Do Englishmen "recycle" their water and soda containers?...

I haven't the foggiest notion you know, here we have to, but they come back with an nickle per container for doing it, it does help to keep them out of the envirorement I suppose...we took in last winter's supply this morning and was getting up to about $30 and still going strong when hubby informed me he took some of the money to buy "doggie crunchies" with it. I still have about 2 large trash bags full of some to return.  I can remeber when we use to do newspaper also, but  then everyone started doing it an it brought down the price to where it was no longer worth it price wise to do so. At one time some people were selling this roller like thing, you put your newspaper in the roller and it swiped it at the bottom with an lite water/glue combination, and rolled it up as your cranked, then you let them dry and "instant" firewood...well, not exactly, but suppsedly this helped keep down the cost if you liked the room with an cozy fire in the fireplace.  I would think that while this gives off heat, perhaps not as much as an peice of dried wood would...this woudl be more like an "presto" log perhaps.  

Shirley. Here up on the north West coast we HAVE TO recycle our waste.

Each domestic dwelling has a large grey coloured plastic container on wheels with a lid called a 'wheelie bin'. in this we put unrycyclable waste. We also have a green coloured wheelie bin, in which we put garden waste and raw veg waste. we also have a blue bin in which we put paper. we also have a green tub in which we put glass (bottles, jars etc). Tin cans we have to wash and put seperately and plastic bottles we put in a seperate bag.

The unrecyclible waste is collected every 2 weeks and the others collected  alternat weeks.

Clothing etc is collected ona regular basis by charity organisations.

Each local council is taxed on the amount of waste it fails to recycle and returns to 'groundfill'. As you can see, although this helps reduce waste and protects the environment the number of containers at each dwelling can be unsightly 

In the 'olden' days we could take glass bottles back to the store for a refund of a few pence but that stopped when plastic 'soda' bottles became popular.

I have managed to find a picture of oneof these bins on this site. this is a pic of a 'run-down part of a town. Burnley gets a lot of bad press fro the national media but has some lovely places in and around the town. This unfortunately is a run-down part as almost all towns and cities throughout the world have their 'rough' side. Anyway this is to show you what a 'wheelie bin looks like lol.

Picture by Ben Higgins

We have the blue containers here also...and we have to do all the recycling also that you do. but our kitchen garbage we use an food disposer these days...and some of our "papers" we can burn in the fireplace now an then...not to much glass these days...as you say an rarity.  We have two blue containers(one paper, one plastic mostly) , smaller one for yard debris, smaller one for all the rest...like glass...tin cans.., etc. Well we so far have turned in about $30 of US currancy..with about another $20 to go...I went with my hubby whom tells me they only accept an limited of bottles to be recycled per day at the stores...per person.  So we will be workig on it for an bit. I guess out on both oceans there is now an floating island of debris...and garbage. Egyptians left us pyramids....we leave garbage.

We have the blue recycling bins here too, Shirley, but they don't look nearly as charming as the ones in the picture above.