The answer to my question is recycling. A global recycling league table published in June had Wales in second place, narrowly behind Austria, with both countries recycling 59% of their "municipal waste" as defined by the EU. England didn't do so badly in 11th place.
According to UK statistics, on some other basis presumably, Wales recycles 66% of its waste, with England in the high 40s.
Why are the Wales stats so good and so much better than England's? Here is the reason:
These are some (most to be fair) of the waste receptacles provided by our local council. You see essentially the same receptacles by the roadside everywhere in north, and I assume south, Wales. There is of course a black wheelie bin and, in front of it a food waste caddy with a bag for recycling coffee pods on top. Then we have a brown wheelie bin for garden waste and the device on the right is known as a trolibocs. (In Wales we don't do the letter x, so taxi is written tacsi for example. Imagine hearing trolleybox with a gentle Welsh lilt and you'll get the idea). The top stackable box takes paper and white card, the middle takes plastic and cans and the bottom glass and brown cardboard. Until this week when, great joy, we've had yet another receptacle delivered:
This bag will from now on take the brown cardboard. I'll have to flatten and break up boxes to fit in the bag as boxes too large for the bottom trolibocs container left alongside the trolibocs as previously "will not be collected" I am sternly told.
Which will mean it takes me even longer to sort and pre-process all of our recycling. But I don't mind too much as I've always been against waste and for as much re-use as possible.
Soon after I retired I saw a cartoon which captured some of the essence of no longer being in employment. A man and his wife (of course they're married, they're both of an age) are lying next to each other in bed. He looks twitchy. She says to him "I know it's bin day tomorrow but try to contain your excitment dear".
Part of my excitement comes from the now ten receptacles provided for our recycling. In addition to the eight shown above (counting the trolibocs as three) there are occasionally used bags for batteries and for textiles. Oh and you can place small electrical items on top of the trolibiocs for collection too.
I recall one of the many recent Tory PMs, I think it was Sunak, saying that his party was going to bring some sense to waste collection in England and was not going to allow the proposal for as many as seven different waste bins. Only seven - ha! The BBC reckoned there never had been a proposal from the PM's own Deparrment of Environment etc for seven bins, though the Environment Secretary admitted the government was "assailed by representations of this sort". It's not clear yet whether Labour will cause inflation in the number of English bins, but you've got a way to go, boyos.
I've often wondered - and sometimes read about - whether all this waste separation is necessary. Just chuck it all in one bin and the equipment will separate it. Isn't that what they end up doing anyway? And doesn't it often just go to landfill? Ah but. We know that the equipment struggles to sense black plastic trays for example. And the plastic bottle tops get separated from the bottles and end in the wrong waste stream, which is why they're now anchored onto the bottles. (Of course I twist them off, it's a struggle to get them back on to the orange juice bottle otherwise. I'm not perfect you know!) I tend to think this is what they mean when they talk about waste streams being contaminated. Sure, I rinse out glass jars wondering, as I do so, whether there's any net benefit or disbenefit to the environment. A bit of jam on a glass jar isn't going to make any difference when the jar is melted down in a furnace, is it? But apparently fairly small amounts of the wrong plastic in a waste stream condemns the whole batch as being no good for re-use in making our fleeces or whatever.
The frustration about different containers in England stems, I think, from the differences between local councils and the difficulty in finding out about what should go where due to the different contracts councils take out with providers and the differnet processes those providers use. Wales seems to have benefited from standardisation of the process nationally. As a result if you have a question and phone to ask the council (yes, someone does still pick up eventually) they know the answer. "Egg boxes go in the bottom of the troliobcs, mate". Or at least they did until we got that new large green bag. How will I remember?
We don't, of course, have to put all of the bins out every week. I remember quite a few years ago the Daily Mail poking fun at the weird Welsh council - my local council - which was moving to four weekly collection of the general waste black bins. How could anyone be so daft, they clearly thought. We'd already gone from two weekly to three weekly, a move which had finally got us to start using the food waste caddy, which we'd always thought would cause smells in the kitchen. Which it doesn't. Unless it's full of raw onion. What it did was prove that the larger caddy, photographed above, could not be left outside the back door. Although it has a handle which locks the lid in place, making it supposedly animal proof, the foxes are too clever and determined for that if you've left a chicken carcass in there. So that has to live in the garage. And no, it doesn't make the garage smell.
Using the food caddy proved a revelation. There is an amazing amount of weight in the food waste, even though we try to use as much as possible, Mrs H choosing some menus on what's left in the pantry or fridge. "No, I'm not cooking that, it doesn't go with the sweet potatoes which need to be used up". If food was economically available in smaller packages, especially things like bread and potatoes, there would be much less waste.
As a result of separating the food waste our black bin never smells and is usually no more than two-thirds to three-quarters full after 4 weeks. If we have a large item to dispose of, say a duvet, I keep it back till bin day and it will nearly always fit in the top, putting off the need to make a trip to the tip (sorry, waste recycling centre) which is a twice yearly irritation as it has to be booked on line and there are never appointments at short notice. I've learned it's not sensible to spend the morning producing bulky gardening waste, load the car with that and an assortment of items set aside in the garage and go in at lunchtime expecting to book an afternoon appointment, only to have to unload the car, muttering because there were loads of appointments available earlier and I hadn't known which time to pick but they've now all gone.
So when I read of Tory ministers promising to bring back weekly bin collections I was bemused as to why that would be necessary. To be fair we are only a two person household but then that must be pretty close to the average household size in our area.
The other excitement and tension about bin day is getting the right containers down to the street on the right days. The trolibocs, food and other recycling apart from garden waste is collected weekly. The garden waste is collected fortnightly and the black bins every fourth week. Best not to miss that! Though, when we unavoidably do because we're away, we've always managed to fit everything in for the next collection.
I was actually quite glad when our council went from three to four weekly black bin collection. The bin collection calendar (no longer sent out annually on hard copy, I might have to download their damned app which will send me reminders of which bins to put out) became easier to follow. Week one black and recycle, week two brown and recycle, week three only recycle, week four brown and recycle. Which meant there was never any need to put out all of them at once.
Which was a merciful relief as there is a problem for me with the Welsh system. I have to wheel and lug those many receptacles 100 yards down the fairly steep hill I live up to get them to the side of the nearest public road each week, often in the dark at this time of year. I've become adept at taking the trolibocs and a black or brown bin down together, one in front of me, one behind. A kind of "bin train". When we've filled our second brown bin* or there are other items two journeys is necessary. Together with posting all the different wastes into the right bins one does feel like an unpaid waste recycling operative.
But we're second in the world, so I guess it's worth it.
Da iawn Cymru!. Say it phonetically something like "dai-ow-nn, cumry" and you've said "well done Wales" in Welsh.
* we have to pay for the brown garden bins, of course. The second one is at a bargain rate. The collection is done by a private contractor separate from the council collectors who pick up the other stuff. It's all unusually efficient for a council supplied service
Wales second in the world for recycling rates. BBC website 5 June 2024
Da iawn Cymru! Wales named as second best recycling nation in the world, media.service.gov.wales 5 June 2024
Seven bins and Sunak's other net zero claims fact checked. BBC website 21 September 2023
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