Roll up! Roll up! It's the Wild West Recycling Show!

Well I went to the Recycling Roadshow as promised today.... Armed with the camera, and when I asked if I could take a few photos for a friend unable to attend, the answer was a guarded "no" - not for publication at least (and this counts with it's burgeoning readership of 3)

Anyway - the roadshow itself ran to 3 display tables, a pile of bins, some example recycling bags and some example rubbish.

What gets delivered - well depending on your rural or urban setting you will get a black wheelie bin, a years supply of lilac bags, a years supply of clear bags and then for rural people it will be a composting bin, for the urban a green-lidded wheelie bin for garden waste. I enquired what constitutes a years supply and the answer is 50 bags - they assume that there will not be a bagful every week and that most people will be away for 2 weeks a year, and that a collection is usually missed at Christmas (so presumably we're getting bonus extra bags by that way of thinking)

The bags have a list printed on them what is acceptable content - but they don't say what isn't - so the advice is "if it ain't on the list it ain't goin' in"

The hardest thing for people to get right is likely to be the plastics recycling - only type 1 and type 2 plastics are suitable for recycling (most plastic has a triangle with a number in or near it to tell you the type - examples of the logos can be found here) other types are not. Some carrier bags also have type 1 or type 2 markings - but they are not acceptable currency for the recycling team at SBC.

The delivery of the bins and bags is managed by an external contractor, so SBC has no clear control over what's being delivered to where and when, so they were unable to say when they would arrive at the Paper Boy's residence.

You'll be notified by a postcard similar to the contraband photo attached when the scheme starts - the postcard has a magnetic strip on the back so you can stick it to the fridge to remind yourself to put out the right coloured bags on the right days.

I asked why the obsession with recycling volumes, when it's consumption that is the issue... of course it's a three-headed approach - but as I guessed earlier, consumption reduction and material reuse (internally by the consumer) are much harder to quantify than the amount of material recycled.