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Opinion : Do the recycling collections in High Wycombe use too many containers?

| August 28, 2021

Once upon a time every house only had a ‘dustbin’ to dispose of waste, then came the concept of ‘recycling collections’.

With the advent of recycling collections came a plethora of bins, boxes and bags of various shapes and colours.

You may has seen an article that appeared in the news section of this site recently entitled ‘Change in cardboard recycling collections in the South Bucks area of Buckinghamshire‘.

It seems that in South Buckinghamshire area (Beaconsfield, Gerrards Cross, etc….) residents are soon to be given a special 44 litre (9.7 gallon for those like my good self who still use proper measurements) recycling container for recycling paper and cardboard.

I wonder how many residents in the affected area will be pleased to see yet another recycling container arrive to join the collection already bunging up residents driveways and back gardens?

Looking at the picture in the news article (above) it seems the new recycling box will be made of plastic, but surely in this modern environmentally friendly world is it a good idea to be commissioning so many boxes made of plastic which is a substance that is being eradicated from certain areas of life over environmental concerns? Surely the recycling boxes could be made of a more environmentally friendly material?

However, as a plus point the new recycling boxes (depicted in the picture accompanying the news article above) do seem to have a rather natty picture on the front featuring what my good self deciphers as a flying turkey and three mushroom clouds rising into the air. Presumably the mushroom clouds represent the ‘nuking’ of the three district councils in the South of Buckinghamshire back in 2020?

In my opinion there are too many recycling receptacles already and I pity the poor residents in the South Buckinghamshire area who will soon be receiving more.

Back in 2014 yours truly wrote a blog entitled ‘Bins, boxes and bags – Why does recycling have to be so difficult?‘ In the intervening years nothing has changed in terms of how recycling collections operate.

Surely recycling collections should be as simple as possible and that means reducing the number of receptacles used in the collections?

Why can’t we have just one bin (or maybe two bins – one for recyclable items and the other for non-recyclable items) at the most? In this modern age it should be possible to create technology at the recycling centre that can sort the items in the recycling cart (which incidentally also has the natty picture on the side of the turkey and mushroom clouds) into the different types of recyclable waste once the cart is emptied.

It would be interesting to know how much recyclable waste actually goes into the black bins rather than being recycled.

It would also be interesting to know how many households in Buckinghamshire don’t fully participate in the recycling scheme by presenting all their recycling receptacles for every collection.

What do you think?

My blogs are published regularly here on the WycombeToday.com website.

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