Waste Diversion (Composting & Recycling)

[ChetMC]

Do municipalities in England typically have composting and recycling programs in addition to garbage collection?

[flapjack]

Oh boy yes. You can expect a fortnightly garbage collection and a weekly or fortnightly collection of
paper/cardboard
aluminium/tin
glass
and PROBABLY some kind of plastics. Where I am now does bottles, the town I used to live in did everything.
There is support available for composting at home, including subsidised compost bins.

A lot of this is going to depend on where you live, though. I do an eight mile drive once a month to get rid of our plastic tubs and tetrapaks, because Wiltshire recycles them and Swindon doesn't :

[Helen_A]

It is really really dependent on where you live - county and district.

What in each category will be taken or accepted in the 'bins' really varies as well - for example here in MK any plastic will be taken as long as it is bottle shaped (but there are collection bins at various supermarkets and municipal places that take by no.). But in other areas its limited to numbers 1, 2 and 3 regardless of shape, or others they specify types of use of plastic (one place would take yog. pots of any plastic type, but only plastic no. 1,2&3 of anything for other use/shape....

All areas the containers must be washed - dirty or contaminated with food anything is worth lots less atm, so many areas just getting one or two unwashed things in a load is enough to mean the whole load is worthless and ends up being stored (if you are in a place with space to bale and store and ride out the market) or you will condem the whole load to landfill....

[orangefoot]

We are in the Vale of the White Horse and we have two green bins for weekly recycling, a subsidised home compost dalek and a bi-weekly green waste and cardboard 'brown bin' which we pay £33 per year for.

This is a list of what you can have recycled from your doorstep here.

[bella_stranger]

we used to have a compost collection, but someone else in our building was using it impoperly (putting plastic bags and other weird stuff in it) so it was taken away.
we also nearly had our recylcling taken away when they put a WHOLE PILLOW in it? ... :

[CrunchyMamaToBe]

Generally, yes, but it depends on where you live.

I'm in a neighboring district to Orangefoot and we get recyclables + garden waste collected one week, general rubbish the next. Everyone got bins/bags for free, but only of a certain size - if you needed a larger one, you had to pay for it.

My complaint right now is that we can only recycle plastic bottles (so no yogurt pots, etc.) and no tertrapaks. There's a tetrapak drop near us, but that means letting them build up in our small kitchen until someone will be happening by there.

[NW6Londonmum]

North London
We have collections for food compost, garden waste and recycling items (glass bottles/jars, plastic bottles, paper and cardboard). Local site takes tetrapaks and other plastics.