We keep our big recycling bin in the garage. Just open the kitchen door and there sits the bin. Very handy. We always rinse each can, etc. thoroughly so there is no odor.

I have a small (10 gal) blue recycling container under my sink which is emptied into the big blue bin in the garage that the city empties bi-weekly. Nothing laying out. Same with garbage, under the sink and emptied daily into the big black bin, emptied by the city weekly.

Either the city or the county provides a big green container. We keep it in the garage until it is full and then haul it to the curb on recycle day. I just take stuff out there as we accumulate it.

I have a canvas shopping type bag hanging on the door handle to the back door. When ever it is full, I take it out to the recycle bin.

I have a small white trash can in the kitchen for the recycling and when it's full I take it to the garage. I got the trash can from Big Lots.

I also have a recycling bin that the town provided. Our recycling is every other week, so the color of the bin we were given depends upon which week you have recycling.

Did your town not provide recycling bins? What do you mean by "big container outside"? And what's a herbie? Sorry, not picking at you, just trying to get the gist of what you've got and what you're asking.

I am using a recycled can to recycle. It was left behind at a house we bought years ago. It's taped up and ugly, but holds it all until I take it outside to the basked. I am thinking of using these outside since they breathe (I have to take my own to the place, no pickup, so they have to be carried), right now, but you're talking about inside? Inside, I'd use stackables if you have to separate.$30 at Walmart.

I have a bag hanging on a door handle and empty it into the bin when it's full. I don't mind having it just hanging out. Same as oklamoni.

Putting the herbie inside the garage is a good idea. My garage is small, though. I could probably fit it in if I clean it out.

Suzique, the Herbie is the big trash container the garbage company provides us. I have two for regular trash and one for recycling. The recycling one is a different color than the garbage.

Since most recycling materials have a point of use, I got a bunch of pretty colored, sculptural resin waste baskets. Inexpensive ones. There are big ones where mail, newspapers and magazines are read, and short ones in bathrooms, my studio, the room with the gift wrap, etc. There's a big one in the eating area of the kitchen as well as a two bin trash pullout with plastic bag liners. One bin in the pullout is for the deposit bottles and other things to turn in for money, and the other is for the stuff food comes in, which is often damp from rinsing (with reserved water), so the liner bags are helpful. The pretty resin ones have handle cutouts and are easy to tote down to the pickup bin and have mostly paper, which doesn't fly away. Larger cardboard boxes are flattened and taken in, or tossed over the railing to put in the bin. Packing materials and shredded paper go light as air in thin plastic bags.

When we moved here, the garbage folks indicated that they were (still are) out of bins. I put paper products in cardboard boxes from the move that are at the end of their usefulness. Other items go into an old kitchen waste basket that I have been using for all kinds of things. I wrote recycle on it and it goes to the curb. Both are in the garage. Total distance from the kitchen counter to the stuff in the garage is 12 steps (round trip). Yeah doc, I get lots of exercise.

We have two identical plastic bag lined medium tall open top plastic "trash cans" under the kitchen sink. One for recycling stuff, one for normal trash. Items from the house are deposited in the recycling bin when ready to be discarded and newspapers/magazines are stacked on a laundry counter. All are taken out to the weekly collected large plastic wheeled bins as they fill up and we make a run through the house to gather waste of both kinds the night before pickup day.

Our trash cans are outside, alongside the garage. No room inside, we keep two cars there.

I have a bag for plastics and a bag for paper. I have them hung on nails just inside the basement door. Quick to get to but out of sight.

I have a pull-out compartment built into my cabinetry. It holds two identical trash cans with split flip lids. I use one for garbage and one to hold recycling. I line the one for garbage with a bio-degradable plastic bag and the one for recycling with this reusable fabric cloth liner. http://www.reuseit.com/home/planet-wise-planet-wise-reusable-13-gallon-trash-bags.htm

Nope.

It is an additional $20 per month charge from our trash service, and they're already priced high. There's no local place for us to take it to ourselves either.

So until the rate goes down, we don't recycle.

My kitchen pull-out has one bin for garbage and one behind it for recycling. DH empties both as needed. Newspapers and cardboard go into a rectangular plastic bin just outside the door to the garage. (It was our city's original recycling container. When people started being more 'green', they gave us a big bin with wheels and a gizmo that the truck latches on to to lift and dump the bin.)

Garbage (very little of that) goes into a normal size round plastic can in the garage, then to the curb every Friday morning by seven.

All our recycling goes into a large bin in the garage once a week, then out to the curb alternate Fridays. (We don't have enough to lug it out weekly.)

We have a deep two--car garage with room for two cars and some yard stuff -- and the garbage and recycling containers. We'd have garbage all over the place from local varmints if we kept these outdoors -- or put them out Thursday night.

We used to have recycle pickup the first Thursday of the month. Of course, I would sometimes miss it and there it would be for another month. A few years ago big dumpsters were put up about three blocks from me, so that is great. Everything (plastic, glass, metals, paper, etc.) goes into one bin, and cardboard in another. I usually have it in a plastic bag to take there.

Maybe I'll just hang a bag on the back of one of the doors to the laundry closet. At least it would be out of sight.

Recycling was phased in, in our city. So first it was just certain plastics and paper, separated. Then all plastics were accepted, and paper and plastic could be combined in the same bin.

Then they added green waste/composting. So we have 3 separate trash bins that are collected weekly:

- Green waste, a bright green trash bin: food scraps, including bones; all yard waste plus bundled branches less than 3" diameter on the side. Used paper towels and kleenix can be added as well. I have a small food scrap bowl on my kitchen counter; sometimes I empty it into the green waste trash bin (all wheeled trash bins are the property of the Waste Mgmt company) halfway during the week if I've been cooking a lot.

- Recyclables, a gray trash bin: all plastics, no matter what kind. This includes those horrible clamshell packaging, glued to cardboard backs. All paper, including boxes flattened down; and most metals (like jar lids and cans). We have a couple of bins for them - food-smeared jars/cans/bottles go in a big wastebasket that resides in a closet near the kitchen. Papers (like junk mail) go in a rectangular plastic file bin with cut-out handles, for easy take-out to the curb to toss into the big recycling trash bin.

- Regular trash that can't be recycled, a dark brown trash bin: styrofoam, things like Swiffer disposable pads, used plastic wrap. There's really very little, even with our rampant spendiness, that can't be recycled. Usually we have just one or two medium-size plastic trash bags per week.

Our city is not quite as good on recycling as San Francisco is. SF is the leader in the US with 80% of its garbage recycled. I think Oakland is around 70% or so.

This is what I have on kitchen counter, then take to big recycle trash can outside about daily. used to drive to recycling Ctr and went through the trouble of setting my own bins for sorting #1, #2, #all else and cans. Now our HOA has negotiated a contract with a waste Mgt Co that will do trash p/u and provide a bin for all recyclables, which we are not required to sort. I'm so into the sorting that it will be odd for a

while not to do it

Ours too, Bossy. No sorting required.

We also have single stream recycling. I take the trash out at least once a day since I use the little grocery store bags for garbage. I prefer not to store garbage in my kitchen. The recycling sits on back of the counter over the dishwasher next to the sink to be taken out once or twice a day. usually DH grabs it on his way out in the morning.I do have a separate bin for paper that is built into a little island cart I currently have. Since we generate so much dry paper we just fill that and empty it on the eve of waste pickup.

We have curbside mixed recycling; in the kitchen, I have two different color trash cans. One black for trash, one gold-ish for recyclables.

I'm the opposite bossy! We had mixed and I have to get used to taking it to the place :) It's much easier to put everything in the inside bin and dump it into the bin, than it is to separate it out each week. You'll enjoy it. I imagine, as my county grows, we'll get added into the garbage/recycling that goes on in the middle of the city. I hope it's soon. Out where I am, you have to pay for someone to pick it up, unlike the city.

I have two lower kitchen cabinets with a slide-out base. Trash can goes in one and recycle can goes in the other.

We have to drive ours to town so we use big bags that 50# of corn comes in, one each for paper, plastic, aluminum, steel, glass, etc. They are kept downstairs in the garage. Upstairs, we keep paper handle bags in the guest bathtub off the kitchen, we add to them daily. When those get full, they are taken to the garage and dumped into the bigger bags. When we're going to town, we put the big bags in the truck and empty them at the recycle place.

I have two trash cans next to each other in my kitchen. One for trash and one for recycling. They are emptied as needed.

same as chi, two bins in the kitchen, one for trash and one recycling that get emptied into the wheelie bins as needed. The large wheelie bins are just outside the back door so quick and easy to get to.

Kathygrdn... what's a "herbie"??

Aluminum & paper is all we have each week. Like Chisue there's a garbage can & behind it another one we use for foil. Then a drawer above it we use for mailed-to-us-paper. A block from DH's office is a drive up and recycle place, he goes often.

I recycle religiously when I'm up north.. In fact I have more recycle stuff than trash. When I lived in my house we had single stream recycling bins provided by the town and I would take stuff out whenever I left the house. In my condo I have a bin in the garage and simply toss things from the top of the stairs. Down here in Florida in my over 55 community, there is no recycling option available except for papers. I find it hard to believe that these people don;t care more about what kind of world they are leaving for their grandchildren. But then this is not the most progressive state in the country.

We use a standard 13 gallon flip top trash can and keep it on the enclosed back porch. I line it with a trash bag but we can no long recycle with the plastic trash bag..go figure. Just haul it out to the recycle bin in the alley when full but save the bag. Most items are paper, plastic and metal, so no big odor either. For food straps I have a smaller flip top can with a bucket in it to take it to the compost bins.

Pkramer, yeah I thought that was odd, they don't accept plastic bags. I used to throw out my kitchen scraps in the fenced area in my backyard but got lazy and quit doing it. Then I only put in grass clippings and trimmings from stuff I cut. Last night I bought a composter. I'm so excited!

We have 2 containers under the sink. One is a small rectangular garbage container that I line with newspaper pouches. Shaped like a pirate's hat. This for the green bin outside. The other is a kitty litter bucket lined with a plastic grocery bag for the garbage that can't be recycled or for the green bin.

I also have 2 blue recycling buckets in the spare room, one for bottles and cans and tetra packs, the other for paper, cereal boxes and plastic bags.

I also have 3 buckets of worms that are happily grazing on cantaloupe rinds as I type. :-)

At our Maui condo complex, there are bins for paper (no cardboard), glass, plastic, and aluminum (no other metals). There are no recycling facilities on island. I don't know if there are any on Oahu. It's possible that everything has to go out of the state to a facility.

We can't recycle everything here yet, but we do paper, certain plastics (only those whose openings are smaller than the width of the container), cardboard, cans and bottles. They have to be sorted for pick up every two weeks. If we miss the recycle pick up time (very early in the morning), we can drive 1/2 mile to a community recycle area. Unfortunately, apartment complexes don't recycle here, so lots of stuff hits the landfill. We just voted in an increased fee to have mixed / unsorted recycling in the future.

In town we have a brown resin wicker tote tucked into the shelving next to the trash can. When it get full, we take it to the garage to sort into the separate recycle bins. Those blue bins are placed out with the rest of the garbage every other week. (Garbage is every week). We are not allowed to have a composter at my location in town.

At the lake place, we hardly ever have any trash. I can compost all my kitchen scraps along with any paper product. Compost is put in plastic Folger's containers until we have time to dump it in the compost bin. We only throw out plastic bags, lids, and the plastic parts from packaging. All the trash and recycling is placed in 2 front-to-back 13 gal. baskets in a pull-out cabinet. When we pack up to head to town, we just pull out the trash bags out of each just before we leave. (We don't pay for trash pick up) If there is still stuff in the counter top Folger's compost container, we toss it in the freezer till next week (frozen compost breaks down faster anyway).

We don't have it available here. I used one of these at my Dallas house. They are good canvascanvas bags with handles, easy to pick up and carry out to the big bin. Can also be used for laundry. You can put a trash bag linerliner in them too. I kept it in the laundry room right off the kitchen or in the garage also right off the kitchen.

http://www.walmart.com/ip/15641337?wmlspartner=wlpa&selectedSellerId=0&adid=22222222228008567453&wl0=&wl1=g&wl2=m&wl3=41081718152&wl4=&wl5=pla&wl6=78307047032&veh=sem

When recycling started here it was the tote you put out to the curb. You needed to sort bottles, cans, paper, cardboard, etc. They were surprised at the number of people who did recycle with the effort involved so they soon went to the cart pickup every other week with no sort. Cost was $1.25 per month more to go to bi-weekly, no-sort than the weekly sort, plus it was advantageous to the company picking it up since they could use one person driving the truck rather than a couple extra people grabbing and tossing the stuff into the various compartments. The cost is tacked onto the water/sewer bill along with other fees and charges they want to hide from residents.

I haven't heard if trash fee will be more since this started. It's normally $31.44 for 3 months.

chisue - Maui has a landfill and USED to have recycle bins right there where you drive in, near the scale house.

EDITED - I misread chisue's post. I read it that there was no recycling in Maui. Sorry, my mistake! lol

Recycling has been mandatory in my area of CT for several years. I have a triple container somewhat like what Raven has pictured above only my containers are contained within a plastic surround box type holder. My three containers are about the size of large kitchen waste baskets and I line them with plastic 13 gal. draw string bags. When they're full...I remove the entire bag...tie them off and deposit them into the designated large refuse containers supplied by the condo that are professionally emptied weekly. I keep my container system in my large storage closet...away from regular living space. It's become such a habit to me that I think I'd have a difficult time getting used to not recycling. For large equipment such as TVs and other electronic equipment...as well as chemical hazardous waste disposal, I'm fortunate to have a collection center in my area. Actually...we're pretty sophisticated for country hicks. :-)

When I lived at the house, it was blue recycle bins that my parents upstairs used and then blue bags. I put newspapers in three blue recyle bags.

Tins and glass in another bin but they asked for glass to be separate.

We weren't allowed to use anything at all except the blue bins and blue bags so I had to buy a bunch more blue bags and blue boxes.

Then put them all in the trunk in my car and take them all down the day before recycle came.

We lived way up mountainside and long windy driveway so couldn't use those pull ones that ones that live in city lots can use or that were low down and flat short driveways.

Then pick them up when recycle picked up and grabbed the bins and boxes as they were stolen and so I had to mark our name on them and they were then left alone.

And then moved to condo and you have to lug it all down to the parkade and into this little room so it means all this unlocking and zillion keys they make you have living here and too much they are full up and then its what to do????

So, I put it all in garbage bags and so if its full the garbage bag gets left on the floor and they can take care of it, nothing else to do.

We also have here kitchen compost, don't like the bucket they give us as it stained something else and can't scrub it off. And so I take it down using my white garbage bags from wastebaskets and find that easier to take care of it that way.

We all have to find out how to keep it from getting away and for those who can have it all together that is great but when you have to have it everywhere that isn't good.

I miss not having recycle bins or bags and regular schedule but here no, its check the room and can I put anything in????

When first moved here no kitchen compost and so the garbage bins were sky high especially on weekends.

kathy