Hello and welcome to The Compost Bin. I'm Compostwoman and I live with my family in rural Herefordshire. We have nearly four acres of garden and woodland, all managed organically and to Permaculture principles, which we share with Chickens, Cats and assorted wildlife. We also grow a lot of our own food, run courses in all sorts of things and make a lot of compost!

I am a Master Composter and have spent more than a decade as a volunteer Community Compost adviser with Garden Organic and my local Council.
I'm a self employed Environmental Educator so I run workshops and events where I talk about compost, veg growing, chicken keeping, cooking, preserving and sustainable living. I also run crafts workshops and Forest School/outdoor play sessions in our wood.

We try to live a more self sufficient lifestyle here, as best we can, while still having a comfortable life and lots of fun.


To learn more about us click on the About Compostwoman tab and remember to click on the photos to make them full size!


Friday 2 October 2009

Oh! Such joy ( well a new recycling scheme, anyway.....!)

Today we had an unexpected delivery. A new Recycling Bin!

You may remember my previous rants on the subject of recycling , in which I mention that we don't get any doorstep collection out here in the wilds of rural Herefordshire.

But,Herefordshire has now decided to extend the scheme to ALL its residents so everybody gets some recyclables collected from their home. (Well, it, and all Councils, are now legally obliged to do so ,
by legislation I helped to campaign for!
)

As an Environmental Consultant and activist I also spent a huge amount of time in the late nineties vigorously campaigning to stop the building of an Incinerator in the town of Kidderminster. This was meant to "dispose" of a large chunk of Herefordshire and Worcestershire's joint household waste. I rather suspect that IF they had managed to build this incinerator I would not now be feeling so happy as "Energy Recovery" from the incinerator would have counted as "recycling". So, I guess, there would have been no Big Green Recycling Bin sitting outside my back door?

But we won the fight against the Kidderminster Incinerator (hurrah) and the Incinerator plan "went up in smoke". And lo, I have a Recycling Bin.

Here it is in all its glory...




along with a calendar, a handy leaflet telling us what we can put in our bin and a sticker to go on the front of the bin.




Here is a list of the items that you will now be able to recycle from your home:

Paper - including newspapers, magazines, phone directories, catalogues, office paper, junk mail, greetings cards and envelopes.
Cardboard - light card and corrugated cardboard, egg boxes and kitchen/toilet roll tubes.
Metals - food tins and drinks cans, aerosol cans and sweet/biscuit tins.
Glass - bottles and jars of all colours.
Plastic - all plastic bottles. Plastic containers including yogurt pots, margarine/ice cream tubs, fruit/vegetable punnets, cream/ custard pots, cake/pastry trays and soup/sauce pots.
Cartons – including milk, juice, smoothie cartons, fabric conditioner, soup, chopped tomato and custard cartons.



So...finally .....we have a recycling bin at Compost Mansions and we can stop filling up our car boots with recyclable stuff "just in case" we go near a recycling point.

We will still need to go to the Household Recycling Site with textiles, batteries, CF lights, wood, electrical goods, soil and rubble etc, but this bin will make SUCH a difference to us! Apart from anything else, the bottles, cans etc can go in the bin, outside, rather than filling up boxes in the boiler room, or in my car boot!

Also the 100g (ish) of landfill waste that we do put out each week at the moment for the landfill collection (all else is reused, recycled or composted here) is largely yogurt or margarine cartons, so we will now be able to reduce the stuff we send to landfill even more, maybe even down to a true Zero Waste level! Previously the recycling system would not take these items, but the building of a new Materials Reclamation Facility has changed all that. |
All collected recycling will be transferred to a new material recovery facility (MRF) being built at Norton, Worcestershire. This new facility will sort materials using state of the art technology into their different types ready for recycling.


So, we will be able to put these items inside our lovely new recycling bin!

Hurrah! I am a very happy Compostwoman, today! Good on you Herefordshire Council, for doing this...!

5 comments:

  1. I have recycling envy; our lot pick up sporadically and ignore more than they actually collect. No milk cartons or tetrapaks, no plastics etc. Tedious incarnate.

    ReplyDelete
  2. that is great news.

    I can recycle most of those on your list but have to take them to the HWRC to do so.

    Our recycling bin for East Lindsey will collect, paper, cardboard, plastic types 1 & 2 and cans including aerosols.

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  3. hoooray! we can recycle al of those here and textiles.

    But we arent fortunate enough to have one large bin with a lid that is attached. Nope we have to seperate, so we have lots of quite large ugly orange boxes. Which once the have emptied them, they throw them on the drive and throw the lid where ever. which then blows up or down the road depending on the direction of the wind!

    ReplyDelete
  4. That is very good, we can't put out plastic tubs or fruit juice cartons. It seems silly that recycling can't be more uniform across the country but its better here than in some countries, I read that there are some places in the US where it is not possible to recycle glass.

    Enjoyed the chick photos in the previous post.

    ReplyDelete

Hello! Thank you for reading my blog and for commenting. I try to reply as quickly as I can and I really appreciate your interest in my life and doings here in The Compost Bin.

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