UKH

If you read the fine print on the leaflet from the council it says that only types of plastic that can be put in the brown bin are plastic bottles and the tops of trigger spray bottles. For the last couple of months my partner has insisted that we take all of our recyclable but not bottle shaped plastic to recycling centers to be recycled. Is this really what we are supposed to be doing or can we get away with just chucking it all in the brown recycling bin? 

Also from Sheffield, if it says recyclable it goes in the brown bin, its then not my problem!

Sheffield's crap for recycling isn't it? But your 'wish-cycling' solution is likely to result in the whole lot being rejected as contaminated unfortunately.

I take other plastic to the recycling places at the supermarket. I'm sure it'll end up in the incinerator anyway but I feel I've at least tried! 

We did a very interesting tour of the incinerator pre covid. Sadly whilst the fact we send nothing to landfill is to be celebrated, Sheffield's recycling provision is abysmal.

From what we were told bottles are the higher grade plastics that are most cost effective to recycle. If your brown recycling bin is full of non-bottle plastics (even ones that can be recycled elsewhere) Veolia will treat it as contaminated and none of it will be recycled.

I hate this too and don't really have space to be saving stuff and taking it myself. Also hate that we don't recycle food waste. My bin is half full of things that don't need to be in there  

Like SCC, it's all a load of bollox.

Plastics are mostly oil and at least this will be used to generate heat/electricity, same with food waste and pretty much anything else that can burn. Obviously nowhere near as good as recycling but far superior to landfill. I do wonder though if the fact we don't pay landfill taxes means there is less incentive in Veolia to maximize their recycling.

That said on the plus side all our recycling is apparantly done in the UK, so unlike many cities Sheffield isn't shipping our waste half way round the globe for third world nations to deal with.

S7 resident here - I only put plastic bottles, glass and tin cans into the brown bin.  All other recyclable packaging gets taken to supermarket or 'household recycling centre' as I believe the Tip is officially called...

I really hope my stuff gets recycled, but the phrase 'recycled' seems to cover quite a spectrum these days (sadly)

Ahh Veolia, we moved over to them at work a couple of months ago, we have one large bin for general waste and 2 large bins for recycling, cardboard, plastics etc. 

I was there for a change 2 weeks ago when they came to empty, all 3 bins in to the back of the same wagon, I questioned why are the recycling bins going in with the general waste, apparently they are short of drivers so for the time being it all gets collected together. 

How does that work?  What I mean is, if there is a bin lorry full or ‘proper’ plastic but containing one ‘not proper’, would they tip the whole lot into landfill?  I’ve heard this before (ie it’s contaminated recycling so all chucked) but it seems more trouble than it’s worth. 

Yes basically. They can separate a small amount of 'contamination' but more than a certain amount they will just treat the whole lorry load as unrecyclable, as it's not financially viable for them to sort.

Hence only taking 'bottles' as they can be quickly identified by eye. Even if your plastic tub is the same grade plastic as a coke bottle, it's not a bottle so shouldn't be out in the blue bin.

For anyone interested in Sheffields rubbish disposal I'd highly recommend a free tour of the incinerator. https://www.veolia.co.uk/sheffield/sheffield-energy-recovery-facility-open-...

I keep seeing this, but it feels suspicious and a bit scaremongery/excusey. Shocked if it's as clear cut as Jenny C says

That's what we were told by the incinerator staff (actually a friend of ours) when we did a tour. One lady was very pro recycling and gave him a hard time over it, so I'm sure he would have come clean for the sake of an easy life if it was just scaremongering.

Would like to visit a recycling centre to compare. As above the incinerator was really interesting and has made me very strongly in favour over landfill - as despite not recycling nothing goes to waste with electricity being generated from the waste.

Also I do think it's worth reiterating that Sheffield doesn't greenwash by sending low grade recyclables to facilities abroad. All our recyclables are fully processed in the UK, not passed on to be a third world countries problem.

This has really ground my gears since moving to Sheffield a few years ago! Veolia are trying to separate PET from the other kinds of plastic, as it's the one they can recycle cheapest. Choosing "bottle shaped" as the sorting criteria is ridiculously blunt, and will reject a lot of non-bottle shaped PET, but also lead to non-PET bottles being put in the brown bin. 

In my opinion it's indicative of the contract going to the lowest bidder, not the one that actually provides a good service. Rubbish collection is a service that we pay for as taxpayers. Everyone knows that we should be recycling more, and this will only happen when it's easy for people to do the right thing. Veolia cutting corners like this makes a lot of people frustrated and disenfranchised with recycling, which is clearly bad for the environment.

Another gripe I have is their bins: the bins are collected in a weekly cycle of rubbish / paper & card / rubbish / glass, cans, & bottles. The blue bin is far too small to fit 4 weeks of cardboard for a household in: now I live in a house of 2 we manage ok, but when I lived in a 6 person houseshare we'd have to jump on the cardboard to make it all fit*. This incentivises people to "just chuck it in the black bin" as that's collected more regularly and is huge. The black bin should be the smallest and collected the least regularly, as it is in Bristol where I grew up! I know people complained about that when it was introduced, but everyone I know there is used to it now. According to this league table, Bristol recycles 46.4% of waste, compared to Sheffield's 32.2%. I'd be interested to know what tactics are used by the better-performing areas if anyone has any personal experience!

I know it's idealistic, but we should live in a country where the products we buy come in the minimal packaging, that can either quickly biodegrade or be recycled with our household waste without having to make special journeys to the recycling centre. The companies that deal with our rubbish shouldn't be awarded the contracts if they're going to provide the bare-minimum service that Veolia seem to.

* I know you can leave big bits next to the bin, but they sometimes reject them if they're not tied together tightly, which is also a lot of effort.

I disagree with black (general waste) being directed less frequently, especially in summer when it can get smelly. But wouldn't have an issue with it being replaced with a smaller one.

But completely agree that that the blue bin is too small. Also how the heck do people fill the brown one in a month, especially when correctly separating out the items veolia won't recycle?

I've lived in both Bristol and Sheffield in the past decade and Bristol is considerably better on this. 

The recycling was collected every week. Any plastics, glass, cans, tetra-packs, etc. all went in the same box. It was all chucked in the same lorry; the binmen hooked the box on the side of the lorry and separated everything into separate holes. No issue with the rubbish only being collected every fortnight; it was rare that I had more than a carrier bags worth in there because virtually everything else was recyclable. 

Since moving to Sheffield about a year ago, I've found it very frustrating in comparison. Having to take tetra packs to the council site in Waitrose carpark for example. I didn't know that all other plastics count as contaminant, so that's another regular journey I'm going to have to make to a recycling centre (which, let's be honest, most people are not going to bother with). 

Don't get me wrong, Bristol Waste have a mistake in them as well. They decided a couple of years back that paper&card should be collected in this weird bag (made out of the sort of material bulk aggregates are delivered in), which obviously blew everywhere, got lost, allowed the card to get soaked, etc. 

Bristol has an amazing recycling centre in Avonmouth (looks like a scene from Blade Runner, especially at night). I'm sure I read that all the buses ran on gas (and 25% of the gas mains supply in the immediate area) created from the composted waste of locals.