Is household recycling a scam?

I'm not sure what happens in other parts of the world but here in the UK our refuse collection is starting to smell a little fishy

Not all that long ago it was a simple business, if it was rubbish then you put it in the bin and the council sent the bin men round ONCE A WEEK, collected it all and buried it.

This was obviously not a great idea from an enviromental position, we also had our green/garden waste collected for free.

Things are diferent now. All recyclable materials are collected seperatley, other rubbish is collected fortnightly and we have to pay for the collection of garden waste.

The apparent reason for this is purely enviromental as far as I can see but I see it a little differently.

This service is paid for by council tax, in my area refuse collection is stated at 7% of my bill. This means that I personally pay around £100 a year for this service (about $160 US).

So in a nutshell heres what happens, I pay someone £100 every year to take away my refuse, I seperate it into things of monitary value and no monitary value. They then take it away, seperate all of the plastics/glass/cardboard and then sell it to companies that reuse it. all of the garden waste goes to make compost which is then sold back to me at the local recycling centre.

The small amount that is left still gets buried.

I would not mind if the truth was told but I estimate that if I saved up all my refuse and sold it I would be worth a few quid?

I have been offered no reduction in council tax even though I now have to take the time to seperate and clean my recyclables, have had my collections reduced from 52 per year to 26, had my green waste collection cancelled entirely and the local council makes a profit from my doing so.

a reply to: nonspecific

Most people in larger cities are required to seperate recyclables but I don't know why you're required to pay an additional fee. I understand why you're complaining, it seems the company is charging you a fee then making a profit from your trash.


I live in an apartment in Phoenix and I just trow my trash into the property dumpster. (I should recycle but....)

It is not a company as such but the local council so in effect the goverment, there is no opt out either so if i decided to recycle my own waste and deal with anything else left over I would still have to pay.

a reply to: notquiteinsane

a reply to: nonspecific
Another thing that I always wondered about is ...
How much energy and water is used by homeowners cleaning trash before a commercial business recycles it and makes a profit on the end product?

A fair amount over the entire population I imagine and it all gets cleaned at the plant anyway. I tell you It's a conspiracy

a reply to: butcherguy

originally posted by: nonspecific
It is not a company as such but the local council so in effect the goverment, there is no opt out either so if i decided to recycle my own waste and deal with anything else left over I would still have to pay.

a reply to: notquiteinsane

Oh, I thought there was a seperate independent company collecting the recyclables.

Hmmm... it does seem fishy.

I would agree if they imposed a fine if you didn't seperate your trash but to charge extra is just wrong.

a reply to: nonspecific
Don't tell anyone.... but I don't wash mine out.

same up north in summer it stinks

This has bugged me for a long time...
every now and again i throw stuff in there that i shouldnt for badness.
the more time spent removing it... you know the rest, and a guy at the bottoms getting paid. a reply to: nonspecific

I only do it when the wife is watching as she moans at me if i dont.

To give a rough idea an aliminium can is worth 1p (1.6c) that does not sound like much but with a population of 68 million even an average of 3 cans of soft drink or beer per person per week would start to add up

a reply to: butcherguy

i dont have time to mess around...i pay for trash removal...if they want to separate and sort my trash, they can do it.
i have 2 cans. a black one for garbage and a green one for plastic/glass, etc....
i dump my house garbage into the black one and when that is full i dump it in the green one....
let them deal with it

I have large dumpsters at a local hardware store and we just bag recyclables and take them there. I save aluminum and pay for a trash pick up. Which gets more and more pricey every year.

I pay $60 a year, they don`t come and pick the trash up we have to take it to a "transfer station" I don`t mind separating the recyclable items because I figure that the money the county makes by selling it keeps the yearly cost down to $60.

As long as the recycling doesn't go to a private company that makes a profit from it then it's all good. Or am I being taken for a ride by all this?

Here it does go to a private company, or so we're told. The big bins that are in shopping centers for clothes actually are a private company that turns them into rags & are sold overseas, unless marked Salvation Army.

I used to clean & sort the recyclables. That stopped one fine morning when I saw our trash guys dumping both the garbage & recycling into the back of the garbage truck.
Facepalm.

If they don't care, I don't care.

a reply to: nonspecific

Its a multi-BILLION $$$ a year busines in the US. There are many documentaries that show how its picked up, sorted, divided up between industries and then shipped off for reuse-maufacturing.

Big, big business. One of the largest....if not THE largest companies handling the pick-up, separation and selling of it is WASTE HANDLING or WASTE MANAGEMENT.

I have 3 bins green ,blue , brown every 2 weeks the green bin is picked up but it is on the cards to go to 3 weeks between bins .

The blue bins are for paper, plastic and the brown foe garden waste , everything goes in one bin with me but my neighbour and i share a bin so he does all the sorting out and putting out of bins as i have not put a bin out in 4 years i just open the kitchen window and drop it in

I take most of my metal to the scrap yard twice a year and get paid for it. We used to have paper drives when I was a boy scout and we would make money to help pay for our camping trips. The city did not get involved in recycling back then. Most stuff put in the landfill back in the sixties was more natural. Plastics weren't a big part of the trash yet back then.

But now, it is way different, we have gone backwards with all the unnatural chemistry we are making.

a reply to: nonspecific

I love recycling ,every little bit has to help . We have in Australia the same set ups as you probably have in the US as in coloured bins .Paper and cardboard in one ,general rubbish such as plastic in another , and aluminium cans and bottles in the last . It is the last bin that my state (South Australia) has pretty made obsolete . Here we get paid 10 cents for a can or bottle and 20 cents for the larger plastic bottles . These items are marked if they are redeemable but its pretty much everything . You would be surprised how quick the money mounts up and most people collect these until l they get a bin full then cash in . The real big upside of this is people dont throw rubbish out the window when travelling . Why would you throw paper out then keep the cans . People rarely litter .fines are from 315 dollars up to 5000 for an individual .Also jail . Sorry to derail your thread .