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Douglas Kerbside Recycling and Waste Collection Survey


Amadeus

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1 minute ago, Ghost Ship said:

Ah.  Well that's an obvious problem.  In a place the size of the Isle of Man there's no reason not to have a single, shared waste and recycling strategy.  All parts of the island need to be doing the same thing

It's the same for social housing, swimming pool provision, street lighting and other items. It would all be much more efficiently and effectively provided by on all-island scheme. 

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2 hours ago, Ghost Ship said:

We've had fortnightly alternating general waste and recycling collections for almost 20 years, and it's never been any sort of problem - despite me feeling sure it would be when they were first introduced.  (I was wrong!)

The only issue during the first 5 years or so of fortnightly collections was that we didn't have proper recycling wheelie bins - just a green box with a lid that was only marginally bigger than a beer crate  or milk bottle crate. That sounds like what you've got on the IoM at the moment and they're useless.  You must have a proper wheelie bin for recycling.

The other thing we have is a WEEKLY food waste collection.  For that we have two "caddies".  A smaller one (about the capacity of a shoe-box) that stays in the kitchen, and a larger one (similar in capacity to a large bucket) that stays ouside and into which you transfer waste from the kitchen caddy.  It works well, although we generate very little food waste as we eat everything we buy.  The only stuff that goes into our food waste are vegetable peelings, apple cores, banana skins, compostable PG Tips tea bags, and the very occasional bit of food we've let go rotten.

If we recycle everything properly* and use our food waste collection properly, we have no issues at all about alternating fortnightly collections.  We hardly ever fill our general waste wheelie bin now.  I missed a collection over Christmas and New Year because I forgot the correct collection day so we went four weeks before a collection.  No problem.

But if you try to introduce it on the island I suspect it will only work properly if you bring in proper recycling wheelie bins and a separate food waste collection.

All general waste needs to go in the appropriate wheelie bin.  If you leave it by the side of the bin in a bag, they won't take it.  We have a lot of urban foxes and if you do leave anything out in a bin bag it doesn't stay in the bag long anyway. They're more accepting of recycling that won't fit in the bin like very large cardboard boxes that won't fit no matter how you fold them.

As regards dirty disposable nappies, I presume they go in the general waste.  All our council website says about them is that you mustn't put them in the recycling - so I presume they must therefore go in the general waste.  We have neighbours with young families who must use nappies and there is no problem I'm aware of.  Maybe they don't use disposables...

I'm all for fortnightly collections and reducing the amount of general waste, and I'm not even particularly "green" or some sort of eco-warrior.  It just seems to make sense.

Oh - and since all this was introduced the standard and level of service of our refuse collection has increased beyond recognition.

 

*If you only have a limited recycling collection on the island then that is a PITA.  Our council collects: plastic bottles, paper (including shredded paper - which may interest David Ashford!), cardboard, glass bottles and jars, tetra pak cartons, aluminium foil and trays, empty aerosols, plastic pots, tubs and trays, steel and aluminium cans.

My experience was similar, except at that time we didn't have a food waste collection, it went into the general refuse bin.  A very big difference with what DBC is doing is that the recycling wheelie bin back then took all recyclables apart from glass.  I am not sure if DBC are going to do the same or require recyclables to be sorted for collection. If it isn't sorted for collection it can only be a big added cost to DBC. 

On packaging, most large supermarkets accept a lot of the plastic wrappings that can't be recycled domestically.  Tesco have such a bin, the Co-Op advertised they have something too but not sure if they do on island, but Shoprite don't have anything as far as I am aware.  There is still some packaging which is not recyclable either at home or in store, but that is reducing all the time. 

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2 hours ago, hissingsid said:

The only way forward is to cut down on the packaging at source the layers of cardboard and plastic is over the top and unnecessary.   My pet hate are the one time use plastic water bottles they should have a 50p tax on them and so should single use carrier bags 10p is laughable.

My pet hate is buying bottled water at all.  Tap water here is fine, filter it if you want to and put it in a reusable container if you are one of those people who can never be beyond 3 feet of drinking water.  But don't ship the bloody stuff all around the world. 

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6 hours ago, Gladys said:

My pet hate is buying bottled water at all.  Tap water here is fine, filter it if you want to and put it in a reusable container if you are one of those people who can never be beyond 3 feet of drinking water.  But don't ship the bloody stuff all around the world. 

Bottled water sales are still quite astonishing (though they are starting to go down):

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That's nearly 3 billion litres in 2018.

Edited by Roger Mexico
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  • 4 weeks later...

They'll need a bigger amenity site to give Douglas residents somewhere to dump all their surplus shite when collections go to fortnightly?

Edited by Non-Believer
typo
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On 2/2/2022 at 2:21 PM, 0bserver said:

It's the same for social housing, swimming pool provision, street lighting and other items. It would all be much more efficiently and effectively provided by on all-island scheme. 

Give it to the DOI then !!! That will end up well. 

There's the issue though as who would you trust to do it economically and efficently ??  

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41 minutes ago, Numbnuts said:

Give it to the DOI then !!! That will end up well. 

There's the issue though as who would you trust to do it economically and efficently ??  

Some form of Parks and Recreational Department/Body. 

We all know that nothing should ever be given to the organisation known as the DOI (quite the opposite it should be disbanded).

But that shouldn't limit our thinking in terms of how services are delivered on the island. 

There would be a lot of synergies and efficiency savings to be had by combining them all. They could deal with all the 'nice to haves' that central government shouldn't be getting distracted and bogged down with. 

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