could you cope if there was a bin collection strike in your area?

Almost all areas are still having regular collections, just not as regular as the usual weekly collections. It has nothing to do with being "posh", although it must be noted that several of the more affluent parts of the city are under the control of other councils who are not having a strike.

Sadly, the press have honed in on a few parts of the city where rubbish has been a problem for a very, very long time. As many people have pointed out all over social media, the piling up of mattresses, furniture, and appliances has nothing to do with the bin collection strike. Nor has the fact that in some areas the residents have decided to take all their rubbish and pile it up in the street.

I frequently travel through a very much not "posh" area of the city, and it's just as clean as it always is...any rubbish hanging about there is also nothing to do with the strike.

Exactly. As you say, the previous strike was worse.

The areas worst affected by the mess are the areas that had problems already.

Many of the areas of Birmingham which sit on the border of Birmingham and somewhere else come under the control of various other councils who are not having bin collection strikes, so for them (and I am one of them) there has been no change.

Lichfield council is one such example, and their bin collectors have been out & about in some parts of Birmingham to lend a hand. Meanwhile, general waste collections are still taking place by Birmingham councils, albeit not as regularly in all areas.

Most of the (many) parts of the city I drive through are not looking any the worse for the bin strike, as it seems a huge number of people are taking responsibility by using the tips and trusting in the current processes.

It must be devastating for the people of Birmingham. Apparently the posh areas still have regular collections?!
God knows how I'd cope

Exactly this.

It's nothing like that. The press are making a huge drama of it. Birmingham had a bin collection strike a few years back, it was longer than this, and people were generally very civilized. There wasn't much press coverage of it either.

I live in Birmingham, albeit under the control of another council, and our bin collectors went on strike in 2023 and again we managed very well.

The press are making out that we are all living in rancid conditions, when in fact the areas most affected are the ones that are not the cleanest to start with.

I was thinking about whether this strike would prompt any discussion about the amount of waste we generate for landfill due to excess packaging and non repairable items. I haven’t seen or heard anything though.

I would probably manage ok. Food waste goes in the compost heap, washed recycling could be stored clean in the garden. I generate less than a carrier bag of landfill per week and would try to consciously reduce that.

There was a strike here a couple of years ago, I think it lasted a for a month. We were fine, squashed everything down as much as we could and when the bins were full we went to the tip once. Now the kids are a bit older and out of nappies I think we could manage for a couple of months without a collection. If it was in the summer the only extra thing I would do is to store meat scraps in a tupperware box in the freezer to try and avoid getting maggots 🤢

I’d have space to store it neatly for a good while in bin bags, however I change cat litter frequently and I imagine the smell and flies would be appalling.
if the tip was open I would bit the bullet and go there once a week…take my book and assume I’d have to queue.
if it was closed I’d have to drive my rubbish to my mum and dad’s house or sister’s house.
they live an hour away so it would be an unpleasant trip!

I live in Birmingham.

Honestly the biggest issues in our area have been:

1. bins left on pavements for weeks on end, whether they’re full or not, which makes walking to school frustrating.
2. no recycling collection since Christmas. We generate about one bag of waste per week, but our recycling is always full. We’ve been taking it to the tip but I’m conscious of taking too many slots as others with more refuse may need to go.
3. fly tipping. No Doris, now isn’t the time to clear out your back bedroom and leave a broken bed and some ancient pictures on the road “in case someone wants them”.

Most areas have gone 4 weeks max without a collection. The amount of rubbish some people have generated and dumped on the street in that time is disgusting. People should have some respect for their areas.

I lived in Toronto when there was a garbage collection strike in 2009. It lasted like 5-6 weeks and it was awful. We had a DC in nappies at the time and a basement neighbour who didn’t seem to realise there was a garbage strike? It was awful. If I remember right it was well into the +20’s and it just smelled. The US (Obama was president then) literally issues a travel warning for their citizens not to travel to Toronto.

We discussed this at work and think we would be ok for a month maybe more

I have an extra large recycling bin anyway and two green bins, so could store recycling in the green bin temporarily, like we have at Christmas when we had extra

Don't put much in the refuse bin it's usually only half full, so could go a while if we squish it down.

Food waste probably a bigger problem, we freeze it anyway so might be able to squish in freezer if we separate peelungs that can be composted and just freeze food scrapings as nd bones etc

I just emptied our full kitchen bin bag into the wheelie bin. Despite being careful, a bit of bin juice still leaked on to the ground outside before I could yeet it into the big bin.

No way whatsoever that would have gone anywhere near the inside of either of our (old but well looked-after) cars.

Incidentally, I wonder if any desperate folk in Birmingham have been resorting to the (ahem) other 'bin' for their slimy/sloppy kitchen waste... the one that you can flush?

We live in the country and I would just burn our rubbish!

It would be a nightmare round here. Its all terraces so we use bags only and fly tipping is already a big problem.
Also I dont drive so couldnt go to a tip. TBH the day after bin day always looks like chaos here with rubbish strewn everywhere so I cant imagine what a strike would look like!

We could cope. But the dump/recycling centre is about a two minute drive from our home, and we frequently take things there as it is.

Block of 6 flats, communal bins. Bins are full most weeks, recycling bins are full every week. We all drive so I'm sure if it came to it we could get rid of it, or someone would call the Housing Association who owns the lease and try and get them to sort it out (I know it's not their job but we pay them a service charge which does include rubbish disposal obviously not bins but we'd try).

Live in a rural area and a rat ate through a neighbours wheelie bin. Double bagging rubbish will not even deter cats never mind rats. Just so you are aware not to be argumentative 😊

I would find it hard as disabled and can’t drive. I expect as with many things it hits the people in the most deprived areas hardest as less likely to have access to a car and neighbours the same.

Yes - that's a very good summary of the situation.

It does also then raise the question of elderly people having to sell their homes to pay for it, if they need to go into care homes in their final years.

If they object, people will ask "Well, why should other people pay for your care needs" - but if they feel they can justifiably argue that they have already paid for it themselves in their council tax for several decades...!

There are ways around it, though - even if illegal.

Our county tips turn away any commercial vehicle - which includes an odd-job person with a Fiesta van, even if that doubles as their only personal household transport, with their own domestic waste - but there's no restriction at all for non-commercial vehicles.

We have friends with a VW minibus - they refer to it as 'the van' because that's essentially what it is: a van with windows and seats - but the back two rows of seats are fully removable.

They use it for their own household waste and when helping friends and family with their own (household) waste; however if anybody were thus inclined, it wouldn't be difficult to buy a similar cheap old vehicle, leave it unmarked, and charge many desperate people on an 'ask no questions' basis to take it all to the tip as free household waste, time and time again.

Not that I'd condone this, of course; but if councils are not delivering one of their most basic essential services for which people have already paid council tax, I think you could sympathise with the people's predicaments.

It's ironic that, if a rogue trader took people's money in exchange for agreed services and then didn't provide those services, the council trading standards would pursue them; yet in this case, effectively by the same logic, the council are the rogue traders!

Personally I would be able to take it the tip several times a week. I'd help out neighbours where I could. I live in an area with a lot of fly tipping. The general excuse is, I don't own a car. Personally if you are replacing furniture etc you need to work out how ro get rid of the old, because dumping it on the street isn't on.

Our bins often don’t get collected as our back street is regularly blocked by cars - we’ve gone 6-8 weeks in the past. We managed fine as we both drive and the tip is only a mile away.

Yes, I don’t disagree, and I have 2 small kids who will use the public school system.

I’ve said for a while now that council tax is essentially now a social care tax for the elderly and kids with SEN - something like 60-70% of all council tax goes on this area alone, so every household is making something like a £150 contribution directly to this every month (and this doesn’t take into account core spending on the elderly and SEN in the form of benefits, pensions, hospitals etc).

This is why demands for more to be spent on social care/welfare will fail, as I think there will be a revolt if people earning 25k are forced to spend yet more on propping up other people when they can barely prop up themselves. I think saying people on benefits should be entitled to holidays as a human right etc is madness when they would happily take yet more tax from working people who can’t afford a holiday themselves.

I actually said to DH long before this all started that our bin collections would get less frequent and we’ll start to see the return of rats and infection. It sounds Dickensian and I think he was sceptical but he noted last night at least where Birmingham is concerned I’m right! I did a stint working in LA and the amount spent fulfilling their statutory obligations to 1 child are staggering - tens of thousands per week in some cases, on just one child. Some families cost the LA hundreds of thousands a year in special school places, therapies, bespoke packages, social work etc

Well im due to have a baby soon, and nappies with warmer weather and bin strike would not fare good at all... Other than that it's a bi-weekly collection in our area anyway, so stretching it even longer really would not be nice.