The way rubbish and recycling is collected in the borough will change in the spring. Most households will receive two wheelie bins; a black one for rubbish and a blue one for mixed recycling.

They will be collected on alternate weeks with the blue recycling going one week and black rubbish the next. The green food waste bin will continue to be collected every week. These improvements are designed to make it easier to recycle so that more people do the right thing instead of throwing their waste in the rubbish bin.

‘It feels disgusting to put old food in the normal bin’

We sat down with Leah Grey from Greenford who told us about how she recycles and why she thinks everyone should do more to cut down on waste. Leah said:  “I’m quite a committed recycler. Everything is recycled at my house; the glass, plastics, cardboard and the food. We’ve always recycled; or us, it’s about sustainability and protecting the environment. My mum says: ‘You won’t have a planet for your children to live on if you don’t recycle!’

“The food waste is a big one at my house, every week without fail. I found the food a bit disgusting at first and used to get in a lot of trouble from my mum for scraping the plates into the rubbish bin, but I’m used to it now. I can see why people find it a bit strange to begin with, but once you start doing it, it actually feels disgusting to put old food into the normal bin. It feels natural now.

“My mum puts pressure on us to recycle the food, because it can make the kitchen smelly if it’s all left together in the main rubbish bin. We use a little kitchen caddy and recyclable food waste bags and we change them often so it’s really easy to keep the food waste separate

‘Plastics take hundreds of years to break down’

“Plastics is another important one for us. All our plastics are rinsed out and put in the white sack. Plastics take hundreds of years to break down and so many things are either made of plastic or packaged in them. We fill up our white plastics sack with recycling every week and that would have all be going into our black rubbish bags if we didn’t recycle. Our tin cans and glass are recycled too.

“One thing I’m going to try and recycle more this year is batteries. At the moment we just put them in the rubbish, but we use a lot of them at home for our remote controls and things like that, so once they’re finished I’m going to put them in the green box or one of those battery recycling bins I’ve seen in shops.

‘I don’t think that everyone realises how easy it is and how important it is’

“I think that some people do need an incentive to recycle, even though it’s not difficult or complicated. I don’t think that everyone realises how easy it is and how important it is. And if their container isn’t returned one week, they give up and chuck it all in the rubbish bag.

“What annoys me most about people who don’t recycle is the way that they use the fact that I recycle as an insult and accuse me of being a do-gooder. I think they do it because they feel defensive; they know they are being lazy and don’t like it pointed out to them.

“I’d like people who don’t recycle to realise that what they are doing is as bad as spitting in the street or urinating outside of the toilet. It’s really not hard to do the right thing.”

To find out more about how to recycle in Ealing, go to the council’s website. To receive updates on the new rubbish and recycling collections and wheelie bins, ‘like’ our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/ealingrecycling.