[omro]

I'm really surprised by this conversation. Since I've been here, one of my "fun tasks" is to help with the rubbish night.

I live in a household of three adults and one child and three cats who don't go out (thereby only use cat litter).

Our weekly waste nearly always is just one black bag and recycling bags/boxes and green waste. The black bags come in varying sizes in the supermarket and sometimes we use a smaller bag, sometimes we use the bigger one and never once has the bag not been taken. We've yet to use a clear bag, though we have a box of them "just in case".

As for the rubbish around parts of Hamilton, can I point out the possible reasons for it?

Firstly, people seem to be uneducated about the system. It's been mentioned here that there is a belief that the one bag limit is in effect, however it definitely isn't.

Secondly, people are actually a pretty lazy entity most of the time.
- They don't take the time to find out things (such as the above limits) and take things on face value based on hearsay.
- They don't take the time to work out what is recycleable by the city and what isn't.
- They don't store any excess rubbish from one week to the next, to even out the heavier and light weeks.

I haven't spent a vast amount of time wandering around Hamilton looking for rubbish being dumped, so I could easily be very wrong here, but most rubbish items that I see lying around are items which could be recycled.

I must admit I'm not 100% clear on whether or not the city will take all plastics, so I will ask here if anyone can give me any pointers. In particular I'm curious about things such as plastic bags, milk bags, the plastic bags you get bread and bagels in, the inner bags for cereal boxes, the plastic wrap certain food items come shrink wrapped in or the film lids to meat trays, etc. oh... and straws.... kids seem to be obsessed with straws. I'm personally tempted to put them all together in a recycling bag and see if they'll take them.

And in response to meeting people off the forum. Meeting up from the forum has nothing to do with establishing any form of "club". For me it's been a purely social invitation to put faces and names to online personas, to make friends and have a laugh. I have met people from the forum both at the Art Crawl get togethers and not. I've met some people one on one. I would still like to meet more people, be it one on one or at these group get togethers. So far I've met some absolutely AMAZING people thanks to this forum and felt more connected and welcome as a result.

You have nothing to fear from turning up and meeting people, you won't get verbally or physically abused for your on forum opinions. Infact forum related topics are over very quickly followed by good social merrymaking :-) Please everyone on the forum, come along and just say hi at the next meet up.