My recycling is going in with the rubbish!
No it isn't - it just looks that way:
We have different types of vehicle collecting the recyclables and it may well appear that your material is not being separated.
We can fully understand how residents may be misled into thinking that there is no point separating their waste items, and that recyclables are just going in with the residual rubbish.
Most recycling lorries are "split" vehicles with separate compartments for glass and for the other items.
One type of lorry has a hopper at the front for glass, and the other material goes in the rear. In the case of the latter the blue bins are emptied on the lifts, in the same way your green bins are.
Another type of vehicle loads all materials at the rear. There is a 70/30 split at the back so there are still separate compartments involved.
In both cases the crews often use a "slave" bin for glass. They fill up a wheel bin with glass and empty that into the lorry. If the lorry has the 70/30 split at the rear both the blue bins and the glass slave bin are emptied on the lifts, but they DO go into the separate compartments.
In the event of vehicle breakdown a small caged lorry may go out to collect glass separately. This is quite in order. The glass goes to the same place for reprocessing.
In fact, it is a legal requirement that we keep glass and paper apart.
Recyclables never go in with general refuse. But there are obvious similarities between the different types of vehicles used on our work.
The 70/30 split vehicles are also used in some areas where we have a black refuse sack and clear recycling sack collection. It might APPEAR that it's all going in the back mixed but it isn't. The rear loading section is in fact split as described above.
The main purpose of introducing our new scheme is to increase recycling. There would be no point whatsoever putting this scheme in and then not running it properly. So you see, it's definitely worth splitting your rubbish into the recycling bin and general household waste, as we do handle it correctly.
