Council not giving extra allowance for those whose bin dates not changed

Our bin is being collected 4 days late. We had so many people over christmas that for the second year we paid to have the bin emptied by a local licenced waste carrier. They charge £15 for it to be emptied and they came on Saturday. It is worth it to us, as I dont want the stinking food rubbish (we dont have a food waste collection here) in the car going to the tip. Our recycling is also full, and we will have to go to the tip with some recycling as they dont come for another 1.5 weeks.

But that depends on how good your council is with its recycling. Ours won’t take any wrapping paper if it has sellotape on, so , either you rip off all the bits with sellotape , or you just bin it, they don’t recycle plastic bags, plastic film, crisp packets etc, so they also end up in the rubbish bin and, if like us, you have bought presents for your grandkids which they open at your house, you do generate more rubbish/ recycling. Before they introduced bins, our council would take whatever extra rubbish you put out at Christmas, now, if the lid won’t shut, it’s left, maybe just for one bin collection cycle, they could make an exception, after all, at the end of the day,we do pay for it

I can criticise my council for much but they do waste and recycling well - long may it continue. We have weekly : paper and card box, plastic and metal box, food bin and non recyclable rubbish in bags. Garden waste in large stickered green wheelies or green bags that you pay for. Can put small electricals out next to bin. Batteries and small electrical to the library. The only requirement they have is that cardboard is cut up to fit the recycling box. The recycling centre aka the tip has become stricter - booking slots since Covid with proof, different areas for commercial and general public and very eagle eyed on what goes where. Very efficient and helpful, though. Lots of street corner textile and cardboard mini units.

I’m not being smug, I’m being very grateful indeed especially after seeing the paltry service given to so many others on here 😕 My DD, in the next London borough over, paying equally eye watering council tax, gets nothing like as good a regime.

Our black bin is fine, we aren't anywhere near capacity for it, but we are completely out of room for recycling (to the point where I'm contemplating having to put some of it in the black bin). If you have more recycling than will fit in the (not huge) boxes/bags they give you, they won't collect. Slots at the tip need to be booked and 'sell out' quickly.

i can take soft plastics to tesco
but tetrapaks are so annoying that i would have to drive to the tip, what a waste of energy!

If it helps future gift wrap, t k maxx had lovely fabric gift bags recently for very reasonable price. So a few medium size means at least your own children’s gifts less disposable wrap. I imagine on sale now.

Our bin day only moved by one day. Recycling is always as much as you have as long as it’s either cardboard just put out or you bag it in a clear bag.

Waste is only ever with the lid shut. We do have a food bin as well. Collections once a Fortnight for each type of rubbish apart from food.

No extra allowance here, never heard of that being offered before either, not here in my little bubble anyway.
Our bins should be collected on Thursday but have been on Mondays for the last two weeks instead, back to normal next week.
We couldn't get the blue bin out last time because of the damn storms so that one is chock a block ready for next week & we will most like fill it with what we have stored away as soon as it comes back in the gate too. It's been squashed down already so that we could squeeze more in but definitely at the limit now .

Our general rubbish bin is collected every 3 weeks. But over Christmas it's 6 weeks. No extra allowance here either

I didn't mention what I buy. Only examples. The point really is 1) why supermarkets don't sell only in recycling suitable packaging and 2) why we dont have standardised recycling across all areas and its so different everywhere ... but I'm not sure that's something we can solve on a thread between us, sadly.

Depends on the size of your household? We have 8 permanent residents and 12 over Christmas so obviously generate more rubbish than a couple would.

We have 3 weekly bin picks ups as do my parents, different councils

Should add the wheelie bin fits 3

It will have to be provided from March 2026 except in a few Exempt areas (like South Yorkshire) which has a special type of processing plant.

My parents hosted and we had two bags of black bin rubbish, I can’t understand why you would have more? The food waste goes into the brown bin, cardboard is recycled and most the wrapping paper was recyclable (dd had the job of removing the sellotape) this year even crisp packets can be recycled.

If the excess is mainly non-recyclable wrapping paper/packaging, can't you keep this in the house until you can fit it into a future collection or take it to the tip?

I'm an advocate of using gift bags rather than wrapping paper - you can keep those you receive and reuse them until they wear out. I realise that it's what's given to you that impacts your Christmas waste, not what you give to others, but it's a good example to set (and much quicker than wrapping).

YABU to have started a rubbish thread!

If you host over Christmas get your guests to take home a share of the rubbish. Or just sneak it into their car!

That's crazy! What council are you with? I thought all councils moved collections by a couple of days, not missed the collection altogether.

My local council picked up a day early last week and back to normal this week

But If councils made it easier more people would recycle. Using Tetra Pak cartons as an example, another poster's council takes them as recycling but mine doesn't. Surely if hers can mine can rather than expecting me to do a dump run for some milk cartons!

I’m surprised so many councils seem to not offer food waste?

we had it over 15 years ago in London, and two other councils so I assumed it would be standard in uk now, not removed

Yabvu - plan for the waste as pp said!

We are a family of 4 and 10 for Christmas and our waste is well under control.

We have switched to Christmas bags (reused) for adults and wrapping paper that recycles so there’s no wrapping waste. My ds7 enjoys carving up any extra cardboard in a neat pile which goes under the bed/ in the garage until we can drip-feed it into the recycling bags.

All our soft recyclable plastic is rinsed clean and stuffed tight in a plastic delivery bag and we take that to the supermarket.

Soft plastics are the game changer - if you are recycling these I truly can’t understand how your waste is getting out of hand, unless you indulge in some kind of grotesque consumerist “my pile is the biggest” approach to gift-giving.

The paper I buy is recyclable. That goes to someone else’s house with their presents, the stuff which is now in my house came from elsewhere, that’s not recyclable.

Food wise, I don’t know anywhere that does food collection, I also think most gardens round here certainly don’t have the space to compost.

Our landfill bin is going to be collected a week late, it is always full at the point of collection in spite of recycling what we can. I’ll take it to the tip.

If we leave anything extra at any point in the year our bin men just pick it up. Must be lucky after reading these.

It would help if recycling was standard across all councils. Ours says to put Tetra Pak cartons in the rubbish or, ideally, take them to the dump. I'm not storing used milk cartons until I have enough to make a dump run worthwhile and I don't want to spend my weekends sitting in a queue either! I tried the small tins of cat food but they are more expensive and I struggle to get them open so he's back on pouches.

If councils made it easier to recycle I'm sure more people would do it.

I think most adults are capable of not fly tipping rubbish regardless of the time of year.