North/South divide: who does it better? (recycling, that is)
Being a Northerner in the South, I have to travel back and forth lots, visiting family and friends regularly to places like Leeds, Rochdale, Manchester and Liverpool.
Being obsessed with recycling (and likely to judge you if you're not equally obsessed) means if I'm coming to stay, I'm gonna need to check out your recycling facilities.
The thing is, in the UK there are literally hundreds of different 'ways' of recycling. My sister in Leeds needs to check the numbers on the bottom of plastic containers to see if she can recycle them in her kerbside bin. While my friends in Essex chuck any-old- plastic in their recycling- even crisp packets which in North London, we're penalised for.
In Leeds, the council don't collect glass from your home, you'll have to do that yourself, whereas in Rochdale and North London (if I lived in a house or flat with recycling facilities, that is) one can put glass alongside cardboard and most plastics in the same 'mixed recycling' bins.
Size: it matters.
On Wirral you'll get a huge grey recycling bin for everything. Even, I'm reliably informed, envelopes WITH windows. (I never even knew this was a problem in some localities)
And what about food waste? How many times have you Londoners woken up to find next door's egg shells and tea bags strewn across the road after a rather rambunctious fox got its paws on the outdoor food bin caddy? The poor residents have tried their best to recycle their food waste responsibly only for the local neighbourhood wildlife to thwart their efforts.
What if, being geographically inbred like me, you momentarily forget which rule you should be following and your packet of Walkers accidentally gets mixed in with Wednesday night's Blossom Hill? And before you know it, there's a note on your green bin telling you your recycling won't be collected until you've changed your filthy ways!?
Ultimately, wherever you live recycling is not the answer. We must not rely on our local council or local landfill to help us live cleaner lifestyles.
If we stopped bringing single- use waste into our our homes in the first place we wouldn't need to be endlessly checking numbers on milk cartons or ripping up our Amazon boxes in to a gazillion pieces to fit them in our bins!
Quick reference to The List will help us know what to do next:
Being obsessed with recycling (and likely to judge you if you're not equally obsessed) means if I'm coming to stay, I'm gonna need to check out your recycling facilities.
The thing is, in the UK there are literally hundreds of different 'ways' of recycling. My sister in Leeds needs to check the numbers on the bottom of plastic containers to see if she can recycle them in her kerbside bin. While my friends in Essex chuck any-old- plastic in their recycling- even crisp packets which in North London, we're penalised for.
In Leeds, the council don't collect glass from your home, you'll have to do that yourself, whereas in Rochdale and North London (if I lived in a house or flat with recycling facilities, that is) one can put glass alongside cardboard and most plastics in the same 'mixed recycling' bins.
Size: it matters.
On Wirral you'll get a huge grey recycling bin for everything. Even, I'm reliably informed, envelopes WITH windows. (I never even knew this was a problem in some localities)
And what about food waste? How many times have you Londoners woken up to find next door's egg shells and tea bags strewn across the road after a rather rambunctious fox got its paws on the outdoor food bin caddy? The poor residents have tried their best to recycle their food waste responsibly only for the local neighbourhood wildlife to thwart their efforts.
What if, being geographically inbred like me, you momentarily forget which rule you should be following and your packet of Walkers accidentally gets mixed in with Wednesday night's Blossom Hill? And before you know it, there's a note on your green bin telling you your recycling won't be collected until you've changed your filthy ways!?
Ultimately, wherever you live recycling is not the answer. We must not rely on our local council or local landfill to help us live cleaner lifestyles.
If we stopped bringing single- use waste into our our homes in the first place we wouldn't need to be endlessly checking numbers on milk cartons or ripping up our Amazon boxes in to a gazillion pieces to fit them in our bins!
Quick reference to The List will help us know what to do next:
Number 3- Reusable straws (glass, bamboo, metal)
Number 4- Tupperware
Number 7- Tote bag
Number 8- Milkman
Number 10- Soda Stream
Number 11- Washable face wipes
Number 14- Cotton bunting
Number 15- Reusable Hot drink Cup
Number 16- Reusable produce bag
Number 17- Ice cube trays
Number 19- Reusable Water Bottle
Number 20- Mooncup
Number 21- Washable floor cleaners
Number 22- Refillable Ice lollies
Number 27- Safety Razor
etc etc
How many have you still got to tick off the list?
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