Settling in and setting up our recycling station

It’s been a bit of a baptism of fire since we moved back to the UK less than three weeks ago. Three weeks? It seems longer. Apart from just the general disruption of moving, MiL fell and broke her hip about four days after we arrived, so in addition to unpacking all our boxes and dealing with snagging on our lodge, we’ve had to add nursing and cooking duties. At times like this it can feel as if life has got out of control, and for a control freak like me that’s not a good place to be. So, one way of coping that works for us is to divide all the tasks to be done into small elements, write a list and try to achieve four or five things a day. Another trick I use is to take control of areas that can be managed, and this is where recycling comes in.

Before we left France we were getting quite into the recycling habit and moving towards a plastic-free lifestyle. Moving certainly throws all these good intentions into a harsh light. You’re surrounded by cardboard boxes, and despite best intentions, there always seems to be a couple of things that you need to order, a few trips to B&Q and almost daily visits to the supermarket as you restock. Obviously, we want our new home to be vegan and cruelty-free, so all our cleaning products have to meet these standards and be recyclable or refillable. There are plenty of zero waste shops around, which I’ll be exploring in the next few months, but I’ve had to make do with Sainsburys for now. And, like the French house, the kitchen is a 100% vegan zone so, apart from pet food, no meat will cross the threshold.

The arrangements for household waste were something I wanted to get under control as quickly as possible. I’d noticed on previous visits that FiL didn’t have a very good grasp of the complicated arrangements for kerbside collections, and was pretty keen on burning stuff, too. Not at all good for the environment! It took me some time to get my head around the waste collection calendar myself, and this was not helped by the fact that the Christmas and New Year holidays added extra disruption. However, Colchester council seem to have a fairly good system for rotating fortnightly collections, although you need a plethora of bins and boxes to cope with the waste separation rules.

We have now got a system of no less than three bins, three boxes and a waste food caddy. Plastic and paper/cardboard are collected separately, so that accounts for two bins, glass and metal tins are also separated, so that’s another two boxes, plus there is a black bin for ‘all other’ waste, though each household is only permitted to put out three 60l black bags per fortnight. Waste food, including cooked debris and meat, is collected weekly, though I have left this for the in-laws, as one of the first things we bought in B&Q was a compost bin for all of our vegetable and fruit peelings. As I am strict about meal planning, and we only buy the food we eat, we have very little food waste.

Initially, we thought that the French recycling system was probably superior, with the Syded three-bin public collection points in virtually every village and hamlet for glass, paper and card, and plastic. However, having seen the volume of recycling on the kerbside on collection day, it is clear that even in a small village like this, about the same size as Châlus with under 2,000 inhabitants, the UK method is probably the most effective option. Of course, like many places, the council does not collect every type of package capable of being recycled. One such item is Tetra Paks, which I was a bit disappointed about, as apparently 90% of councils do collect these. However, the extremely helpful Eco Colchester Facebook group quickly pointed me in the right direction here – to Sainsburys, in fact, where there are large (overflowing) bins for this type of packaging, plus plastic wrap and carrier bags.

I also learned that there’s lots happening on the recycling front in Colchester, something I’ll be exploring in the future. Several centres collect products that are difficult to recycle for a company called Terracycle. For example, a local school uses this as way to raise money, with 24-hour accessible bins for things like crisp packets, bread bags, toothpaste tubes and toothbrushes, and sweet wrappers. We decided to try to help this cause, and add to our recycling project, hence yet another collection box has appeared in our recycling station.