To be annoyed with council's '3 black bin bag' rule?

[sallymanda]

Now, don't get me wrong, I do recycle and -9 times out of 10- usually manage to put out only one bin bag out a fortnight.

Yesterday, a leaflet came from council stating that no household should put out more than 3 black sacks a fortnight (for those that don't know, black sacks=non-recyclables).

They say that people can have an exemption from this but there are so many problems with this in practicality:

1, How will bin men know?

2, What about houses of multiple occupation? Flats etc.

3, How much detail must be given to have an exemption? What if a person suffers from an illness that means they cannot control bladder/bowels, do they have to tell the council such personal information? Or, as this is mumsnet, have to put out nappies? Which, after all, can't be recycled?

I am also at the tone of the leaflet- you'd swear that people were committing murder not putting out their rubbish!!

I mean people PAY council tax- it's not as if it's a free collection service.

All this will mean is rubbish lying around the streets.

I'm annoyed (as you can probably guess!) AIBU?

Our council are quite sensible. We've had fortnightly collections for a couple of years and, thankfully, our eldest became continent in the daytime at around the same time. Our youngest is still incontinent, though and, at 7, his nappies are huge, so if a spring clean coincides with school holidays, we have to squash everything down in the wheelie bin. If I had both of them still using nappies or pads, I'd probably request a biological waste collection.

What is sensible about the way they collect is that they don't normally collect on Mondays, so there's only a couple of times a year when collections are shifted by bank/public holidays. Monday is when street cleaning and public bin emptying appears to be done, so that is what's sacrificed on a week with a bank holiday.

Yes, that would be a bloody waste of petrol.

they don't sell exotic food from abroad either :)

"claraschu, fine you're entitled to your opinion on that and if a person has time on their hands and are able, they should recycle, however, people don't pay council tax for the council to pass moral judgement on their behaviour."

I don't understand how it takes time to recycle.

I have 3 bins and chuck stuff in the appropriate one when I want to throw it out. The only extra time is rinsing out food containers, which might take 1-2 minutes of my day, on a bad day.

The council (or maybe the government) passes moral judgement on my behaviour any time I want to litter, drive while drunk, take my kids on an educational visit to Disneyland during term time, play Schoenberg at top volume at 2 AM, or murder someone. Why shouldn't it pass moral judgement on my desire to turn the earth into a storage place for black bin bags?

I don't understand how it takes time to recycle.

Me neither.

As I see it, I have some rubbish in my hand. Recycling it is simply a matter of which bin I put it in, not whether I put it in a bin at all. It takes the same time regardless of which bin it goes it.

It's all rubbish, it just goes in different colour bins.

If we have a clear out or have something bulky then we take it to the tip rather than have it sat round waiting to be collected. When at the tip I invariably come back with something anyway so I class that as recycling too!!

3 bags a fortnight should be ample TBH, we don't fill our wheelie bin & we've got 4 adults in our house.....

Another one who doesn't understand the time issue.
I do find it frustrating how different each LA is - we moved from somewhere which recycled loads of stuff: blue wheelie bin for recyclables (glass, paper & card, plastic, clothing, metal, batteries), green for other rubbish & if you had a garden, brown for garden waste. Recycling & regular rubbish went out on alternate weeks.
We now live in a LA where they only recycle paper, card & glass. Regular rubbish goes out weekly, recycling fortnightly. Even if I separate plastic & metal there is nowhere to take it.
We have our own compost heap, thankfully because over an acre of grass cuttings soon mounts up.
I've designed houses in many LAs and each one seems to have a different requirement for us to accommodate (I try to make recycling provision flexible knowing how much they like to change how they do stuff)
Most councils have a rule that over 6 people in a household can get a larger bin/allowance BUT very few advertise the fact and you are supposed to somehow guess.

I've just written to my pm about this who has written to the local authority. I was under the impression Eric pickles was trying to stop this restriction of waste collections, and the localism bill was going to assist. At the same time (as I am not bloody minded just realistic) I have accepted the councils offer of someone coming to sift through the rubbish and they did, which was quite helpful jn terms of what can be recycled, and being given extra bins for recycling, but mortifying as they can't come in the house so did it on my driveway.

Eric Pickles was talking out of his arse on waste collections. Collection and disposal arrangements, contracts and costs are matters for each local authority (or groups of local authorities who might club together).

Some have in-house arrangements for collection, some have private contractors, and each chooses what it will pay to collect at the website for recycling - whatever suits their demographic, their built environment and their budget.

Regarding disposal methods, that varies widely too. Energy/heat-from-waste (incineration) is better than landfill, but it's a costly and long-term venture for a local authority to set up the initial infrastructure.

Not 'at the website' ffs. At the kerbside!

I don't think they'd get away with a limit down here, so many houses are HMOs, house shares and so many families rent rooms that it'd be ridiculous to try keep it to 3 a week.

We recycle in my household but even then there is a lot of rubbish. I would compost as we have a bin but the only way to access it is through a gauntlet of months of dog poo which is deemed unnecessary to pick up by their owners due to its location round the side and back of the shed

We have been given a half size wheelie bin to put in general waste. This is only collected every 2 weeks. I recycle a lot, paper, cardboard, batteries, food, plastic etc

I cannot fit two weeks of rubbish in a half size wheelie bin. I have been throwing my rubbish in public bins for years - the tip is too far away to keep taking it there and I cannot let it build up in the house as there is no space and it smells

We have a half sized wheelie bin for general rubbish which is collected every 2 weeks - the lid has to be fully closed and no extra bags, it annoys me

There are 5 people in my house, plus dog, cat, guinea pig, hamster so have the associated dirty bedding, cat litter, etc.

I do recycle, religiously, we have a compost bin, etc but sometimes with the best will in the world I have extra rubbish and that's without the odd weeks when I've cleared out the loft or something so I end up at the tip

we have had fortnightly collections for past 15 years we have one general wheelie bin ( if more than 4 people you can get a second) we have one recycling bin for paper card plastic and tins tetrapaks, and a smaller glass recycling bin which is collected once a month the lid must be closedthough a tiny gap would be ok no extra bags, food waste bin collected weekly but we compost

personally I think for a family of 4 that is more than adequate even with nappies we manage easily

if your day is christmas it is normally collected a day or two later

You cannot put your household rubbish in street litter bins round here. The council go through any bags and try to trace where they have come from as the bins are for loose items only. Our local newsagent was just fined for putting some of their waste in the street bin

Easy, just shred anything with personal details on so untraceable

There is no way to stick to this for large families (roll on family taxes and so on). Are you guys aware you can order a larger wheely bin in a lot of areas? Then you will tend to just be allowed to use what you use.

You cannot put your household rubbish in street litter bins round here. The council go through any bags and try to trace where they have come from as the bins are for loose items only. Our local newsagent was just fined for putting some of their waste in the street bin

Easy, just shred anything with personal details on so untraceable

So flytipping's fine as long as you're not caught? It's an offence to use public litter bins to dispose of domestic waste. It's a separate offence to dispose of commercial waste in any way other than organising its proper disposal - and that doesn't include sneaking it into a public litter-bin, a neighbour's bin or even your own domestic bin.

"GrandadGrumps*

Crime? Really? no wonder there's so much crime if there are petty rules such as this: it's ALL rubbish for goodness sake. As long as it is in A bin why does it matter?

And they can't-won't trace it, anyway. Councils rooting around public bins wtf is the world coming to?!

And I speak as somebody who hates it when people drop litter.

See murder, blackmail, assault, drink driving-those are things that are 'crimes'. Not putting a carrier bag full of sweet wrappers in a public bin.

They certainly can and do trace it. It causes real problems because public litter bins are meant for small items of litter, they're not big enough or emptied often enough to allow for the whole neighbourhood to dump their household and business waste in them - and it costs a lot more for the council to empty a public litter bin than collect the rubbish in your normal household collection.

It costs me £30 pm to have the small amount of waste from my home office collected. I could easily put it in with the household rubbish because I produce about half a bin of recyclables and less than a bag or non-recyclables per month.

Maggots in closed trash cans are easily solved. Put a handful of mothballs in the bottom of the bin.

Our black sack waste gets incinerated. So I can't really see an extra bag being collected as worse then driving to the tip with it.