Council to reduce recycling collections to every three weeks

I'll need another big recycling bin then. Mine can be full up after two weeks.

We pay £60 a year for garden waste. I'd pay for food waste collections if I could but our grotty town doesn't do things like that.

*fit for purpose.

If this was a private contractor they would be sued for a service which isn't for purpose. 3 weeks?!! This has got to be a joke. Disgusting.

We don't have a garden but those who do now have to pay for a permit for a brown garden waste bin which I think is collected every 2 weeks.

We were all given a small brown bucket type thing with a lid for food waste. I only ever see one person putting this out. We have hardly any food waste so what little we have gets wrapped up and put in the general waste bin.

I think you are right

Maybe buying loose veg and using a reusable net bag each time or if not recycling soft plastics at supermarkets

I know not everyone can do this

Jesus!! Ours is every week for normal bins and every other weeks for recycling. I cannot imagine every 3 weeks! The roads would be littered in maggots 💀

Garden waste is collected fortnightly. There is an annual charge for this which works out at just over £1 per week.

Food waste is collected weekly
General waste is also collected weekly
Recycling collected fortnightly, doesn't include glass. That has to be taken to Recycling points.
Small electrical equipment can be put out with the Recycling as long as it fits in a standard carrier bag and is left on the top of the Recycling bin
There is still a lot of things that we cannot put out for Recycling.
Soft plastic can be taken to supermarkets for Recycling.

We have weekly recycling (3 separate boxes for glass, cardboard and plastic) then fortnightly black and green wheelie bins. I'm shocked when I see my dsis have only black bags that are taken fortnightly. They are overrun with foxes so now have piles of black bags in their garage.

Hampshire - black bin general waste weekly, recycling green bin every other week - brown bin garden waste every other week in the summer which is an extra cost.

Our garden & food waste is uplifted fortnightly - so long as you pay your £40 for a permit

General waste every 3 weeks

Plastic & glass - every 4 weeks
Paper & card - every 4 weeks

Not great compared to a lot on here

We have a compost bin but it's too small to take our garden waste and you can't put cooked food waste in it.

Our council are canny though - they charge to take away garden waste and then use it to make compost and sell it back to people!

Where I am we have

Recycle bin and glass box - fortnightly

Garden waste - fortnightly (extra paid service)

Other waste which goes to an incinerator - fortnightly

We are supposed to be getting a food waste collection service at some point in the next year or so.

4 Weekly black bins and Weekly for recycling including food and nappy bins.
4 weekly for garden waste too, which now carries an extra charge. So we made a compost bin.
No smelly bins as all food goes weekly and everything recyclable is also gone each week.

Typo? (Or sarcasm?)

Surely no residential areas have their rubbish collected this often?

I'm zone 1 and we are weekly collection for refuse and recycling ♻️

And we see the road cleaner almost everyday.

Main issue here is dogshit. Which the poor road cleaner isn't responsible for but often deals with if someone has left shit right in middle of the pavement (he always gets a big tip at Christmas)

Yes, we used to have those and some terraced houses opted to keep that method when we switched to 3 bins

We have 3 bins here, black, blue and green. Black is general waste, blue is dry recycling, green is food and garden waste. One week it’s blue and green and the other it’s black. For some reason they reduce the green bin back to once a month from just before Christmas. Kinda odd timing, I might get after but not before.

I find the general waste more useful than I feel I ought to. Probably because I’m decluttering and shredding can’t go in the dry recycling here.

Anyone in an average-sized household who is concerned they can’t do an extra week on their recycling bin needs to go back to the first steps of the equation, which is Reduce Reuse Recycle.

That depends on the size of the bin, surely? We used to have small plastic boxes which were expected to last us a fortnight. They were about a third of the size of a small wheelie bin - oddly they didn't last very long, lol.

North West England here. Weekly bin collections, fortnightly recycling and free grass collection. Feel very spoilt and moved into this borough a years or so ago. Council tax is pretty much the same and no increase for the coming year either. It's crazy how much difference there is across country

Anyone in an average-sized household who is concerned they can’t do an extra week on their recycling bin needs to go back to the first steps of the equation, which is Reduce Reuse Recycle.

We should all be reducing our impact first. Less packaged food, fewer single-use plastic bottles, shop in person not order online to cut down on cardboard packaging etc.

I know it sounds sanctimonious and preachy but well, we all bear collective responsibility for making things Not Worse, if we can’t make them Better.

The other way round would be better. The recycling bin is usually much fuller than the rubbish for us.

The problem is with recycling is that people just stick it in the bin uncrushed.

My guess is if all my cans and bottles were crushed I could go once every 6 weeks easily because most of the space in the bin is air not cans. Of course the bin will get pretty heavy though.

I think people will just have to get used to crushing down their stuff. And councils will have to get stronger bin people and replace the bins more often as they get knackered due to the weight.

I’m shocked at 3-4 weekly bin emptying in the UK. That’s absolutely disgusting. Rubbish collection is a basic necessity of any civilised society. It’s not like more rubbish is generated if it’s collected more regularly, it’s just disposed of quicker which is necessary for environmental hygiene.

In yon olden days all rubbish was always collected weekly. How can we have gone so far backwards in this country? My in laws live in a small village in a relatively poor Eastern European country and even they have all rubbish collected and street cleansing weekly from March to September. Rarely see street cleansing here.

We are a family of 6 and have two large recycling wheelie bins emptied fortnightly (any household with 5+ occupants can get an extra recycling bin) and a general waste slim wheelie bin also emptied fortnightly, on alternate weeks. We can put out 2 extra bags of general waste with the wheelie bin as a larger family. We also have two food caddies, smaller one kept in kitchen to be decanted into the larger one outside which is emptied weekly. We have to buy the compostable bags to line the food caddies and they’re bloody expensive! Absolutely hate that bin!

There is a nappy collection which can be applied for and is weekly.

That’s the bare minimum that should be tolerated IMO.

I find the reluctance to get on board with this astounding.

It primarily space and complexity.

I currently have to have 3 indoor seperate bins for general waste, cardboard waste and other recycling because all have to be kept seperate. The general recycling has to be cleaned and dried. All of which I do. There is a fairly complex set of rules as to what can go in what bin, so I find myself at least daily checking them to make sure everything gets filed correctly. e.g. only some cardboard goes in the cardboard bin, some types have to go in the general recycling. Only some colour plastics can the general recycling, others have to go in general waste,

I then have 4 full sized wheely bins outside in the space behind the house that is 2m x 2m. That's it. Those bins each have to be wheeled down an alley that is just wide enough for them, each week. That means I am constantly juggling them like one of those puzzles where you slide the square to make a picture - so that the 'next' bin due is the one at the front.

I am not allowed to keep those wheelies in front of the house and, if I did, they would take up drive space for a small drive that is currently full.

If I add another 2 food receptacles - one indoor and one out - I will then have 9 waste vessels. That is simply bonkers to me.

Outside, the only places I have to add another caddy of any description is on top of the four wheely bins and moved each time I need to use that bin or in front of the house (where it's not allowed). And I don't live in one of the (many) victorian terrace houses around here that cannot fit all 4 wheely bins into the front garden and so have to leave 1 or 2 out on the pavement to be walked round.

Improving recycling % is important but the answer cannot be to constantly add yet another bin and yet another set of rules to homeowners. Meanwhile, certain industry wastes a phenomenal amount of rubbish and manufactuers are still allowed to use packaging 2-3x the size of the product to make it look like you are buying more than you are - and wasting all that. There also needs to be legislation about how food offers are put together so that people are not encouraged to buy more than they need just to get better pricing. Things like 3 for 2s could be better spaced out so if you buy two items in a period of time you can then claim a 3rd free within another period of time; stops you having 3 items all at once and ending up binning some.

Food waste should be allowed in the green bins for those that have them. That increases the food composted without wasting energy and plastic on yet another bin.

And I also think all councils that have to compost green and food waste, should be made to provide that compost back to residents for free or at cost price. It's currently all ar too much 'you have to do this now or else'.

They rolled out the food caddys last year for us. I've never used it, i don't want another box in my garden and it's certainly not going in my kitchen. I really don't want yet another thing to think about either. We dont really have food waste anyway.