Cleanzine: your weekly cleaning and hygiene industry newsletter 18th April 2024 Issue no. 1110
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We women have a reputation for not being able to admit when we’re wrong but I’m pleased to say I’m not one of them. I must confess though that I’m surprised at some of the findings published in the Local Government guidance, published in support of weekly rubbish bin collections.
Regular readers of Cleanzine will have become aware of my support of fortnightly bin collections and my argument that if the councils make it easy for us to find space in our rubbish bins, we’re more likely to discard than recycle. What you haven’t been aware of though, is that privately John Austen has been firmly in the other camp. Well I’m happy to hold my hands up and to admit before 100,000 Cleanzine readers who can act as witnesses, “I was wrong!”
According to the latest figures, many councils have managed to recycle over half of all rubbish while maintaining weekly collections. My own council, Epsom & Ewell, has provided fortnightly rubbish bin collections and a good kerbside recycling service for some years but we residents recycle just under half of our household waste, which proves that point. The good news is though, that none of this waste goes to landfill - anything that is not recycled is taken to an energy-from-waste plant in Kent and used as fuel to generate electricity.
So I suppose it’s really a case of ‘the volume doesn’t matter; it’s what you do with it that counts! (you can read more about the findings below and I’d love to receive your thoughts on them and particularly so if you live outside the UK. Are you moving to fewer, or more frequent rubbish bin collections and why?)
As John lives in Kent, it’s just occurred to me that some of his electricity may have been supplied as a result of my own, committed recycling efforts, so perhaps he won’t make me eat quite so much humble pie when he reads this, as he might have done…
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Yours,
23rd January 2014