Rubbish and litter is an inevitability. Everybody accumulates waste and rubbish that has to be disposed of. The average person in the United Kingdom disposes of over 5 kilos of rubbish a week in their rubbish bin – a quarter of a tonne a year.

All that waste has to go somewhere too. It is either buried in landfills, burnt or it can be recycled. However, not everything can be recycled and much of what we throw away in our rubbish bins isn’t biodegradable, meaning it can linger around landfills for decades – damaging the environment in the process.

Types of rubbish

The type of rubbish we throw away can be divided into five different categories. Some of which is biodegradable, some which isn’t:

• Plastic – Most plastics aren’t biodegradable. Many can’t be recycled either which is why the use of plastics is becoming an increasing environmental concern.
• Paper/card – from packaging to newspapers most paper can be recycled in some for or another. Paper recycling bins and recycling containers make it easy to store before it is taken away.
• Tins and metals – Most metals can be recycled and special recycling facilities exist in most towns and cities to deal with it.
• Ceramics and glass – Both can be recycled so look out for bottle banks or glass recycling bins.
• Organic waste – from lawn trimmings to the garden to food scraps fro the kitchen. The least harmful to the environment, organic waste is useful as compost and fertilisers.

Recycling

Recycling is essential if we are to keep in check our growing need for landfill and the increase in rubbish that is being discarded. Different types of recycling bins are available for both public and home use.

Household recycling bins, for inside the home, are often separated into compartments to make recycling easier. The rubbish can then be disposed of in the relevant outdoor bins. Often recycling bins are colour coded to make the process easier.

Can bank

Non-recyclable waste

Waste that is thrown in the rubbish bin and can’t be recycled can become a nuisance, especially many plastics that linger in the environment. Look to ways to reduce the amount of plastics and packaging you consume to reduce the amount of waste that ends up in landfill. You will be surprised at how little you really do need to throw away in the waste bin.

Every year in England alone we throw away some 25.5 million tonnes of rubbish in our waste bins and it increases each and every year as we throw more and more rubbish away, and the population continues to expand.

That’s enough rubbish to fill every Premiership football stadium in the country and with such large quantities of rubbish, litter and trash, it’s a miracle we are not all knee deep in filth.

While most of us aware that our rubbish has to end up somewhere, few people take the time to think where all this waste is going and whether or not we will ever run out of capacity on our burgeoning landfills.

There are really only three methods of dealing with household waste and each comes with its own costs and disadvantages:

Recycling

Perhaps the preferred and most eco friendly method of dealing with waste and rubbish is to recycle it. Recycling is just a term to describe reusing materials, either in their original guise or by breaking them down to their raw materials. Paper, glass, metal and a whole host of materials can be reused and recycled which reduced the amount of waste that is just dumped on landfill. Many households now have recycling bins for separation of these items. However, not everything we throw away can be recycled and it can often be costly.

Much of our recycling is also exported abroad added further environmental costs to our rubbish disposal as well as causing environmental problems in many of the developing countries this rubbish gets shipped to.

Much of what we throw away ends up in landfill

Landfill

Sadly the majority of what we throw away in our rubbish bins ends up in landfills. A landfill is just a dump where items are permanently stored until the landfill is full and then it is covered over. Some items on landfill sites slowly degrade, especially organic waste but a lot of what is dumped on our landfills can last for years and years.

However, landfills are not all bad news. The gases produced by rotting rubbish is now being harvested as a source of energy and many former landfills whilst unsuitable to build houses on are often turned into nature parks or other green environments.

Incineration

In areas where there is insufficient space incineration is still regularly used to get rid of rubbish. Incineration is perhaps the most environmentally damaging method of removing rubbish but in many areas there is little choice. The energy from the incinerators can be harvested though so it is not all bad news when it comes to burning rubbish.

Most of us have one and probably have done for most of our lives but very few of us give the humble dustbin much thought. But in fact the dustbin has gone through dramatic changes which have coincided with changes that our society has been through over the last hundred years of so.

Whether you call it a dustbins, rubbish bin, garbage can or wheelie bin, the changes to our main refuse collection bin have been dramatic and represent the changing way we live ourlives.

Dustbins have only been around since the last 150 years or so. Before that time there was little need for dustbins or waste bins as most waste people discarded were ash (from fires), wood, bones, body waste and vegetable matter which more-often-than-not was just burned in the fireplace.

However, when the industrial revolution happened and more and consumable items were being purchased and a an increase in plastics an other materials were being used. The need to keep our towns and cities clean became apparent.

The 1848 Public Health Act as the first time that a government decided that each household should have access to a rubbish receptacle which was emptied by state funded binmen. Dustbins were introduced by many councils. These rubbish bins were large metal containers and didn’t change on shape or design for decades.

In fact it wasn’t until the latter part of the twentieth century when concerns about land-fill space and the need to recycle some of our waste become apparent did the style and shape of dustbins change.

Along with the introduction of bottle banks, large plastic dustbins were introduced in many parts of the country as a cheaper method of producing bins compare to the heavy metal trash can. However, the need for recycling increased and goner too are these old style bins and most people in England and Wales were given wheelie bins. Wheelie bins not only make the job of collecting rubbish easier, different coloured bins have been introduced to encourage recycling. Many areas of the country now have two or tree wheelie bins. One is a conventional household rubbish bin the others are recycling bins for garden waste or recyclable materials.

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