to think reducing general waste collections to every 3 weeks is unrealistic?

Most food packaging is recyclable

All councils are going to be forced to do weekly waste food collections soon.

We pay nearly £70 for a brown/garden waste bin which accepts food waste - which is emptied every couple of weeks (except in winter), so for 24 collections.

We've renewed for this year, but I think it's the last time they're going to have extra money for doing their actual job.

My council does a medical waste wheelie bin. Think you might have to pay for it upfront but they do collect it more regularly. Not sure how often but next door has one and it’s always out and collected

does your council do something similar?

Same here . Until food suppliers change their packaging there’s no hygienic way to reduce it .

We are every other week and had a huge increase in flies and maggots last summer which we finally traced to the garbage. Every third week would be a disaster I think

Whatever are you putting in there?

It’s probably what the council wants. Rubbish will no longer be their problem and they will still charge us the same for our council tax and more when it inevitably goes up every year!

Me too. I can often go 6 weeks before my general waste wheelie bin needs to go out.

My local Sainsbury’s will accept “soft plastics”
waste. My recycling centre is 4 miles away so that’s helpful too.

It's every 3 weeks here. I find it ok as there are bins for all plastic, glass, paper and aluminium. In fact there is enough room for me to sneak in my grass cuttings in black bags as I refuse to pay £100 for the garden waste bin on top of the crazily high council tax 🤐

I have noticed more flies at the end of summer the last couple of years. I don't know if that is a result of climate change, bins left for longer or something else altogether.

We've just done 3 wks due to the weather - the black bin was delayed by a week.

The bin was so heavy after 3 wks.

Surely in summer they must absolutely stink.

They're bad enough after 2 wks.

Ours is ridiculous. We have to pay for a permit for food/garden waste, but you cannot put out your food waste caddy at the same time as the big green bin which is meant for garden waste. Our general rubbish is every 2 weeks which is ok. Plastics and glass seems to be every 4-5 weeks. But our paper ones recently changed and are now only every 5-6 which is just not frequent enough as it’s such a tiny narrow bin. I can foresee that eventually all bins will require a permit.

Ours has been 3 weekly for years - our council was one of pioneers, apparently. We managed even when we had kids in nappies, and two cats using a litter tray. It's easier now, not just because I don't have anyone in nappies, but the council now takes plastics which it didn't before. I would also really recommend saving your soft plastic waste and taking it to Tesco/Aldi. I think I fill the equivalent of a regular bin bag each cycle with soft plastics.

@DeftWasp that sounds ideal watch now Biffa will be getting more custom before long when people get fed up of councils ripping everyone off.

We have a 2 black bag limit every 3 weeks.

paper, cardboard, plastics/cans, glass and food waste are collected weekly

it’s fine. If anything it makes us think about what we’re buying and how it’s packaged.

What’s council tax for then? I’m beginning to despair of the shit show of services that we pay for.

If your council doesn’t recycle much it can be hard to cut down.

where I am we have one wheelie bin for all recycling and they won’t take any more. That’s two weekly.

general waste is everything else and often people put recyclables in there because the recyclables bin is full.

The bins have been collected every 3 weeks where we are for ages. We can’t manage at all. We have bought an overspill bin for outside where we have to store extra waste and there is a company who do private bin collections (with a bin provided) that we are going to start paying for. Our recycling bins are always at maximum capacity too so it’s not that we are lazy about recycling, it is just the council waste bin is too small to be collected every 3 weeks. They gave us all smaller bins the week they started the 3 weekly collection.

We are a family of 4 and have been on 3 weekly collections for a couple of years. Never had an overflowing bin. General waste is a normal sized wheelie bin.
Recycling and food waste is collected weekly

Ours at the moment is every fortnight recycle and food waste and garden waste is weekly.
our useless council are now looking to role out the every 3 weeks.
we struggle already with general being fortnightly it’s always full despite recycling.
when they sent out questionnaires for it I voted against it reasons being it would increase risks of diseases , rats and encourage fly tipping even more so.
That really this all needs to be pushed back onto big corporate businesses the amount on excess packaging or non recyclable packaging used is what makes it harder.
It’s a nightmare and I often wonder who’s it benefiting it’s not the environment sake it’s so the gutsy twats can fill their own pockets more with extra pay by the amount of cut backs they keep doing.

It’s disgraceful!

Yes, we throw out so much cardboard!

We’ve had this for a few years now and it’s fine. Family of 4. Even with one in nappies. You can get an extra bin for 2+ in nappies I think. In fact, our bin didn’t get collected last week due to weather so we’ve gone four weeks and it’s only just full now. Our last collection was before Christmas!

We do have an extra cardboard recycling bin as we generate a lot of that. It does take extra time but you do get complacent when you have a lot of bin space I think.

It’s been 3 weekly where I live for a couple of years. no wheelie bins, we can put out 3 normal black bags. As a family if 3 it’s rare we put out more than one.

We sere going to struggle due to elderly parents with incontinece and medical issues - so pay for Biffa instead, costs approx £45 a month for two collections, the advantage being its one of those massive commercial bins and its a service where they sort it out, so it just all goes in.

It is disgusting. At one point I had 3 in nappies and was changing around 15 nappies a day. That's over 300 nappies every 3 weeks and the council still made us fill out a silly little diary tracking everything we put in our bins for several weeks to see if we could justify getting a bigger bin. Which we had to pay for anyway. Paying for it wasn't an issue but the ridiculous process was. And bins sitting for 3 weeks are absolutely stinking.