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

Okay. And how does this mean that no plant edible by humans should go in a garden waste bin.

There are plenty of plant diseases for plants which are not for human consumption, as well.

And do you really think SERCO have either the capability or time to go through every green bin, identify the plants and whether they happen to be poisonous to humans or not?

It’s clearly totally arbitrary. Clearly no kitchen waste was going in the garden waste, but why should all garden waste which happens to be non-poisonous be forbidden from being classified as garden waste and being composted? Particularly when there were no food waste collections in place at the time so all edible plants would then have been going to landfill.

Sorry, if by “Really?” you were referring to daily waste collections as a minimum in most European countries, then yes, really.

Instead of having individual bins at each house there are generally large enclosed skips at the end of each road where all residents deposit waste as it is produced, and these are emptied daily or, in some cases, twice daily. Specific provisions are usually made to collect directly from those with severe mobility issues.

It’s not rocket science. Most countries learned over a century ago that leaving rotting waste around for weeks, attracting flies, maggots and rats etc, was not conducive to public health or an acceptable residential environment.

How disgraceful.

As usual the needs of women, children and the disabled have been completely ignored when designing these “policies”.

It sounds bad but we have had this for years and in practice it hasn’t proved a problem. People seal the waste in plastic bags before putting it in the bin.

Every three weeks? We only have half a carrier bag of rubbish PER YEAR and I run a zoo and have a polygamous family with 27 children. I just forbid any of them from pooing. None of the women in our family have periods, either: all births are virgin births. We move from prepubescent to post-menopausal instantaneously at precisely 50 years old. I don’t know why everyone doesn’t do the same.

It’s like the “Four Yorkshiremen” of waste collection on this thread.

Yes, really. I live in a detached house. The Council has just gone to 3 weekly collections for general waste. They stated that they “discussed” a separate service for sanitary and medical waste, nappies etc but decided not to provide this because those who needed it were “a minority”. Therefore, they insist that all of this must go in general waste bins and that bins full of rotting excrement and blood will be left cooking in summer for 3 weeks in residential areas. It is disgusting and a health hazard.

"Not all Councils offer this service. Ours is telling people to put sanitary and soiled medical items, dog and cat poo, dirty nappies etc into general waste then only collecting it every 3 weeks."

My son's is every 2 weeks. Because he is classed as living alone they won't give him an extra bin despite being fully incontinent and having 3 carers night and day who also produce rubbish.

I have 12 children in nappies (I just use reusables though. So easy) and 18 incontinent dogs. We only fill half a bag for life every 3 weeks. How much rubbish do other people have??

Ours is fortnightly but if it moved to every 3 weeks we'd be stuffed. We're a family of 4 with 2 cats and 2 dogs. If you scoop/fully change cat litter the recommended amount that's a black bag a week on its own!

FIL would never compost potato peelings because there was a risk of spreading potato blight, apparently.

It really makes no sense at all.

Really?
In residential districts where there are houses rather than blocks of flats?

For those who don't have food waste collection. You will soon. Made a huge difference to us. What can be recycled goes up before black bin collection goes down.

You'd hope so, wouldn't you. Yet for my council it looks like it'll be another 2 years at least till that happens - 2028!

It's wild that people are expected to pay council tax for such an appalling lack of service. That's unsanitary and what if someone's on holiday when the collection happens?

We're on twice a week collections for both rubbish and recycling.

Not all Councils offer this service. Ours is telling people to put sanitary and soiled medical items, dog and cat poo, dirty nappies etc into general waste then only collecting it every 3 weeks.

As I said near the start of the thread this is extremely unsanitary and will smell foul, especially in summer. The life cycle of a fly is 2 weeks so 3 weekly collections will result in maggots and thousands of flies in residential areas.

Most civilised countries collect waste daily. In some cases, twice per day.

They really need to rethink not allowing pedestrians to use the recycling centre. It's absurd that people who do not or who cannot drive are not permitted.

Once drivers are inside the site they are walking around so citing health and safety is nonsense.

Our council is doing a trial of collecting soft plastics in one part of the county. It has been an outstanding success, with them collecting far more than they anticipated. The rest of us are looking forward to them expanding the service - it’s surprising how much of our waste is soft plastics. I take them with me to the supermarket atm but having it collected will be great!

For those with too much waste of any kind, looking at what you’re buying can make a big difference for not a lot of change. Buying bigger options gives relatively a lot less waste than a higher number of smaller ones. Buying loose fruit and veg has lots less packaging than pre packed options.

I recycle as much as I can and my general waste bin isn’t full fortnightly ( family of five). My council are pretty good and recycle soft / hard plastics. I take glass to bottle bank. Food waste / peelings goes in brown bin.

I do remember when dc were small and I had three in nappies (toddler and twins) and bin was constantly overflowing. I got an extra bin provided. I think in that situation council should provide an extra bin / do an extra pick up. When I worked for council you could apply to go on to weekly collection. Mainly for people who would struggle to move a full bin but also if you had excess waste due to medical needs or young children and there was no room for extra bins.

The Council here once refused to empty my garden waste bin, for which I pay an additional £80 per year, because I had put some rotten apples from the tree in the garden in it. This was before they started collecting food waste and obviously they wouldn’t have fitted in the tiny food waste bin anyway. So presumably they wanted this compostable garden waste to go the landfill?

They then said “no edible plants” can go in the garden waste. So presumably no nettles, no rose petals, no vegetables people have grown, no offcuts from herb bushes, no dandelions, no bay leaves, no pine needles, etc!

Absolutely crazy. How does the arbitrary fact that a particular plant happens to be edible by humans make it less compostable?

And are we meant to believe that Serco’s refuse collection staff have the botanical knowledge to determine which plants are edible and which are not?!

They seem to deliberately make it impossible for people. If we want littering and flytipping to reduce then they should be providing ample bin space and collecting far more frequently to make it easier for people.

In theory when they bring in the 4 bin rule (2028 here) we should manage however, I suspect the reality will be different when you factor in things like birthdays, parties, Xmas, delayed or missed collections etc.

We switched to 3 weekly general waste collections about a year ago and with 5 people aged 17 plus in this house it's been fine.

Surely this is one of the most basic services provided by Councils, so why should you have to pay for it twice? Just like all the tax for the NHS when in practice if you want timely and competent treatment you have to pay privately, and all the tax for schools which in practice make no provision to educate many children with specific educational needs.

We need a system like in most countries where if you pay privately for something that should be provided from tax revenue you receive a proportional tax rebate.

Our black bin is every 2 weeks but it’s never full. So 3 weeks would be fine for us.

One thing that has helped is we collect the soft plastics and take them to the supermarket (Sainsbury’s/Aldi/Co-op near me all collect soft plastics).

Food waste is collected every week.
We have a compost bin in the garden, and pay for a brown bin for garden waste.
The recycling bin takes all tins, paper, glass.

Old clothes we take to the charity shop or clothes bank.

So there’s not loads to go in the black bin, really. We don’t have babies or pets admittedly.

But overall I hate seeing all these wheely bins everywhere. It’s the first thing you see in most people’s front garden.
In the Netherlands they have communal underground bins on each street, it’s so much nicer.

We've just gone 3 weekly for black bin general waste. We have pets and I just about manage apart from over christmas when we had to go to the dump, it was over 5 weeks between collections. I find recycling hard, I'm often unsure what's recycleable and what isn't.

I really do think it’s one of those things you do sort of adapt to. When it came in for us about 5/6 years ago, we thought the same as many people on here. But actually we’ve never had an issue. We do have a food waste bin which I think is important, plus plastics and cardboard (would love a glass collection but we have to take that ourselves). Food bin is weekly and the rest are on a three-week rotation.

It did make me realise that we were being a bit lazy, thinking we were good at recycling but doing things fairly often like lobbing out of date packets of food in the black bin instead of removing contents into food bin and then recycling packaging. But even with nappies and some dog poo bags, we’ve never had to do an emergency tip run or have had an overflowing bin, even with this delayed collection and all the Christmas stuff in.

Black bin rubbish is definitely the thing we have least of. We would struggle more with a delayed cardboard or plastic collection.

So I think most people will be fine with it, you just have to adapt a little and if you’re decluttering and chucking stuff out, plan for that instead of filling the bin.