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It would be good to have some feed back from the various recycling banks/systems about "what we are not doing properly"I have read on the BBC site of lorryloads of paper arriving at mills(?) with too many brown envelopes in the consignment and its all turned back!Like yourselves I do have a system..but its a bit unsightly.NEWSPAPERS,MAGAZINES,PAPER, OLD ENVELOPES.  I pile these up in a plastic box and keep it under the table in the home/office and take to Tesco's Osterley, or the local paper skip outside the Library.(I remove all addresses from envelopes and correspondence etc etc and put them in a large envelope for a future shredding session)(All those plastic windows in envelopes are torn out and put in the general waste)TINS AND GLASS. I wash them out and put them into the green box which I leave in the garden alley ..hidden from view.Only these items do I leave out on recycling days..not that there are many.(In the Hebrides, residents have been asked to remove the paper surrounding baked bean cans etc! in addition to washing them out!) (Somewhere in the UK up to 500,000 tons of glass is being stored in Warehouses I gather as "they" are not happy or sure about the reprocessing/recycling. Can this really be so?) (Some people, object to the recycling of glass when in its smashed up form it is used in aggregate for road and pathway surfaces!!)PLASTICS OF ALL SORTS.  This I collect in a tall swing bin..the one I used to use for all items! Most items I wash but some I don't.  I take the bin to Tesco's Osterley once a week ..where they have MANY open topped containers ..so you don't have to touch the plastic.EGG BOXES Saved up in shopping bag and hidden away..and taken to the Osterley Farm. But my new egg supplier will in future be Vanilla in Churchfield Road Acton..who sell some crackers!!CARDBOARD/BOXBOARD As Richard mentioned there are two main types.  Firstly corregated cardboard found ..those brown cartons...and then there's boxboard the thinner material used for packing teabags,shreddies etc. I collapse these and keep the boxboard inside a Shreddies box or something similar.There is a recycling skip in Twickenham and a colleague passes that way often. SILVER PAPER/SILVER FOIL. collect these items up in a pretty tin..and then enclose all in a transparent plastic bag and place in green box now and then.BATTERIES  Collect in see through plastic bag and then green box occasionally.OLD OLD CLOTHES AND TEXTILES..Store in plastic bags..not for long..and deposit at Tesco site..where you're asked to keep items in the plastic bag.FOOD.  All uncooked food,fruit and vegetable residue collected firstly in a small pretty pot on the window sill, then daily transferred to a small container out on the patio..and then weekly dumped on the compost heap at the end of the garden. Including egg shells, orange peel and all.THE RESIDUE  Hardly any...two small bags a week..except currently 3 bags of tissues as well!! (had flu for 10 weeks on and off)When the Borough's refuse collectors arrive there is very little for them to take.  Passing the Bridge Road depot at 2pm any days..the lorries are already back at base..and I wonder if their rounds should be extended in any way to take account of the downturn in their loads.When Brentford FC play at home and some 5000 and more fans turn up harmlessly swigging cans of refreshments..do all those 5000 cans ever get recycled.  Do local litter bins have their contents sorted somewhere?

Jim Lawes ● 6684d

This is what we do:"Recycling centre" in a corner of the kitchen/breakfast room, in which reside:- green box for newspapers and junk mail- old straw shopping bag for glass bottles and jars, and for cans- cardboard boxes torn and/or folded and stacked vertically between the green box and the bottle bag.On top of this lot:- large plastic carrier bag (an old Waitrose "bag for life") for hard plastic stuff - bottles, food trays etc.- another large plastic carrier for card packaging like Weetabix packets and outer card packaging that needlessly surround plastic food pots (never quite sure whether they count as paper or cardboard, so we keep them separate, which is convenient as they tend to be small)Garden waste from our very small garden in a Hounslow white bag, kept outside until it's full or starting to biodegrade.All other waste including food in kitchen pedal bin (in bin liner), which is emptied daily and put outside in a plastic dustbin lined with a black sack (anti-fox precaution).On the evening before the collections, stuff small card packets into the biggest one (e.g. Kleenex, Weetabix), put on top of newspapers in green box, add cardboard, then bottles and cans.We take the plastic to Waitrose, West Ealing, every week when we do our weekly supermarket shop.Having written this down, I realise it sounds complicated, but it becomes natural very quickly.  I'm amazed at how much plastic we are now recycling, and we often have just one black bag per week now.

Richard Jennings ● 6685d