to be a bit pissed off that after all the cuts, £250,000,000 has been 'found' for weekly bin collections?

[Annpan88]

Correct me if I'm wrong but after all these cuts to services and people losing their jobs, I believe the government has decided to make changes to the minor Inconvenience that is fornightly bin collections?

Yes, it is a bit of a pain in the arse but I don't see how its the most important thing in thw world and I'm guessing people are pretty use to it.

I just wonder if people are feeling like me, AIBU?

It's not a human right.

Rubbish collection has never been mentioned anywhere, ever, or any declaration of human rights.

They're a bit more concerned with not forcing children to join armies etc.

Seriously... how many of you put the 'right' to weekly bin collection above, for instance, a carer's right to some respite?

Better not tell you just how little of your thousands of council tax goes on bin collection then rycooler.

Don't tell me, you're one of those people that wants a rebate when their bins aren't collected because of snow?

YANBU
It will only encourage more waste!
since our rubbish has been collected every 2 weeks, we have cut down on what we throw out, we recycle more, buy items with less packaging, re-use bags, boxes, rinse out jam jars and bottles for the school art room, give egg boxes to the farm shop etc etc. It is an expensive step in the wrong direction!

I pay over £2,600 per annum (and that's not even the top band :() for my council tax, but I think that what we pay our council tax for is a lot more than just rubbish collections.

If they can save money (and land fill) by going to fortnightly collections for general waste and thereby have more resources for more important priorities (education, respite care, social services to name just a few) then I am happy for them to do so.

Waste collection is a relatively small part of a council's budget compared to social care, but obviously it is more visible.

If you take a town of, say, 250,000 people, the council might save £150k a year by going to an alternate weekly collection but it wouldn't even make a decent sized dent in the budget for running a respite care facility for ten youngsters with disabilities.

Not to mention that unless it's a unitary authority it's different councils with different budgets and possibly different political leanings running the waste collection versus the respite facility

Yet Line it can be the difference between closed and open.

Or, as for one family I worked with, be enough to avoid them spending 6 months in one room in a horrible emergency block with their 2 kids and baby born half way through (their LL ceased to pay his mortgage, bailiffs turfed them out), a period that lost him his night job due to inability to sleep.

Back then and where we were a house cost way less than the savings, and I would much prefer my piddly contribution to be towards something like that than a bin emptied twice as often as I need it.

Peachy Absolutely agree - just looking at the economics.

Actually it's the entirety of waste collection and disposal that adds up to big bucks and could save councils a lot of money. Would love to see the savings go to provide social care for the vulnerable.

And if fucking manufacturers could engage in waste reduction in the first place ...

I wonder if those countries where it's common to have communal bins for each block/street/area have less packaging around food etc?

I know it would put me off buying overpackaged stuff that we didn't definately need if I had to lug it down the hill to a big bin!

(Not suggesting we switch to this system)

Here's a view from the other side....

I work for my district council, in the waste and recycling department. I can honestly tell you that with the exception of some who point blank refuse to recycle (including one genius who said recycling without a licence was illegal and he was allergic to sorting his rubbish), the overwhelming majority of people are pleased with their bi-weekly grey bin collections. They get a weekly collection, it's just that one week their recycling goes and the next week their waste bin gets collected.

Because of this scheme, my district has been able to recycle well over 50% of waste, a figure that is rising every year. And we have no plans to change back to a weekly grey bin collection, no matter what ridiculous financial incentives are wrongly thrown at this.

Pickles is a moron, and anyone with a brain knows it.

I am very glad to see that the majority of this thread has been full of sensible comments (there will always be the odd strange contributor!).

P.S. I think in our district only about 12% of the council tax you pay is actually kept by the district council in its entirety (rather than specifically the waste department), the rest being distributed to the county council for the upkeep of them and essential services, such as police etc. The waste collection itself costs you personally about £1 a week (can't remember the exact figure, but it's well under £2 a week anyway!

Hope that helps anyone thinking of having a rant about paying shitloads of council tax!

Have to say I have a huge hatred of the maggot things. Our food bin is a very good design and sealed very well so I assume it would be quite maggot and rat proof. I freeze my food waste in the garage freezer and it gets put out the night before collection so it doesnt hang around being smelly ( I realise this wouldn't be possible for a lot of people).

Those who are getting bags ripped open by vermin, are they bin bags or wheelies and do they have food waste in them ?. I can see that fortnightly collections where the general waste/landfill bin has food in it could be gruesome

Our landfill bin is collected fortnightly and has food and nappies in, I haven't really noticed a problem to be honest. If it's hot it's a bit whiffy when you open it, but since it takes all of 30 seconds to chuck the next bag in and close it again I can't see the issue!

YANBU. Weekly collections of the general waste bin aren't needed here (Wrexham) imo. The council collect food waste and other recycling weekly but general waste and garden waste on alternate weeks. And they collect on Bank Holidays.

Dh and I were discussing this (oh, our glamorous life ) and we couldn't remember the last time that we completely filled our blue bin. We've got one child still in nappies as well.

I'd like to see the money used for other things, or at least used to allow other councils to upgrade some of their recycling facilities to include things like food waste collection.

Laura; do you work for a Labour run council by any chance?

Rycooler, no, I am, unfortunately, very deeply entrenched in Tory country. Why?

Laura, average across all councils is around 70 quid per household per year, so your per week quoted price is about right.

Our stupid council decided to ask residents if they thought too much money was spent on waste collection, only they gave them a figure as a whole. Guess what the man in the street says if you ask them if 3.5 million pounds spent on waste collection is too much? The figure per household per week is something people can relate to.

When people think it's too much I wonder how much per week they'd be willing to pay for a collection each week? People seem to have no hesitation paying out quite a bit for the wheely bin washout man.

District I live in gets 10.5% of council tax paid with the rest going to the fire, police and county

The counties' and unitaries' biggest costs are social care for adults and children.

Oh lord, how do we tell idiot Pickles that he's got it wrong? He's heard a minority of whingers whose views coincide with his own and translated it into 'what the people want'.

How do we tell him that - I hope I'm right here - that if theres a spare £250 million there are much better uses for it.

Laura; it's your opinion of Eric Pickles - most people working for a Tory council would be supportive of Tory policy. obviously there are always exceptions and councils change hands sometimes. Plus it was Labour who introduced fortnightly collections after 120 years of happy weekly ones - you just sounded very loyal to this unpopular Labour policy.

Laura's team could do their very best, and yet it's the elected members of the council who could change policy mid-stream, or after a change of administration.

And I suspect Tory councils who have gone fortnightly are precisely the ones which Pickles is wishing to seduce with his cash?

er, rycooler, if you've read this thread, the alternating week collection schemes are actually pretty popular. The ones that have a wheelie bin for garden waste I'd guess are hugely popular in leafy, lawny Torytown.

Thanks for backing me up tyler80. :)

It's really mad how much some people think they pay for their collections. The problem is, there are some very shortsighted individuals who are incapable of seeing 'the bigger picture'. Council tax goes towards paying for quite a number of services, it's just that some people think the only thing they get is a bin collection.

This leads to frequent idiotic outbursts of "I pay your wages!" over the telephone.