Being a fairly conscientious person I've always tried to recycle, but like most things there is a postcode lottery around the country.

Where you live can drastically alter what you can and cannot recycle, how much and how often; forcing people like myself to throw things away out of little alternative. By not owning a car (on similar principles) I am again disadvantaged because I cannot lug boxes of stuff to the nearest recycle centre (and I'm not supposed to lift heavy things for medical reasons), so I have to rely solely on kerb-side collection.

When I first moved to York it was around the time when the council was moving waste collection to a fortnightly service. Even though my previous council had been weekly, they didn't recycle a lot of things like plastic, which makes up a big chunk of modern waste.

The only thing they did have going for them was a little kitchen-top box which you could dump your food waste into, but it's didn't make up for the rest of it. Having flipped through the York recycling leaflet when I arrived I was initially very excited to be able to recycle plastic at last, without it costing me the ability to recycle cardboard or tin cans. However, in practise, that enthusiasm soon subsided.

I find I often have to throw away perfectly recyclable material towards the end of the fortnight because my recycle bins/bags are full to bursting point. I really hate doing this and try to see if my neighbours can spare any space but, with all the excessive packaging now-a-days, most people have the same problem.

Also being a human being I occasionally forget to put the rubbish out and then I'm stuck with a months worth of refuge, or worse, having to chuck recycling for two weeks (making my bin even fuller!). And if they succeed in rolling out this charge per bag for excessive waste in this area, I could be penalised despite my efforts.

It's also a little annoying that if one of my recycle bags isn't very full, but my box is bursting, if I top up the half filled bag with cans and plastic the whole thing gets rejected and therefore slung in the bin. But this isn't the only issue.

Faced with a choice between chucking rubbish in the bin and cleaning it, crushing it and sorting it, I wouldn't mind betting that some of us take the easier option when we are tired and can't be bothered to fish out the leaflet to see if the council recycles that particular kind of item. Also I find the collectors of recycling to be inconsistent, taking items one day but not the next.

Every time an item of mine is rejected because that day they decided not to take it, or it's not sorted into the right bag, it makes the whole process confusing as to what they actually take. Who wants to clean and sort rubbish on the off chance it will be recycled?

There is one solution I would like to pose to the council and that is take it all anyway'! If the recycle team could throw out what they don't want themselves I'd be far more inclined to chuck it in the box rather than the bin. That way all the items I was unsure about have a chance of being recycled too.

Changing peoples habits is one of the hardest things a council, government or anyone has to face (Just look at the FTR, one year on and people still don't know its exact change!) If the recyclers were consistent and less picky it would go a long way to encouraging people to think about their habits and perhaps help the planet that little bit more too.

  • by Corrie Niamh Allan