Yes, but you’re talking to a member of ESRI, here, and they don’t have a great track record in having heard of such things.

The waste hierarchy is not just “green dogma” - it’s enshrined in the EU Waste Directive. Of course the Gorecki report suggested it should just be treated as a “rule of thumb” and not be used “as a formal guide to policy implementation”.

There’s no need for a rainbow of bins - a number of dry recyclable streams can be co-mingled in a single bin, as they are at present.

Yeah, but isn’t there a inverse relationship between how cool and laid back people are, and how well things like rubbish sorting work?

I mean, everyone loves the hot-blooded and romantic Italians, whose Naples rubbish scandal stank up headlines across the world.

On the other hand, nobody likes the boring and sobre Germanics, who cut the little plastic windows out of business envelopes in order to sort the paper more correctly.

Everyone loves the Irish, whose craic is legend the world over. On the other hand, have you ever heard anyone say “let’s go to a suburb of Gothenburg and marvel at the famous environmentally sustainable municiple waste stream at Åarenbörga”.

Fair enough.

I just wonder about people who think it is always a brilliant idea to constantly out-source work to unpaid private individuals.

For instance, people are now paying solicitors and accountants to do most of the work of revenue offficials. The Revenue think it is a great idea to tie up businesses and their advisers in red tape while they reduce their head count even though the transaction costs it imposes are hugely inefficient.

It is bringing the bin for glass into the bottle banks that takes about 30 mins per month. Kerbside collection of glass would be fantastic for me, but maybe not economical to provide to me. In which case more bottle banks is the solution. Ideally, every shop that sells bottles should take them back. In reality the shops won’t agree to that.

* Landfill/Black bin, recycle bin and then my own compost bin and my own bottle bin.

where exactly are we to put these rainbow of bins?

NAMA has a lot of vacant lots.

On waste. We have pay per use (plus a hefty standing charge) for black wheelie bins, a brown bin with a per usage charge, and a green bin free.

We all have enough time to sort but my guess is that the uptake on sorting is influenced by cost saving as much as anything else. If you can get an extra 2 weeks without putting out the black bin, thats a tenner saved.
Same with the plastic bags, all the education in the world doesn’t have the same effect on behaviour.

For anyone in receipt of a waiver on bin charges there is no incentive to sort.
Though I’m sure if neighbours on all sides are putting out the green bin then this peer behaviour has some effect.

I suspect theres scope for some research there for some of ye academics who want to get your hands dirty

We’ve come a long way on waste disposal in the last 10 years, but there’s still a way to go.

To me, any waste policy is misdirected if it does not address the problem of consumer goods packaging. The most volumous and most unrecyclable of our current waste production, I firmly believe that European regulation is merited here. Promoting biodegradable packaging or (ideally) less packaging is the single biggest thing we can do to lessen the fiscal and environmental costs of waste disposal. It seems silly to me that we spend a fortune every year throwing out items which cost fractions of a penny to purchase.

@ribbit
Of course it can be done. Waste separation works even without enforcement in Germany and the Netherlands.

We sort green bin waste from black bin waste in our house and we bring bottles and garden waste to the bring centre. We put some waste in the brown bin but frankly do not have time to be dividing up brown waste, wrapping bread and meat in paper to stop vermin and rinsing packaging. All in all we give a good number of precious hours to waste processing a week.

We also do not have room to store the bins. Our small front garden now has three bins on it which has destroyed the lawn. Bins inside gardens and outside garden dominates one’s impressions through sight and smell as one strolls down the street. This is apart from the uncollected (unpaid for) city council bins on the footpath that provide a putrid obstacle for pedestrians.

I am happy to pay for waste to be sorted if I don’t have time. I am also happy to bring my waste to an odour free receptacle at the end of the street. The current system falls short of improving the living environment in the city.

And never visited your homeland in that time?

where exactly are we to put these rainbow of bins?

Where exactly does everyone else?

I often wonder if the whole separating waste thing is not just a matter of developing good habits.

We live in an apartment in a major European city and don’t sort (!) simply because we are too damn lazy. The apartment is a 60sq metre 1br, but I cannot honestly claim that it would be impossible for me to have the four bins (packaging, paper, glass and black bin) which my conscience and the city officially requires.

If someone fined us, even once, we would do things the right way.

Getting households to sort is like getting little kids to brush their teeth.

@ewi
You forgot that I lived in Germany for a long time.

http://www.pushpullbar.com/forums/showthread.php?6197-Amsterdam-underground-recycle-bins

One might expect a Dutch citizen to be familiar with such things, at least.