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

There’s a lot on this thread about how perfect people should be!

My council charges for food/green/garden bin. I have a tiny garden and no time to spend in it, no time or need for compost. I have a small (energy efficient) new build home which only has a half size black bin. I can’t get to the tip/recycling centre as I work full time with a long (public transport) commute.

So my food and garden waste goes in the black bin. The garden waste has to be disguised in a black bin bag otherwise the bin men will not accept the bin.

My overall carbon footprint is on the low side but that’s despite the council bonkers rules not because of them!

If bins were due to be collected on Christmas/new year in our area then they were due to be collected early. No extra allowances were offered. Food waste not being collected in the festive period so it will be 4 weeks worth by the time they come for it again.

Our bins are on a 3 week cycle except for food waste which is every 2 weeks.

@travailtotravel - buy can’t you buy large pot yogurt instead of individual, and fruit and veg loose?

i ended up taking the wrapping paper out of the recycling bin as the land fill bin was due on 27th december

Really makes you think about the excess consumerism and waste, doesn't it? Not the point of your thread I know, but rather than councils offering extra waste collection, it should be on households to manage their waste appropriately.

Bin day changed but no extra allowance. Mind you, the old fella next door but one isn't looking too good so fingers crossed, if he pops his clogs in the next few weeks we'll have his spare capacity to use too. Fingers crossed eh? 🙄

<smh>

Benefits of living in a block of flats. I have one bin. It gets filled up every other day and put out in the big wheelie bin downstairs. I only recycle if I have a giant cardboard box or something. Everything else just goes in the bin.

I wish this were true ... we have no food waste collection and very limited in what is accepted for recycling in our bin (plastic bottles - so no yoghurt pots, trays you fet fruit in etc ... glass and cardboard). If I could recycle plastics and food waste, I'd have very little. As it is ....

Is this true about wrapping paper? That really puts me off. I hate the increased use of paper over Christmas anyway - cards and wrapping etc, but now to discover that it's not even considered to be actual paper...

Ok maybe it’s different where we live. But Tetra Pak packaging ie milk cartons is washed out and recycled here. So are soft plastics. It’s all collected. Just has to be clean ( this is only every 6 weeks so it would stink storing dirty plastic in summer)

I don’t buy things that are tricky to recycle. Things like cat food I swapped years ago to small tins so they are washed and recycled. I don’t think shiny gift wrap or bows are really sold anymore, most in the shops locally are paper based.

Glass we have to take to local point but it’s near supermarket so pretty convenient. Glass bottles and yogurt we pay a fee for at purchase and it gets refunded when we return to supermarket depot.

We have 2 general waste and 2 recycling as we are a big family and all 4 are full.

We wrote to our local district council to complain why they can't accept single use plastics. Their response was a lame excuse that they can't collect enough to make it economically viable to sell in the open market for recycling companies to recycle.

We have someone in our Parish council who professes to caring about the environment so we keep mithering them and hopefully they will eventually sort this out as the bordering county does accept single use plastics. It's impossible to avoid them, because the supermarket use them so much. Many supermarkets are now using molded cardboard like egg boxes for certain fruit and veg, but then you find them reverting back to plastic, it's a running battle!

My MiLs council put a flat no to wrapping paper, even to recyclable one

You can't compost all food waste, and even in our garden the compost bins get full and there is no more room. Our council is only starting a food waste collection in 2026.

My council put flat no to extra bag on top, even when my bin day moved from last Thursday to this morning.
The excess rubbish needs to go to the local tip. Luckily i don't need to book a slot

I’m shocked at how many councils don’t recycle everything! Ours even collects thin plastic now, and my medication packets I take to my local Boots. That helps a lot.

Sorry @WutheringTights Im probably going to infuriate you now but to your point

non-recyclable gift wrap/bags eg foil bows, paper with foil (why do people still sell it?)

the question we need to ask is not why are they still sold, but why are we still buying them, right?

my purchasing habits have changed massively in the past 5 or so years, I don't buy any foil bows, you can get paper ones in shop, or not use them at all. We can't keep blaming the shops, we are the consumers, so our power is far greater. If we say No More, then they will have to change,

Mainly food. We don’t have food waste here yet (and it’s going to be a nightmare when they do from a pest perspective ). We live in a very urban area with urban foxes, rats and mice to contend with. Most people don’t have gardens so very few people do composting.

@Danceparty55 - yes. We have a child, and there’s 3-7 of us throughout the year depending. The black bin just doesn’t get full. I don’t know, we just all rarely have stuff that can’t be completely recycled or composted. Just a bit of non compost food waste and other odd bits I guess. Nappies etc were washable when Ds used them.
We try and buy less packaging where possible, and what we do is recycled mainly.

What goes in your black bin?

That's unlucky. Nearly all the tip slots are available at my nearest one all week.

As well as food wrapping we have Tetra Pak cartons, cat litter, cat food pouches, sanitary products and those are the things I can think of off the top of my head. We're usually fine for a two week collection but if it went to four we'd struggle. We recycle what we can and use the food waste bin as that is collected weekly but can't cut down any more on rubbish.

These kind of responses infuriate me. (Sorry Caspian, you’re just the latest one I’ve seen.) Can posters really not understand that other people might different to themselves?

What goes in my black bin? Well, overnight pull ups for my youngest who isn’t dry overnight, used sanpro, non-recyclable packaging, like shampoo bottles, mushroom trays, meat packaging, non-recyclable gift wrap/bags eg foil bows, paper with foil (why do people still sell it?), non-recyclable plastic packaging from toys, other packaging that is mixed, eg cardboard boxes with plastic, etc.

We’ve been hosting a large group all week and we’ve already had to do a tip run. Of course people have more rubbish over Christmas if hosting, it might not necessarily be much more rubbish overall, but I now have several other people’s rubbish as well as my own to deal with. My (smaller than it used to be, collected fortnightly) black bin is only just big enough for normal rubbish from my family of five, there is lo spare capacity for extras.

Our council works a four day week and has shifted our collection day by just two working days. Can’t understand why some people have had to miss a whole week.

Yes there absolutely is a point in always buying paper only wrappings. We need to think globally not just locally. If everyone only buys paper only, then everyone benefits.

we all need to get better at preparing our recycling, ie stripping off the sellotape before adding it to the recycle bags, it takes a minute or two, but it makes it recyclable,

the only thing stopping improvements to recycling is people's attitude. If it all about finding excuses as to why we cant do it, then nothing will change.

DH and I have been doing it for years, not because it's trendy, but because it's out contribution. That doesn't make us eco-warriors or anything daft like that, it's small things that contribute to big things,

Our collection days have only changed by a day or two (recycling has been collected) rubbish next weekend however my bins are over spilling despite recycling so much. Where we live we get one bin however you can apply for an extra bin in some circumstances, we have two bins and both are full when it’s not Christmas and yes we recycle everything we can! I don’t know where we go wrong. Have to make a trip to the tip this week I think 🤦‍♀️

but yes in answer to your question, they should allow for extra refuse at Christmas!