Evergreen December Challenge Round One: December 4 2018

This is my entry for @phoenixwren's Evergreen December Challenge - round one - with prizes (ooh!), chosen by cats (ooh?). The fun continues through December, so pick your challenge from 31 different things you can do to help save the planet.

Today, I am taking on challenge number two:
"google your local recycling facility’s rules about what items they accept, if they need to be separated, etc. This is because so many people engage in what they call "aspirational recycling" and put in items that can't be recycled, which borks the whole batch and everything ends up getting tossed."

Leicester has always been pretty good for re-cycling, back in the late eighties it was an "Environment City" with little plaques on the highways as you entered the city boundaries. I think it might even have been a Beacon City (I know!) for its progressive environmental policies.

The challenge was a really good opportunity for me to audit my re-cycling practices and find out if there was anything I could change or improve. Leicester has a comprehensive page covering weekly kerbside collections of:

• orange recycling bags (see picture below)
• garden waste
• non-recyclable household waste.
  Two of my neighbours and myself, between us, have hardly any non-recycle-able waste and have taken to just putting out one bin for collection, and even that is rarely half full.

Source: the sorts of things you can include in the orange recycling bags - they're mainly for paper and household packaging.

I love our re-cycling centres. We have two near us, one operated by the County and one by the City. They have different policies :) I prefer the County one: there's usually a chap sitting at the gate, under an umbrella, who will tell you which containers you need for which sorts of waste. But if you have any garden rubble, the City is better, because they don't charge for hardcore.

Source I just noticed that it says the local County recycling site will not accept "Ammunition such as Second World War shells" - can you imagine loading one of those in your car and setting off to the recycling centre?

Source I was interested to learn that there is a LOROS Re-use shop based at one of the re-cycling centres. I also found out that the local Mind charity shop will take small electrical items.

Source Leicester also promotes the Love Food Hate Waste campaign on its recycling pages. It seems "we're saving £3.4 billion a year compared to 2007, not to mention saving 5.0 million tonns of CO2 - that's like taking 2.2 million cars off the road."

Leicester recycled and composted 40.3% of its household waste in 2016-2017. In the last financial year, Leicester spent £16 million on waste collection and re-cycling.

Walking