Bins

What's your local authority like on bin collection?

We have four. Landfill; paper; glass, cans & plastic; garden waste.

Our "green bin" is collected fortnightly and at this time of the year always full. Sometimes it is really heavy, turf, old compost, soil, bits of wood from pruning etc.,

Likewise our weekly "grey bin" for landfill occasionally has bits of stone, gravel bricks, busted clay pots etc. in it.

The monthly glass & plastic has had plastic flower pots, coat hangers and some really doubtful large items dumped in it.

The monthly "paper bin" I often have to stand on the contents a couple of times to get everything in (usually full of cardboard from the boxes which keep arriving for my wife from "Ideal World") This makes it really heavy.

Yet never have the bin men failed to empty any bin.
I think because it's contracted out, the bin men are on "time and finish" so being petty over the contents of any bin would just waste their time.

 

So yours will collect old soil? We have strict instructions not to pollute garden prunings with it.

Some areas are more lenient than others. My sister, dashing around as usual, accidentally put some items in the wrong bin recently. The Garbage Police were on her case immediately. On this occasion they have decided to let her live. But it has been made clear that there will be no room for clemency, should she transgress again.

There was a recent case (I think it was in Margate, on the Kent coast) where contractors were collecting up bags of carefully sorted waste which had been put out for recycling and ... dumping it all in the landfill.

 

Household waste and recylcling (garden, newspapers etc) on alternate weeks.

Works extremely well, I must admit. That little extra incentive to cut down waste because it's only collected every 2 weeks really makes a big difference. I'm far more conscious of composting, recycling, not throwing too much away, not buying more than I need etc.

They won't collect recycling if you put the wrong stuff in the wrong place, but I avoid their wrath by cunningly putting the right things in the right place! No hardship.

 

I think it's essential that we're all more conscious of what we throw away. I've got no problem with sorting my rubbish. It's just that ... sometimes I think the system targets the wrong people. My sister, who tries very hard to be 'green', made a small mistake because she'd been up all night with a screaming toddler and was dashing to get to work. Meanwhile, there are a number of families in my road who - well, frankly if they put their impressive mounds of rubbish in bin bags rather than just tipping them on the pavement, they're doing well. No one will ever take them on, because there's absolutely no point. Expecting them to sort their garbage is a bit like asking my cat to tap dance.

 

True, we have 2 bins, the 'proper rubbish' (as my family refer to it) is collected once a fortnight, the 'green' recycling bin on the alternate weeks, although there's still no facility for recycling plastics and they won't take old turf or bits of wood.

Sadly our Council is great at telling it's Council Tax payers what they should do, but singularly fails to practice what it preaches. Indeed when I rang them about disposing of an old TV, I was told that ' ... in order to protect the environment such items must be taken to the waste and recycling centre' . 'Which is where?' I asked, after a pause she confessed 'Well, we don't actually have one, but ...' she added helpfully, ' there is one at .... and another at ....' The nearest of these is 18 miles from my home but she didn't seem to have an answer to how my driving 36 miles in my 1.9 diesel TDI in order to dump one 8" portable b/w TV was actually going to help 'protect the environment'.

I do get more than a little annoyed when something (fish heads, meat scraps and the like) has been sitting in the recycling bin for almost 2 weeks in the heat and the Council leave a note on my bin drawing attention to the number of flies it's attracted and suggesting I '.. compost more.' One day I'm going to drag this little oik into my back garden and show him my 7 compost bins :p

 

We live in Trafford. There's a recycling facility on the main Altrincham to Manchester road. I've taken an old fridge freezer and a couple of TVs there recently. They monitor the site very closely with several workers to see you put your stuff through the right door, or in the correct container.

They will also collect such things for a cost I think of £15. You need to leave it at the end of the drive over night as they come very early in the morning on the "designated day" after you've paid in advance. Miss them and they won't ome back without a further charge being made.

On the subject of rubbish disposal. We use Tesco's, Waitrose's or Sainsbury's bags for our landfill rubbish, we use these free bags to line that particular bin consuming, at least one a day, some of course are unusable as they get damaged by the sharp edges of cartons. If they weren't available, we'd have to buy them. So being "green" and re-using wouldn't in our case, be worthwhile.

Even though I think the refuse collection locally is first class, a friend who has the four bins at his house lives near a block of flats where the same landfill collection wagon calls and the bins for the flats are for "everything."
I wonder how much of what we separate is actually re-cycled and doesn't go straight to landfill.

 

Certainly where my parents lived quite a bit went to landfill that was destined for re-cycling. They were provided one 'wheelie' bin for everything but for 'compostable garden waste' (collected once a month in those days) one was encouraged to either 'hire' a green bin for £30 a year or buy biodegradable sacks direct from the Council (about £1 for 10 back then) and you could leave up to 10 of these out at the time. My parents chose the latter. Having read the 'user handbook' which accompanied these bags, and unable to work out if it meant all compostable waste or just compostable garden waste (it was the latter incidently) my elderly Mother became paranoid about what could and could not go in them and lived in constant fear that Dad (being Dad) would sneak in something he shouldn't and thus be carted off to a maximum security prison at a moment's notice. In order to avoid this, she'd would carefully rummage through each bag checking its contents and, when she became confined to a wheelchair and later bedridden, this delightful job became part of my carer's duties. Normally I'd arrive at their house after the rubbish had been collected, but on several occasions some emergency meant I was there to witness all these 'special' bags from my parents (and their neighbours), being thrown into the back of a 'normal' collection truck before it turned into an adjoining road where the contents of all the wheelie bins were duly emptied into the same truck. Suddenly even at £1 for 10 bags, this didn't seem quite such a good deal.

 

Since the bottom fell out of the re-cycling market, I'm pretty sure a lot more refuse goes to landfill than local councils will admit.

I'm afraid that I've reached an age where I believe many "green initiatives" are opportunities used to make money out of the public.

For example all the bull**** we get from M&S about the profit from their sale of carrier bags going to charity doesn't impress me one bit.
The cost is now borne by the customer, where with the free bags, the cost was borne by M&S. Yes it was passed on to the customer as part of the mark-up in some way. But I bet M&S have saved a lot of money with the change and it hasn't resulted in lower prices.

Anyway, why should we have to sort the refuse? That's what we pay the local authority to do. We're paying 20% more Council tax now than we were three years ago.

 

Speaking from a 'supposed' third world country, our rubbish is collected twice a week and we live in the country. We can put anything we like into the large wheelie bins and garden rubbish and even furniture and such like next to it which is collected once a week at the top of our lane, 200 meters away. I think this costs on our utility bill â?¬5 per month or less.

On the other hand, in every village or town (our nearest village is 1/2 km from the top of our lane) there are the usual three large bins ... glass, plastic and paper plus a couple of 'rubbish' wheelies.

We have two small bins in our kitchen, one for rubbish and green matter (we don't have a compost heap) and one for cat food tins/pocket wrappers (we do have four who eat a lot) and yogurt/bio pots. In the boot of our car we have two bins .. one for plastic (ie, soft drink bottles (diet Coke, 7-Up) and water bottles .. we only drink bottled water and lots of it) and one for glass.

The system works here well ... and the stuff left at the side of the public wheelies is called the 'Portuguese Recylcing System' ... ie, you have something you don't want and put it there and someone picks it up ... someone has something they don't want and puts it there and you pick it up. Nice! This can include, I might add, very large plants that have been dug up out of gardens, palms, yuccas, etc. In fact, I have a huge Schefflera (Umbrella Tree, outside here) which t'other half picked up at our 'lixo' but don't know where to put it so it will probably go back .... :dh:

 

I'm in total agreement with Doghouse about the supposed benefits of 'green initiatives', many of which seem to contradict themselves.

Despite removing the 'help yourself' free bag dispenser from tills, supermarkets in my area at least, should you ask for a bag, still hand over a great heap of them leaving you to take as many as you wish.

My supermarket has an unwanted carrier bag collection bin, which says, 're-use your bags' and suggests you do so by putting your rubbish in them. Now I guess someone, somewhere just takes their shopping home in a supermarket bag and then dumps the bag - but whoever it is, I've not met them yet nor have any of my friends or work colleagues.

My branch of this store has a further sign which shows how many plastic bags have been put into this re-cycling facility and congratulates it's customers that 'last month you saved .... bags'. The anomily here however is that if I buy fresh meat or fish it's laid on a piece of plastic sheet, another similar piece is wrapped over it, it is then put into a plastic bag and the whole lot is then put into a second plastic bag before being sealed by the price ticket. The reason for this I was told was because '.. we have to use 2 in case one splits'. I might be doing my bit - the supermarket certainly aint.

As if to compound their felony, when I wrote to my supermarket asking why it was deemed necessary to cover, of all things, swede in shrink wrap (let's face it, thrown accurately with enough force these things could be classified as a lethal weapon). Their reply was classic - evidently it's because '.. customers want it ...' What customers? Name me 6.

And light bulbs. Once upon a time you went into a shop a bought a light bulb - not any more. I've lost count of the number of elderly people I've seen gazing, unseeing at the range of 'energy saving' or 'energy efficient' bulbs now on sale in the name of 'progress'. Candle, globe, golfball, helix energy saver, linear energy saver, daylight helix energy saver, daylight linear energy saver, helix compact energy saver (ad infinitum) and all - or some - available as bayonet cap, small bayonet cap, small screw cap, large screw cap and that's before you get to the 8W, 11W, 12W, 15W, 18W bit not to mention the halogen and spot light replacements.

How can the amount of energy expended in manufacturing so many different types of bulbs, actually be helping the environment? 'Save today. Save tomorrow'? More like buy today, save an unnecessary job tomorrow.

And you know what? Even faced with a choice of 80-odd different bulbs, I still have to drive - that's drive (because I live in the sticks)- to at least 4 shops before I can get one to fit my floor lamp.

 

Recycling and bins..

Here in Milton Keynes we have pink plastic bags that we get from the Council in which we can put all paper, cardboard,tin,foil,waxed cartons, plastic bottles.
Then we have black plastic bags, again from the council, in which we can put anything that is non recyclable or compostable...so not that much stuff and I think I put by black bag out maybe once a month.
Then we have a green wheelie bin that is for all compostable stuff from the garden and all food waste.
All glass bottles are collected seperately in a blue box.

We have a weekly collection and yes, we too have the Refuse Police that are trying to give people incentives by giving them £100 if their rubbish turns out to be the right sort.
In most cases I do believe that this works well and I see less and less instances of split bags with the magpies and crows having a feast.

What I'd love to see is the whole country using just one system of sorting rubbish and collecting rubbish.

On way to work, I drive thru a couple of villages in Bedfordshire. I notice that in Beds. they have a different system of refuse collection. They have little green bags (the size of those potato growing bags...) in which they have to put out thier green compostible refuse. Then they have black wheelie bins for other refuse, and plastic boxes for newspapers and bottles.

When I lived in Bedford, just over 5 years ago, and because I lived in an apartment, all we had was those big wheelie bins in which you were meant to put everything. There was no recycling of any kind.

Would it not save a lot of money if the entire country was to have one system and one colour code only.

Oh, and as for light bulbs, I simply cannot get on with those energy-saving thingys. They are not bright enough and I have to go to a couple of shops looking for the ''normal'' bulbs so I can light my rooms. :thmb: so bang goes their theory of energy-saving bulbs.

 

On the subject of light bulbs, I've been building up stocks of "proper lightbulbs" with purchases from "Pound Shops."

I will admit to having four "new" lamps in uplighters, about all they're fit for as the light in other circumstances I find depressing.

 

A bit off the topic of bins, but I don't like energy-saving bulbs either, Shobhna. My husband has put them everywhere (we have to be good, as he was an environmental journalist for a while). The other night I heard a noise which could only mean that the mad axe-murderer had broken into our home and was about to hack us all to pieces in our beds. So I did what any sensible, thinking woman would do - I Slammed The Lights On so he would know I Meant Business. And then ... nothing happened. It takes our lights about half an hour to crank up to speed in the illumination department.

Fortunately the madman turned out to be a small black cat called William.

 

Our area have started ANOTHER NEW SYSTEM.the old system we had a green bin for general household / a blue bin for paper/cans/cardboard/packaging etc/. a brown bin for garden refuse/grass cuttings/pruning cuttings etc (not soil clods,stones or any other material.
the green bin was picked up on a monday,the brown bin was picked up on a tuesday,the blue bin was picked up the next week so it was alternating green one monday blue the next monday.
we now have a new system our green bin is picked up one week on the monday, the blue and brown is picked up the next week on a monday. the only problem ,they have issued us with a plastic bucket to be used for glass/broken electrical items. a clear plastic bag for old clothing.
and a small clear plastic bag for old batteries. the situation now is when any old clothing is placed into the black bucket (in a sealed plastic bag) the con men just pick them up and put them into their vans, it saves them putting circulars through doors for clothes for the poor/or to help the heart foundation or the other genuine charities who require these items:(. the bottles in the black bin (which has no lid ,its like a shopping basket you get in ASDA ) are there for all to see and who will see them first ,THE NEDS!! empty bottles ,weapons, missiles to throw at cars/windows/busses/or just lets have fun smashing them on the roads i
the people who make up these ideas must be living in cloud cuckoo land. music.

 

Got to say Trafford have now got it sorted.

The old large black bin which was originally for "everything" is now for metal/glass and plastic and replaces a stupid small black box with no lid. It doesn't need to be that size, it's usually never more than half full, but it's been "re-cycled".
We used to have blue plastic bags for paper, but now it's a large blue bin.
We've still got the large green bin for garden refuse and now a half-size grey bin for landfill.
Two bins are emptied every Monday (by different wagons), on a four-weekly cycle..

Wk 1. Grey/Green
Wk 2. Grey/Blue
Wk 3. Grey/Green
Wk 4. Grey/Black.

Bank Holidays, they come on the Tuesday.

It works out well as sometimes the green bin can be filled in two weeks and the blue bin is full after four.
I'm not into taking the caps off milk cartons, I squeeze out the air and replace the cap so they don't fill our pedal bin every couple of days.

As for "old clothes" we seem to get a bag for different "charities" stuffed through the letterbox every day. No need for the council to bother.