Recycling,privatisation and technology

I'm amazed now when I go to my local dump or as its known now 'Recycling centre',seven or so years ago my local dump was just that a dump,you'd drive in dump all you crap over the side and drive off home to try and wash the stench of the place from your pores,everything went into a pile and was buried never to be seen again and you'd be lucky if the pair of low paid council employee's would appear from their little TV equipped hut and if they did it would be to scowl at you to remind you how crappy their lives were.

Now when you go everything has its place,from TV's to plastic,metal,wood,brambles.used engine oil,batteries,magazines even rubble and dirt all have their own separate container. You drive through a well organised,modern sign posted complex upon reaching the correct area you may get a polite greeting from one of the 10 or so attendant's who will show what goes where and at times even help you empty your car.

I would have never believed this would be possible,certainly not at this point in time so what's the big turnaround? The Government 'UK' has been banging on about recycling for decades but nothing ever changed and now within a couple of years its gone from a landfill to an essential service with only about 10% going into landfill which is mostly domestic food waste ect.

Three things have changed that I'm aware of; 1.The price of metal has sky rocketed to make it more cost effective 2.The dumps have now been privatised "While still being subsidised"so money and profit play a role 3. New recycling technology has emerged to enable recycling of practically everything or at least find a use for it.

I'm not sure what's played the biggest role but I just think its amazing how quickly the world is changing and its great

 

Take it a step further. Save Water Bathe with a friend!

 

Usually when I've finished doing DIY or something,the last time I went a few days ago I took two old CRT TV's and a microwave,all of them had been rikky'd so their guts had been removed.:-D

Yeah we have 4 full size bins about 120 litres each.,collected every two weeks 'used to be every week a few months ago'

Black;houshold/food
Brown;plastic bottles/cans
Blue;paper/cardboard
Green;Garden waste

We don't have the much space over here so 4 120 litre 'wheelie' bins are a PITA to keep out of the way,its also a PITA organizing everything to go in the right bin,we need some internal bins with separators but god knows how big they'd be.

Thanks for the responses anyway,even yours Tony:-D

 

@Rikky... Dude I as long as I can remember our local dump had seperate skips (bog ones!) to put stuff in, it got more organized as time went on an they started limiting you with how much you could dump in a day.
Here though you pay per ton of what you are dumping with a minimum fee of $35 (about 20 quid) Which sucks.
There used to be a 6 monthly "Big Stuff" collection day when you could put out litterally anything! Fridges, sofas, general crap no matter how big as long as not harmful or toxic.

Now they don't do that and unlike UK where you can (or used to be able to) call the council to come pick up , up to 3 large items and have it taken away for like a tenner ($15). Can't do that here either, so basically if you don't have any way to get large items from your house to the dump then you are stuck with them, I can't even find anyone who does it for a fee.

As for the Weelie bins, dude I miss those, I know it's a pain sorting but they were so much easier and cleaner than bags and a couple of recycle boxes that we have here.

We have to sort plastics/metals seperate from card/paper etc which is ok, but they are a pain to put out, can't put it out night before because it's ...

A: Illegal
B: Will get pulled apart by the bloody racoons , funny little furry lone Rangers that they are :-D