ...
V
RE: Paper recycling
Oh, it's getting crowded here too, but most folks are in denial about it. And those vast open spaces are nice, except they're subject to logging and other profitable ventures...unless enough people chain themselves to the trees. Your situation is proactive, and here in the good ole us of a we prefer to wait for disaster and crisis 😉
Recycling is available here, but not many folks participate. We're the oddballs, with two big bins for recycling every week and a sack of garbage every 2 or 3 weeks. All our other neighbors put out 1 or 2 trash bins 2ce a week, and rarely recycle at all. I think people think that recycling is for crisis, like wartime recycling efforts. If they participated in recycling they would have to admit that we're already headed for crisis, and *poof!* there goes ignorant bliss.
RE: Paper recycling
Well, it looks like we waited too long here as well. One bugaboo I have though is that we are letting millions of East Europeans into this tiny island still. No room !!!
I've lived in the USA. Once in Malibu at a spiritual center so I've no idea what happened there with trash. But also just yards outside Yellowstone Park - for food trash, you could leave that to the local grizzlies! But I was really thinking of Vermont, for example. The USA just isn't as crowded or with so many laws to restrict your life. Two families I know in Vermont both bought many acres of forest, and with no or minimal planning permission, cleared some trees, manually built their own hugehouses, dug a lake (what they call a "pond"), and even built meeting room complexes. You have just no idea how hard it is to do such a thing here. Extend your garage by 12 inches and you'll be told to break the wall down again ...
So this is a mini-rant ;)at being in a crowded nation. Most of the USA doesn't compare ...
RE: Paper recycling
Well, Europe has been at that whole populating thing for a bit longer than the states. Remember, when USA got started it was done on emptied lands. We'll catch up though, at least until Mother Nature shakes a few of us off 🙂
So, Venetian, do you compost your own paper? Or put it out for recycling?