Neighbours bins haven’t been emptied for 2 months

[L0ts]

Hi everyone, not sure what to do as my neighbours are a pain at the best of times. In our area they have recently rolled out blue bags for paper and cardboard. Our neighbours seem to be refusing to use theirs and still filling their blue recycling bin to the BRIM of cardboard and just about everything else, meaning the bin men have now refused it 4 times, so that’s 2 months the bin hasn’t been emptied. They’ve left tags on their bin and I’ve watched as they take the tag off and literally put it in the blue bin which isn’t supposed to have the paper or cardboard 🙃

Anyway.. The last collection day was 3 days a go on Tuesday and they still haven’t brought their bin in from the pavement, which I don’t understand. On Tuesday as the bin men came and they checked their bin, swarms of flies came out. Since then I have noticed loads of flies around the bin too, which makes me suspect it’s infested and is this why they don’t want it close to their house as they usually leave it on the front drive by their living room window.

Is there anything I can do about this? If it was a one off and they were going to sort the bin out I wouldn’t mind but they’ve had 2 months and still clearly aren’t willing to do anything about it. I get that maggots can happen, totally understandable in hot weather and bins being collected every 2 weeks, but this is clearly down to sheer laziness.

What did they say when you went and spoke to them about it?

Phone the council or environmental health

Agree speak to them. But they are probably waiting until someone else complains about it and then it's someone else's problem.

Or speak to the council. They will probably fine them for fly tipping if they haven't already.

You could ring Environmental Health at your local council and see what they can do. Ours are pretty good and I would have thought they'd sort that out because it's a health hazard now.

Definitely an Environmental Health call.

Thanks for the replies guys! I was thinking maybe environmental health.

As for speaking to them, they are NOT the most approachable people in the world. I’ve tried to say hello to them when I’ve seen them getting out of their car and I quite literally get completely ignored. My partner knocked on their door over another issue last year and they ignored his attempts, they were in, we could see the curtains twitching. They are also incredibly argumentative, I hear them shout at each other almost daily. So I’m afraid talking to them isn’t in the question. The woman in particular isn’t very friendly at all.

My council has an online form to report a contaminated bin. Yours might have something similar.

Bloody hell, report to EH, that's just shitty
Do they actually understand what to do, can they read? I don't mean that rudely BTW

So does that mean, you have to fill plastic bags with paper and cardboard and keep in the house? So what goes in blue lidded bin?

How do you get flies in a recycling bin? I don't always put mine out as it's never full, it's been up to two months before (I do separate my cardboard and put that out).

It could be that they are struggling with how the bin system works. And now the bin men won't take it they are stuck in a virus circle.

I myself was struggling with bin issues. I contacted environmental health/bin people and explained my situation in my case they gave me an extra bin.

Contacting environmental health seems a good idea.

@Svara They are a family of 4 and their bins are full CONSTANTLY! Before they rolled out the blue bags all sorts of recycling could go in the blue bins. Butter tubs, milk cartons, pizza boxes, glass jars which could be pasta sauces, jams etc. Cans of coke, beers, the list is obviously endless. I’m assuming it’s attracted flies because at the bottom there is obviously left over bits of food in something or another I always clean out everything I put in our bins for this reason but they don’t strike me as the kind of people who would do the same.

@Puppypower21 I could understand this but the bin men have left four tags on their bins now with ‘paper and cardboard to be put in blue bag’ ticked on it (I know this because 8 weeks a go we also didn’t understand what the blue bag was for and had a red tag but sorted it immediately). I don’t know how they can make it more obvious what they need to do at this point.

I get that they’ve probably fell in to a vicious cycle and now they don’t want to sort it out because it’s full of maggots and flies but they really should have thought about that 8 weeks a go and sorted it out there and then like we did. It comes down to sheer laziness I think, and to leave it on the pavement too for 3 days so everybody has to walk past it, it’s gross.

I do think I’ll be calling environmental health,

@Carwo The blue bag is like a huge rubble sack so it’s not plastic, we just keep ours in the shed and take the cardboard out to it at the end of the day!

I forgot to mention, I was getting my son out of the car the day the bin was supposed to be collected and my neighbours came out too. I heard as they checked the red tag. The guy said ‘well here’s some more cardboard for you’ and threw the red tag in the blue bin, I’m telling you it’s down to pure laziness and the fact they don’t seem to give a damn.

They sound worse than our neighbours. Ours have multiple plastic bags and random containers of cardboard as they seemingly can't get around to picking up a replacement box from the council (or paying for delivery). They have had excess rubbish and recycling left on numerous occasions. Don't seem to understand that boxes can be flattened to fit a smaller space. At least there are no cleanliness issues though!

I haven’t room in my shed, it’s full of crap(DH’s tools etc, half are broken but he is going to fix)
I always wash my recycling so no flies in my bin.

I think they can get charged for it. I put our cardboard bin out once and it wasn't collected and it had a sticker on it saying wrong stuff. I checked it and some idiot had walked past and put food in it, we live at the top of a snicket so people walk past my bin. The sticker says something like if it happens again there is like a £100 charge or something.

@BellaTheDarkOverlord - totally off topic, but what is a 'snicket'? What a lovely word! Is it a public pathway or similar?

They're doubtless bloody awful neighbours, but I feel like councils are almost asking for this kind of response sometimes — convoluted systems that vary massively from area to area, with complicated rules and pickup schedules, arbitrary-seeming changes or complete overhauls whenever they fancy it, and punitive charges for people who get it wrong even if through no fault of their own (at one point, we were on a system with one wheely bin plus a lidded box, an open box, and a netted crate, and were once refused collection and threatened with a contaminated recycling fine because a dead leaf had wafted into the open box). It's not surprising if occasionally the less amenable among us end up deciding to stick two fingers up at the council. You as the neighbour shouldn't have to put up with those consequences, of course.

@ChiefWiggumsBoy We call it a snicket. Others call it a ginnel, alleyway, right of way, passage. Links our road to road behind our houses 😁