We’re currently considering moving house. This, along with Katherine’s challenges of recycling in Edinburgh has made me realise just how much schemes vary from one district to another.

Here in Dartford, we have what must be one of the easiest schemes around – put the cardboard, paper, clean cans and plastic bottles into a separate box and put it out on the normal bin day. But, they don’t take glass (it’s only a 15 minute walk to the nearest recycling point, but I can’t say I remember very often) or compost (OK there for us as we have a compost bin), which is a bit of a downer.

On the other hand, the next borough to us collects everything in separate boxes.. they have 2 bins (one for compost) and 3 boxes (including one for glass). Great if you have the space, but in practice, how many people do. On top of that, they are collected on different days of the week (some only every 2 weeks) so you need to keep track of the days carefully.

I’m interested to know how the type of schemes (the convenience and range of items collected) correlate with the percentage of people that recycle in an area and how much they recycle. We’ve all probably heard of people being fined for having a piece of paper in the glass recycling, or plastic coated wrapping paper in their paper recycling… surely this dissuades people from recycling. The beauty of our scheme is that it is easy and takes up very little space in your house (one extra bin isn’t too much of a challenge for most) so I do notice that over 80% of the houses I pass put out their recycling box.

What are other people’s schemes like? How much do you recycle as opposed to throw out? We’re down to 2 bin bags of rubbish a week and 2 full recycling boxes (plus bags on the compost heap and glass taken separately). I’m determined to get it down to less this year though.