Ideas please! Household recycling scheme for a small housing resort.

[404cameljockey]

I need to renew the central wheelie bins in our resort, the old ones are past their usefulness. The house owners here are happy to help with recycling to a degree, but I don’t think we will be interested using separate small bins for batteries, spectacles, etc. Trying to enforce a very strict regime would I think certainly be unsuccessful.

Each household (there are only about 20 houses in total) places their waste in the bins which are collected three times weekly for taking away. Glass, aluminium cans and PET bottles etc. are certainly sold on. Green garden waste isn’t collected because gardeners handle that.

I organized three large bins before, one labelled for glass, recyclable plastics and aluminium cans, and two for general waste (landfill trash) as there is more of this, including some food waste. Cardboard of any description is placed beside the bins. Beer bottle boxes serve as a reasonable place to deposit smaller cardboard items and it doesn’t require older residents to have to try to break them down. There’s little recyclable paper waste I think. This scheme has been followed successfully for a number of years now, but possibly we could do a little better?

If we were to make three separately purposed and labelled bins what should they be? I think there’s a trend these days to separate out potentially poisonous or chemical items (mosquito spray cans, bleach bottles, batteries, lightbulbs etc.). I’m not sure how effectively this would be followed though, and also don't want to be labelled the Führer of the resort.

Any thoughts would be appreciated!

[Dannie Boy]

Rather than ask on this Forum, I’d have thought it might be better to ask your neighbours, after all they’re the ones who will be affected by any changes - however my own view would be “why change what isn’t broken”?

[404cameljockey]

Rather than ask on this Forum, I’d have thought it might be better to ask your neighbours, after all they’re the ones who will be affected by any changes - however my own view would be “why change what isn’t broken”?

Well, no.

Three of us here form an ad hoc resident committee and undertake to do this boring stuff on residents'' behalf. The last time I tried to poll opinion of all householders was for a camera/light security system and response was lukewarm. These are not thankless tasks as I receive emails thanking me for the work, because most residents (generally friends after a lot of years) don't live here more than a few months of the year and I like to be community proactive. So there's no need for you to second guess my reasons.

As to 'why change' you may see that I had just asked if anyone thought there was a better system without huge upset, environmentally speaking, as a committee member has suggested it to me. I will take your suggestion under advisement, although I've pretty much decided that four large bins variously for metal, glass, plastics and general trash will suffice.

[Dannie Boy]

When I first came to Thailand I lived on a community and you could bet your life that if you asked everyone what they wanted the response would be lukewarm and yet if you imposed new rules they’d say “why didn’t you ask”? The moral of the story is you sometimes can’t please anyone!!

[404cameljockey]

When I first came to Thailand I lived on a community and you could bet your life that if you asked everyone what they wanted the response would be lukewarm and yet if you imposed new rules they’d say “why didn’t you ask”? The moral of the story is you sometimes can’t please anyone!!

That in spades.

But generally speaking what this committee does is welcomed by all, so it's not a thankless task. Scandinavian/Northern European houseowners who like clean, tidy and efficient in general and aren't short of a bob (me excepted!).