Woudl this be dreadful bin fraud and get us all in trouble?

[BinFullOfAshes]

They are introducing a charge to empty our garden waste bins next month.

A whole £30 per year. Actually a stealthy way of increasing council tax but whatever.

They've just sent all the bumf through and it says that for £15 a year you can get an extra bin collected from your house, you don't have to buy an extra bin, just register it to your address.

My parents and sister all live up the road. Would it be terriby criminal of us (me and my sister), do you think, to add two extra bins to my parents address, wheel our brown bins up the road and back every two weeks in the summer, and save ourselves £15 a year?

AIBU?

#firstworldproblems

[CloudsAndTrees]

YANBU.

They have done this in my area too. I won't be paying the extra for garden waste as I have a find that works in refuse collection who takes stuff to work for me. We have to pay extra if we want to put out more rubbish than they say we are allowed as well.

I put rubbish in supermarket carrier bags and put it in a public bin when I take the dog for a walk. It's the same council that sorts it, but there's no way I'm paying even more for rubbish.

[lastSplash]

As you barely use it, can't you just cart the stuff over there and not even pay for the extra bin? All share the £30 a year bin.

[SarahStratton]

The local school collects all my garden waste from me.

[GreenEggsAndNichts]

I don't see anything wrong with it. Your parents would be paying for two bins to be collected from their house. Two bins would be collected. Nothing wrong with that.

I'll give an opposing view on the garden bin subject. When we rented, we didn't have a garden bin. We had a recycle bin and a regular bin. Our regular bin was never full, so we'd just put garden waste in there. It's hardly what the council wants, and no it's not environmentally friendly, but why assume because we have a garden we're keen to pay £60 a year on top of regular taxes. There was no incentive for us to pay money for having a special pickup. We didn't have a car, dropping it off somewhere else wasn't an option.

[LineRunner]

I agree with TempusFuckit.

Why should the gardenless pay for the be-mansioned to have their cuttings collected for free?

Do you hear the people sing.

[BaronessBomburst]

And look at the other plus - wheeling the loaded bin up and down the road will keep you trim and save on gym membership fees.

[SpicyPear]

Well, I can't muster much sympathy as our garden waste service is £65 per year with no extra bin option! I couldn't be bothered with the faff for £15 a year but if it bothers you that much do it. I can't get upset about bin fraud when you're displaying such committment wheeling the bin around

[TempusFuckit]

I guess it would be ethically okay as you are saving the council the cost of collecting from two different addresses.

Not entirely sure about all this stealth tax talk though. It's not a compulsory charge for a start. Plus you could argue that the previous situation, where it was paid for out of general taxes, meant that people without gardens were subsidising people with - and given that people without gardens are probably, as a group, worse off that would make it a regressive tax I think.

Although I may well be talking out of my arse ...

[MadameDefarge]

apologies bin. (narrow eyes) you called me Mimi! are your tiny hands frozen also?

[NoelHeadbands]

Makes sense, I would.

You'd have to be very very careful that the Bin police didn't catch you in the act though. Those Bin Squad bastards can be ruthless.

[FredFredGeorge]

Maybe your Mum and Dad could buy a dozen extra bins, then charge all your neighbours 20 quid for collection and start a little waste disposal business of their own.

[BinFullOfAshes]

Nah, Mimi, I meant I was being boring

Yes, it's £30 per household for the first bin, £15 for extra bins. I reckon I can give my bin to my mum and dad and have it back when I need it (which is about six times a year), and then drag it back up the road to be collected for cheaps.

Win/win.

[oldraver]

Our council used to charge £30 a year for garden waste which on top of £1800 did piss me off so I cancelled it after a few years. We now get one free, though I tend to use it only half the year

[LineRunnyEgg]

I guess Councils are rationing services now. (See many other threads.) Loss of government grants are hitting everybody hard. (Council tax revenue is just a fraction of what councils have to spend btw.)

I would pay the money for an optional doorstep collection. At the moment I home compost, but my composting bin is full! I would pay £30 a year for a collection as long as it went for composting. I expect some people on here pay more. It's not much over a year.

[thekidsrule]

our green bin is still free

its a great idea (big garden,dont drive)

i would very much miss the service if they got rid,but wold be prepared to pay if they started charging,hope they dont though

op pay the extra

[cocoachannel]

I would happily pay £30 for garden waste to be picked up. We all schlep to the tip.

[UniS]

If you wish to drag a bin up n down the street I don;t see a problem with it. the bin will be collected from the registered address, the waste doesn't HAVE to have come from that address.

Where we live now garden waste is collected fortnightly free, at our old house it was collected ONLY in council approved decomposable bags that were sold for something like a pound a bag. so the more you used the more you paid.

[defineme]

I think it would make you look like stingy twats in front of the neighbours.

[WhereDoAllTheCalculatorsGo]

do they collect food waste in the brown bin op?

[RhinestoneCowgirl]

Erm we just pay the £30 for our green bin.

Our neighbour also uses our bin but then he cuts back back hedges and mows lawn in front of our house as well ad his own.

[marquesas]

I don't understand - you pay an extra £30 but your parents would only pay £15 but they live in the same street. Do you mean that your parents will pay their own £30 and you will pay £15 on top of that? If that's the case surely neighbours could get together and pay £45 between two houses instead of £60 which doesn't seem to have been very well thought out.

Have I got that right?

[MadameDefarge]

not ponderous. pondering. just saying.

[nagynolonger]

People here have been paying for garden waste bins for years.

We chose not to bother because we already compost, burn or council tip our garden rubbish.

I would just pay up if I wanted a bin. I couldn't be bothered with dragging a wheelie bin up and down the road.

[BinFullOfAshes]

They pick it up at the moment. For 'free' (paid for out of the council tax).

That's the point. If this was a new thing, I'd be happy to pay. But it's not. They're taking away the collection unless you stump up extra for it. I just think we can use my mum's extra bins (and tbf she will use them when we're not, we just have grass mowings, she does Actual Gardening) and save half the cost.

[LineRunnyEgg]

Out of interest, OP, how do you get rid of your garden waste at the moment?