Buy, throw, save?

Question

I recently moved from the UK to Japan and came across this for the first time...

You buy your bin-bags in packs, either large or small in size (volume). They're not that cheap- average about 3 UK pounds for a pack of 20- see-through, and have different coloured print on them, indicating what should be put in them.

Basically, the price of the bags pays for its collection and disposal. In short, if you throw out just one bag of rubbish a week you're not paying the same as someone who throws out fifteen bags a week.

The best bit is that the bags for recycleable items (separated into metals, glass, PET bottles, 'other' plastics) are markedly cheaper than those for burnable rubbish (food scraps, paper that you choose not to recycle, etc), so if you sort your rubbish into burnable and recyclable, you're both saving money / the planet and reducing the number of land-fill sites in your country.

How would you UK folk like this system back home? I for one think it's a great idea.

In response to Bungle, in Japan we put our rubbish out in one place for each section of the street / set of apartments. It goes under a heavy-duty net and / or inside a steel cage thing to stop birds and animals getting at it.

And you're only supposed to put rubbish out the day of collection. You get in 'trouble' if you just throw any old rubbish out on the wrong day. I know of people who had their rubbish dumped outside their door because they just chucked it out days before collection day. But the bags are small, and there are 2 burnable collection days a week, so there's no real reason why you can't follow the rules. It works.

To Charles: it's not difficult to 'sort' your rubbish. You just need, say, 2 extra bins or containers alongside your regular bin. You sort it as you throw it away, not sort through all your rubbish in one go. The elderly can manage that!

Answer 1

Now that is a great idea.

When you come back to visit us, run for Mayor and we will support you to get this brilliant idea off the ground.

Honestly, you'd think the UK would be up on all these clever and encouraging ways of recycling.

Thanks for the YQ.

Answer 2

Its a great idea.

Unfortunately even the sorted rubbish all still goes into the same landfils in the U.K.

Its an absolute joke, keep getting threataning letters from the council to use those red boxes, erm, it would be good if they would provide the boxes then have a go for not using them. Left hand doesn't know what the rights doing.

Were so slow to clean up our own mess over here.

Answer 3

While it may be the case that the Japanese are highly organised and efficient this is not the case here in UK. My local council supply two wheely bins at my house. One is for general landfill type trash the other is for recycle. It works. My household is now recycling nearly 50% of all household trash and we're getting better at it as time goes by.

Most of the recycled trash ends up in China where they have enormous warehouses full of our unwanted plastic. Not sure what they do with this maybe just turn it all back into plastic bags. Who knows.

Answer 4

I think it is a bad idea because it would be too much trubel for the elderly to chek all their rubbish &all cumponys as well I think the uk should just stick with the bins its cleaner

Answer 5

nah lets keep it all in 1 black bag u name it gos in there even the mrs I aint got time to sort it all rots away 1 day.

ok this is and edit after reading a reply the uk is so small it could pollute as much as it liked and wouldnt ave any impact as far as other countries go

Answer 6

its a good idea.

but every bag that is put out in my street is pulled apart by foxes, birds and romanians - so i prefer the bins just because its tidier and london already has too much litter.

Answer 7

sounds good enough to me.