to expect my rubbish to be collected more often over Xmas?

[sparklyjewlz]

I know the bad weather didn't help but our bins have not been emptied since Dec 16th. AIBU to think the council should have scheduled in a rubbish collection during the holiday period?

Here the collection have not changes during the holiday they came when they were supposed to. Have you got those plastic whelliebins and are they overflowing? I know our council does not emty the overflowing ones.

Our wheeie bins were full two weeks ago. I now have bags and bags of extra rubbish. I'm a bit that one household generates so much tbh.

I would give a call to the coucil switchboard and ask if they are planning to come and collect and why it was left so long.

Oh just another question, have you just recently gone from bags to wheelie bins? We had a 3 weeks gap in collection when we did but things are settled now (although most people seem unhappy with the new system it seems to work really well for us).

I think it is no bad thing that you are starting to think about how much rubbish as a family you make. Christmas is particularly bad.

We are also a family of 5 - we have fortnightly wheelie bin collections (rubbish one week recycling the next) - and generally it is fine for us. In winter we tend to have less recycling because we burn a lot of our paper/cardboard lighting the woodburner.

Our council did collections over christmas - staggered a bit to accommodate the extra bank holidays - gets back to normal the week after next I think. We weren't too badly affected by the bad weather though.

As a practical suggestion to your current situation - can you not take some of it to the local dump yourself ?

By the way - if you are in Birmingham I heard on the radio they were intending to clear the backlog by the end of tomorrow.

Next collection will be Monday, apparently. We've had wheelie bins for about 18 months, so not recent. We have to sort our rubbish now, which is ok, but it means the recycled stuff won't be collected until next Thursday.

Yes. We did take some to the dump (had a bit of a new year clearout) and I have to say I was v impressed by how organised it all was! Paper, card, landfill was all neatly sorted. I know I have that option. Just a bit annoyed that we pay such high rates and they haven't provided a collection service over a protracted period.

To be honest I am amazed they haven't scheduled a least one regular collection during that period. We always get a revised collection notification a few weeks before Christmas that tell us when the collections will be. I assumed all areas did that. If they genuinely haven't then I think you do have grounds for complaint.

YABU IF they where to keep up a bin collection service over the christmas period especially with the "added bank holidays" they would have had to give a lot of extra pay out for working holidays. Why should bin men have to loose out on their entitlement simply because you want your rubbish taken away?

We are a family of 7 and we had no collection from Monday 20th until January 4th. Meant we were frugal with our rubbish ensured that we didnt just throw out idly. I was satisfied to see we had more recycling than rubbish but there was still a lot as my father and sister had stayed with us over christmas (no bins here just bags - where we lived before they supplied us with a paack of 2 extra bags we could use for the period that was over christmas if you were affected but wouldnt take above the 2 bags and the rubbish bin)

If you want rubbish taken away most councils had days where their household waste sites were open.

All councils places this up on their websites so you can get the information there.

We have a food waste bin that has not been collected since 16th Dec. When we took our "overflow" to the dump we were told to put it in landfill. Disappointing.

"Why should bin men have to loose out on their entitlement simply because you want your rubbish taken away?"

Err... because uncollected rubbish is a health hazard, attracts vermin and because we pay our councils a huge amount of money for, amongst other things, the very basic duty of keeping our towns cleansed?

Hate to tell you but our rubbish was collected as normal and even on the usual days.

Mind you we do pay a high council tax.

I do understand that we are not going to have as many collections as usual....but none in 3 weeks is annoying. There must be a better way of organising it as some councils are managing. Which area are you, Randy?

sparkly SW London.

Actually not sure if our Council Tax is high or not TBH. £166 a month for Band D.

I had normal collections too. Our council introduced bank holidays as normal rubbish collection days over a year ago. Plus they do an amnesty on bin bags for the 1st collection after Xmas so you can put out as much as you want.

No YANBU - our bin day is Monday - both bank holidays - rubbish collected as normal

Ours was collected as normal over Christmas - on the usual day even when it was a bank holiday. We generally have one week "normal" wheelie bin and next week recylcling and garden waste and over Christmas we had two weeks of "normal" collections instead.

Still not sure how we have so much rubbish still but that is definitely our fault rather than the council

We had heavy snow followed by ice which meant ours weren't collected for I think two weeks. Not especially pleasant especially given the two week recycling collection but then again I wouldn't particularly like to see a two tonne lorry sliding down my little side street towards my house or the binmen to put themselves at risk over a few binbags, tbh. I think they worked this bank holiday, though. Where would the money have come from to pay overtime to the binmen, btw?

Ours were collected at the regular times over Christmas. One single collection was missed due to the snow a week or so befire Christmas but, as my bin is never more than half full, that wasn't a problem for me.

Our black bag rubbish is only collected fortnightly anyway (recycling and food waste weekly). We missed a collection last month due to the snow, both the fact that they couldn't get the lorry up our road and that the binmen also work the gritter lorries so they couldn't be doing both things at once. So our black bags weren't collected for 4 weeks. We are a family of 5 and didn't quite fill our wheelie bin. We had a lot of recycling (wrapping paper and packaging) and food waste (I had the whole family here for Christmas Day so a lot of veg peelings!) though.

What I just can't understand is the working practices that have been allowed to develop.

If you work in a shop, you don't down tools between 1 and 2, or say I'm not coming in on a Saturday or Sunday.

Likewise, over Christmas, people produce (rightly or wrongly - but that's another debate) more waste and so refuse collectors should work harder - doing more rounds - at that time.

In my last workplace the nature of the work was such that there were lean times of year and very busy ones. Anyone joining the firm was informed of this in the clearest terms. People inevitably moaned about having to work over Christmas, but that was the job.

Furthermore (on a roll here!) in the private sector, if you return to work and see a big pile of stuff in your in-tray or whatever, you up the speed to try to get a handle on it. Not so our bin men - who do the same rounds at the same speed. After Christmas they take about a month to "catch up" and return to collecting on the official day.

we have fortnightly recycling and domestic rubbish and 1 recycling one was missed due to the snow/ice so by the time it was collected there was 4 weeks worth of recycling (we were allowed to put extra bags of recycling beside the bin to be collected). All other collections were as normal.