how many bins do you have ?

Because our recycling bins are micro chipped, enabling recycling rates to be linked to individual properties, there are rumors/suggestions that there will be rewards for those who recycle lots of stuff, subsidised by those who don't put much in their recycling bins.

That might initially sound like a good idea, but it would reward people who drink loads of shop bought bottled/canned wine/beer, etc. who didn't make their own brews/jam in re-used bottles/jars or pasteurise their own juices in re-used bottles, or grew their own fruit & veg avoiding the need for packaging, or used cardboard/newspapers for mulching their veg plots, etc., etc.

Whatever next, suggesting that those who put the most food waste out for use in bio-digesters to create 'renewable' energy are being green and should be rewarded?

 

We have 3 here;

Black for non-recyclable stuff

Brown for garden waste but only between late March and early November, we have no garden waste collection over the winter, pretty stupid idea as a lot of people round here need them then whilst tidying their gardens..

Blue for all recyclable stuff; plastic, paper, tins, glass etc...

 

A few years ago, when I was working for a very huge firm that liked the publicity associated with its 'green' credentials (they appointed a 'Health, Safety and Environment' officer before all the other companies jumped on that bandwagon), we received a memo about the new reward scheme for recycling printer toner cartridges. Each department was to get a big box into which we should all put our used toner cartridges. Each month, the team that produced the most would win vouchers towards holidays and all sorts.

I emailed the brand new Health, Safety and Environment officer to seek clarification. I asked, for example, if it was ok to throw half full cartridges away in order to get through more cartridges and thus win, or if we had to print stuff that we wouldn't normally print so that we could use the toners up more quickly. I suggested a spin-off scheme where we get rewards for the amount of paper we recycle, and suggested that it would double as extra incentive to recycle the toners, as in using up the toner cartridges as fast as possible, we could also use up reams and reams of perfectly good bleached white 90gsm paper.

I got quite a snotty reply. The chap completely failed to see that he was promoting waste. Oddly enough, a few weeks later there was another memo saying the scheme had been withdrawn, then not long after that we got another memo congratulating the chap and wishing him best of looking in his unspecified new role.

 

we had microchipped bins. we didnt know until it came on the news. hubby removed them and put them in the bins to go out with the rest of the rubbish

 

The thing that worries me with all this bin policing and chipping etc is that it is just setting innocent people up to get done.

Its not unusual for random people to stick random rubbish in someone else's bin without the owner having any knowledge that its happened. I would be livid if I was to get a fine because someone had put, I don't know, a plastic bottle in the green waste bin (hypothetical, because I don't put the green waste bin out, but you all know what I mean I'm sure).