Garden Refuse Issues

Hello All!
I have a few thougts on the topic in question and have displayed them below. Who else feels they encounter the issues that come about in this scenario? Or does anyone have further problems with it? Are there any suggestions to a better solution to the problem?

Issue:

• [FONT=&quot]A common problem that exists is when a home owner clears out their garage or tidies up their garden and the end result is that piles of garden refuse and old rubbish are accumulated. This will all inevitably need to go to the dump. The issue is that all of this stuff is often comprised of awkward/bulky shapes and sizes.[/FONT]
• [FONT=&quot]When transporting these things to the dump, the usersâ?? car will often get dirty, with the possibility of debris falling off some of the refuse. Also, dirt from old garage items may mark and ruin the carâ??s interior. This will require the owner to clean their car afterwards.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]

• [FONT=&quot]To add to this, the car is often very limited in size (compared to the items that need to go inside) and this can often lead to unpleasant cramped conditions.[/FONT]

Cheers all! look forward to hearing your responses

 

I guess you've just had a tidy out?

Can any of the stuff be composted? Can any of it be reused for something else? Could someone else use any of it if it is no good to you?

Otherwise, put it in the wheely bin a bit at a time until it has all gone, hire a skip, or hire a van to take it to the tip.

Or, can any of the stuff be reused for something else?

 

hi joebennet87. does your local council not do special lifts?. i know the area i live,we phone the council if we require a special lift.it is not free (you pay for it through your council tax).as far as i know you are allowed 2 special lifts a year(FREE).then if you require any further special lifts, you pay.in saying that it is not expensive. i sold and moved house a couple of years ago.i had to clear out my loft area,hut area,and also some furniture etc from the house ,before moving ,a lot of stuff!!
i had 2 special lifts(FREE) the third i had to pay for. the cost was about £10 .the only thing ,you must
itemise every item . (THEY WILL NOT UPLIFT ANY ITEM THAT IS NOT ON THERE LIST!!. )
music.:thmb:

 

OH is a bit of a hoarder, but I try to keep him under control and we have a good clear out on a regular basis. We only have a shed, no garage so very little gets left in there and forgotten. One advantage of a smaller house is less room to hoard stuff!

We have a composter and a council "green" bin for garden waste (leaves, grass cuttings and general stuff).

 

It depends on what needs disposing of. When I cleared out my late parents' house, 2 x 12 cu.yard skips were the only way to go ... plus 3 car loads of bags and boxes of 'stuff' to various charity shops, furniture collected by local charities or given away to friends, relatives, acquaintances etc., 31 bags taken to the tip and innumerable bonfires!

Under more normal circumstances, smaller items go in the bin or are taken to the tip. Our Council does a 'bulk collection' periodically, but you have to take the stuff to a designated collection point however, that is usually at the other end of our village and if I can't get it in the car in the first place, then I can't take advantage of that and .. if I can get it in the car, then I may just as well take it to the tip anyway. For the heavy or bulky items (freezer, sofas, beds etc.), our Council will do a kerbside collection (£30 for up to 12 items). When Mr. F'smum does have the occasional clear out (and I stress the 'when'!), we just hire a skip.

For garden waste it's much easier. Our Council provides a 'green' wheelie bin and, if that's full they'll also collect up to 6 additional bags of compostable waste (very useful when I have to rip my neighbour's ivy off my side of the 30 metre fencing which separates us!). Apart from that, 4 compost bins deal with most other waste.

And finally - when or if I do take 'mucky' stuff to the tip in the car, I drop the back seat and cover the whole lot with a bit of £4 tarpaulin bought from Wickes, come home, hose it off if necessary and fold it up either for the next trip or when it's used as a 'dust sheet' during decorating - car cleaning for me, is rather like cleaning the cooker or decorating ... a necessary evil against which all precautions should be taken to guard!!

 

Depends on how many cars you have tbh...

I run...

FUN CAR - errr for fun
FUN & FAMILY - errr for fun and occasional family trips
FAMILY ETC - All other nasty trips to the dump or dodgy areas or parking etc

I rarely use the dump tbh, my bin men are very friendly and will accommodate most rubbish, and for everything else just hire a skip !

 

Hmmmm BM, your "carbon footprint" is nearly as big as ours (one car and three motorbikes):wink:

 

If it's possible I just put the rubbish in the car and take it to the dump.
If it's not possible I hire a mini skip , put the rubbish in it and off it goes.

 

Despite, earlier, seeming to extol the virtues of my local Council regarding their taking of extra compostable waste, and despite the leaflets they keep pushing through my door showing what percentage of 'stuff' they re-cycle, how it's increased by 'x' percent over 'x' number of years, how we 'must all ' reduce our carbon footprint, etc., etc., their advice on smaller items is laughable.

Unbelievably, when I rang them over a small, worktop sized fridge and a couple of very old portable TVs found in the loft (and not really willing to spend £30 to have them taken away for me), their rather frosty reply was that they ' ... must be disposed of responsibly ...' and that I should ' ... put them in the car and take them to a tip ...'. Unbelievably, my Council doesn't have a household tip, they closed it about 10 years ago and the nearest one is 18 miles away. 'How then,' I asked, 'does driving a round trip of 36 miles, in any way reduce my carbon footprint ?' At this point it went very quiet ... then she just put the phone down!

No wonder our lane is a dumping ground for every imaginable bit of household junk and that same Council has to send a special clean-up team along at least twice a month. Sometimes yer just gives up.

 

When we lived in Slovenia they had a very sensible system of collecting large and bulky items. About twice a year collections were made from designated areas ( often just grass verges ) in each neighbourhood. Items could be left out up to a week before collection.
'Browsers' would tour round and pick over the stuff before collection.
Result- many items re-used and not too much to be collected for land- fill and no long trips by car to the tip

 

Now that's a good idea.

 

In the 7 years I have lived here the council have only ever once done a collection scheme where you could put household furniture etc out for collection. Was usefull at the time as we had just replaced all the girls bedroom furniture!

Normally you are expected to go to the tip. Problem with this is, that you are not allowed to use a van as its classed as commercial rubbish (they then weigh the contents of the van and charge you disposal). What annoys me is the van we have use of is OH works van, he is an electrician. The van clearly states the he works for an electrical contractors .... so how can they then claim its commercial waste when you are disposing of beds, furniture etc ??

We use the car to go to the tip as much as we can, but obviously beds wont fit in the car so havent a clue how on earth you are supposed to dispose of these!!

Because we live in the town centre and on a main road, we are not allowed to have a skip delivered either, unless you also apply for a permit to have it parked on the road. The permit costs in excess of £50 on its own .... so this makes it a very costly way of disposing rubbish!!

Anything thats useable, we put on freecycle. Just because its our 'rubbish' doesnt mean it wont be usefull to someone else. Everything I have ever posted on there has always been collected by someone else and quite often you have quite large numbers of people contacting you asking for the item!

Which reminds me .... we are re-doing the boys bedroom soon so there will be bunk beds to dispose of. I will offer them on freecycle as they are certainly re-useable just not suitable for teenage boys (one of them has a double bed at the bottom but only single at the top so becoming unfair!).

I can though understand why there is so much fly-tipping. Our council certainly do not help anyone to dispose of their rubbish sensibly!!

 

We must live in a very sensible area of the country then, after reading some of the posts here! We have a bottle recycling bank 2 minutes walk away, another one 5 minutes walk away (that also takes newspapers, magazines, clothes, shoes and tetrapak. Our local supermarket, in the centre of town has similar. We get "green" waste collected fortnightly and plastics/newspapers collected every other week. There is a large council tip 2 miles away, on the edge of town that takes anything and another one in the neighbouring town, 8 miles away. Little or no fly tipping takes place around here...and there are plenty of open spaces so they wouldn't be short of choice if they wanted to.

Then again, Horsham was voted 2nd best place to live in the UK a couple of years ago!

 

That's how it should be. However once when I was a kid, my mate and I had clapped out old motorbikes which we used to use legally on private land, having got them there in my dad's van. A local motorbike shop owner gave us permission to pick through various boxes of parts out his back, that would otherwise go to the scrap yard. Some coppers saw us one day walking down our back alley carrying various parts, and tried to do us for "theft by find" (that was the copper's words). We tried to explain that we had permission from the shop owner and they could easily just ask him, then they physically ATTACKED us. My mate legged it and I spent the next 10 minutes getting kicked about the alley. Neither I nor my mate have ever scavenged junk again. A few times I've seen stuff in skips and thought 'I'd have a use for that' then just walked on by and let it go to landfill.

Our local tip is the same. Its bizarre. They claim to be doing their bit for the environment, but its a load of old rubbish (pardon the pun). Consider this: You have maybe 5 car loads/1 van load of stuff to get rid of. Taking the van is far better for everyone. We are constantly told to reduce our carbon footprint, and that our roads are too congested. A van may use slightly more fuel than a car, but it would be unlikely to use 5 times as much, so 5 trips in the car is worse than 1 in the van. Then there's your car contributing to congestion 5 times, compared to the van's one time. Yet you get penalised for using common sense.