Council to reduce recycling collections to every three weeks

We have weekly recycling and food. Rubbish is fortnightly. Works okay

Our bins have been collected every 3 weeks for a couple of years. I was very concerned when it first started but they gave us much bigger recycling bins which are collected fortnightly and it hasn't been an issue.

Presumably you store it for up to a week (in the bin) now? Food waste is collected weekly, you'll be "storing" it longer if you put it in the general waste?

We've had it every three weeks for a year now and it's hell. Waste also every three weeks too.

We didn't have a lot (or so I thought) as we compost some and the dog eats some leftovers but the food waste bin has really reduced our general waste. Still not sure I could go three weeks between collections though. Saying that, it used to be unlimited black bags weekly and we got used to the fortnightly wheelie bin.

I won't be storing what little food waste we have.. our council tried this and abandoned it as the uptake was minimal

If they want to reduce waste collection they need to reduce the amount we generate.. the vast quantities of wrappings, bags, paper and cardboard on anything we buy or order

TBF it is only the food waste that needs collecting weekly. Bins don't smell if there's no food in them. Except nappies, I've no idea how we'd have coped with one small wheely bin a fortnight and adult nappies, when caring for DH.

I was at a council meeting last night where the leader of our borough council said that everywhere in England will have weekly food waste collections by 2026 because of a statutory change (we don’t yet have it here). I imagine that this would be combined with a reduction in the frequency of landfill waste collections.

I think the whole recycling message was a mistake. We should have all been "taught" to produce far less waste (including the manufacturers and their packaging), rather than thinking it's all OK as long as it's recycled.

Our general waste is once a fortnight and recycling weekly ATM, in reusable bags that are rubbish because they blow about. There are lots of complaints that the bins aren't big enough, but I don't think we're particularly careful to reduce waste and they're plenty big enough for our family of 4, rarely more than half full.

Whoa. I'm so shocked at some of these. Ours is weekly for recycling and fortnightly for general waste.

Caspianberg · Today 12:13
i think councils should be encouraging less rubbish. If people are filling bins on a weekly basis, surely they need to try and reduce waste, not complain islets not collected often. It’s only moved from you house, it doesn’t just ‘disappear’

yes it’s still in the world. Often shipped to a third world country and piled high. It’s hard to reduce waste, most things that make our lives easier and make it possible to work full time etc involve plastics. We can’t all be Amish and grow our own oats. There must be simple changes that big companies can make, like plastic bottle collection funded by drinks companies.

We are still weekly (south east), apparently our recycling collection is changing later this year but think it will still be weekly.

Mine is general waste (black wheelie bin) weekly and recycling (green wheelie bin )fortnightly.

There are food waste bins as well which are emptied weekly.

Ou council is changing to 3 weeks for general waste wheelie bin.
Garden waste is changing from monthly to fortnightly and we are now being charged for that.
Recycling and food waste is every week. But we do not have a wheelie bin for that, we have stupid plastic boxes which blow away if it’s a windy night which happens alot here in Scotland. They also break due to the refuse collectors throwing them onto the pavement.
People have petitioned the council asking for a wheelie bin for recycling but they claim the boxes work and it would cost too much to change to wheelie bins.
I have to get new boxes at least twice a year due to breakage or blowing away.

That ..is extremely accurate.
Thank you.

YABU in my opinion.

Round here they've been on 3 weekly collections for the recycling for donkeys years.

We have 4 bins.

One for a weekly food/garden waste collection.

2 of the others are collected every 3 weeks. These bins are for glass and plastic in one; paper in the other.

The general rubbish bin is collected fortnightly.

Works really well. They even did a bin swap thing where the larger general rubbish bin was swapped for the smaller recycling one. So it forced people to recycle because the glass and plastic bin is now our largest one.

Once you get used to it, you'll see its a great idea.

My council are going from weekly to fortnightly later this year. This is both general and recycling. It will alternate

The main problem which will affect 95% of residents is that the general wheelie bin is 140 litres - the thin narrow bin. If you have 2 plus more people in your household, the general bin will be overflowing. At Christmas/NY, those who miss their collection - they can have 3 black bin bags.

Yet my CT has gone up by £6 (band A single adult) and my parents up by £21 (band D) a month

Yeah, well....
Fly tipping, anti social use of other people's bins, unless they are locked or stored away....
In my country, trash is emptied every day except Sunday.
What a fool - me - to marry and move to the UK 20 years ago.
Time to get out again.
🙂

We have 3 weekly collections and it's fine, general waste could go longer tbh. It amazes me all the councils have different systems, you'd think there would be some cost benefit to standardising them across the country... anyway, we have 3 bins (waste, plastic, paper), food and batteries are collected weekly, glass we have to do ourselves.

Our neighbours rubbish/ recycling has overflowed from the day they moved in, we're amazed how much a small household can have. They complain constantly about the 3 week cycle, about having to sort their recycling (something they have never managed to grasp so the bins don't get emptied and the problem worse), it hasn't been a problem for anyone else and we all have similar sized households.

😂

You’re a lot less likely to get maggots if you keep any scraps of meat or fish in a bag in the freezer until the night before the bin men come. Apparently bluebottles can smell anything dead (so any meat or fish) from a mile away.

For about the last 3 years all our bins and recycling have been done every 3 weeks.
We have a green bin for general rubbish, a box for glass, a pink bin for tins and plastics and a blue one for paper and card.

In spite of everybody moaning, it all works perfectly well - there's no smell or rubbish piling up in the streets.

i think councils should be encouraging less rubbish. If people are filling bins on a weekly basis, surely they need to try and reduce waste, not complain islets not collected often. It’s only moved from you house, it doesn’t just ‘disappear’

We need to completely rethink our relationship with refuse, landfill waste is the third largest source of methane released into the atmosphere
https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/article/20240402-the-surprising-sources-of-methane

and plastics recycling is not great either - 90% is dumped or incinerated (globally)

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/environment-plastic-oil-recycling/

1.86 million tonnes of non recycled plastic waste per year in the UK.

https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5803/cmselect/cmenvfru/22/report.html

none of these methods are succeeding and we are all suffering as a result.

you’re crazy if you think the thing to worry about is the smell of bins! It’s so much worse than that!

Upping council tax charging for bin collection and cutting the service down. Pretty much sums up our shit state of a country. Yay rats and maggots !! Roll on summer !