Day 11

Today was bin day , or at least recycling bin day. Landfill bins are collected only every fortnight. Bristol's kerbside collections are pretty good. Black bins can be used to recycle food and drinks cans, newspapers and magazines, yellow pages and telephone directories, glass bottles and jars, clothes, blankets and material , pairs of shoes, aluminium foil and containers, household batteries, including rechargeable, spectacles and aerosol cans.

I wish they would collect plastic and cartons, but fortunately both of these can be recycled locally.

According to the council's website the amount of household waste recycled has increased from 18.5% to 37% since March 2006, which is very encouraging. However this means that 63% still ends up in a landfill which is not such good news. Perhaps the Zero Waste Challenge Week will encourage people to recycle more of the stuff they chuck in their black bins.

Today's bin is an improvement on yesterday

• 3 plastic windows from envelopes
• 2 plastic lids from pens - what happened to the pens? I hear you ask - and the answer is that I don't know
• plastic wrapping from Tesco's ham
• wrapper from Tesco's buter