Someone in my building's idea of recycling

(to el @ #18) actually, you might find petrol would look after the polystyrene better than matches… or in addition to matches, then you have mum’s roses all tidied up – back to their main stem (but that’s another story…) whooooooooops…

i meant to add to the end of that rant – at least this person featured in the photo was trying to do the right thing (assuming they thought it was recyclable!).

i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again, a lot of people have no shame. i live in a complex filled to the brim with a bunch of complete lazy &(!@&^!@s who put anything and everything in the communal recycling bins and rubbish skip. i don’t know how people can be so selfish or do such things – they must have no conscience! my partner and i had a shedload of green waste which we cleared out of our gardens over christmas – we could have stuck in the recycling bins or rubbish skip, but no we asked a friend to borrow their trailer so we could take it to the tip – and we paid the $16 fee to do so at the ‘normal tip’ because the green waste recycle centre at mitchell was closed over xmas. more rage to see other lazy *(!#@)(*@s had gotten to the green waste recycle centre, obviously found it closed and simply dumped their crap on the kerb. WTF.

Laziness.

A cigarette lighter could’ve had the polystyrene bulk disposed of in a matter of minutes.

And if the truck drivers had to get out of the truck for each and every lazy bum that can’t use a bin with a lid properly, no doubt there would be whinging about ‘wasting taxpayers’ money’ or the like.

Get a trash pack for non-stinky rubbish, or make a trip to the tip once in a while. Hell, why not open the lids on your neighbours bins on collection night to see if they have some free space?

…but you aren’t paying them to get off their arse and out of their truck, which is where is issue lies.

Also your rates cover you for weekly garbage collection services, but that is limited to what can reasonably fit in our wheelie bin (without overloading it), otherwise its your responsibility to lug it to the tip…waste management centre!

Lets say I offer to pay you to remove a tree stump. You come along with your digging machine and it does most of the job but there is a bit on the side that the machine just can’t do (maybe is has some metal wire wrapped around it or something). Then you hold out your hand for the money and are surprised when I don’t pay you. I wouldn’t pay because I didn’t hire you to drive a machine, I hired you to do a job. The same goes for these garbage collectors, they shouldn’t get paid unless they take all the rubbish away. We aren’t hiring them to drive a truck.

Vic Bitterman said :

Just cos something is “marked as recyclable” and has a logo and it’s number, does not actually mean we have the facilities to recycle it.

Exactly.

What’s more, the triangular symbols and the associated number simply designate the particular recycled polymer that the product is made out of – They DON’T indicate “recyclability”.

…alternately, they could have bought bean bags and had a snow fight making beans from the left-over packaging…

Picture truly is wonderful – Santa should have known better…

TAMS website was not all that forthcoming on the polystyrene question… perhaps an email query with pointers to this post? (I’d do it, but DETs web-based email access late at night is non-existent)…

I certainly put “6” in the recycling bins provided, hope I’m not sinning…

ACT bins, which were originally blown open by compressed air (hence the little holes in the lip of the older models which provide habitat for red backs), are now opened by gravity (which is a little more conveniently accessible in the ACT and requires slightly less maintenance), which is why the lid does not have to be flat down anymore to be collected… (as they were with the initial contractors).

Holidaying in Brisbane, I can tell you we must not take our little rubbish service for granted – there is very little commitment to recycling shown here! One bin (about the size of our rubbish), with a spacer providing a small partition at the back for recycling.