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?

I still dont get how you can recycle and still gave masses of waste.

Our problem is, that despite giving us massive recycle rubbish wheelie bins, the council doesn't really accept that much

We can't put plastic milk bottles in there - wrong type of plastic
Yoghurt and butter tubs - wrong kind of plastic
Orange juice cartons - wrong kind of cardboard
Magazines - wrong kind of paper

We have a whole booklet somewhere of the cans and cannots, the cannots list is extensive

We do have a wheelie bin which is collected for composting but can only put food leftovers in there - no grass cuttings or anything like that (although we have a compost bin anyway)

We recycle everything we can, but we are restricted with what we can put in there, so we still end up with a fair amount of general waste

there is 5 of us, plus pets and we are only allowed a tiny general waste bin (fits about 3 bags) which is collected every 2 weeks, we do struggle to get all our general waste in there

Only in the UK would anyone put up with this.

We have to BUY our rubbish wheelie bins in this area of town.

Don't they "put up with it" in Germany too?

Um, no, and certainly don't put up with such high council tax bills.

I was under the impression that they had to recycle virtually everything.

And I imagine they pay for council type services somehow. It's never free.

We have to BUY our rubbish wheelie bins in this area of town

How much do they charge?

In Germany you get a rebate if you don't have much rubbish, and if you take your bottles and packets to the supermarket for recycling yourself, you post them in a high tech machine and it credits you with real money. Kids do a lot of this as they earn their sweetie money that way. Some actually go around picking up other people's rubbish and take it to the recycling points.

You have to appeal to people on their own terms if you want to change behaviour.

They pay by throw rather than having services cut and cut and still paying the same rate of council tax, which is overall much lower than in the UK.

That's our problem too Stinklebell. Our recycling collections aren't even council-operated, it's a charity. We have one wheelie bin which holds two black bags, collected fortnightly, and a small recycling box into which we can put newspaper (which we don't read) and glass. No garden waste bin/compost box despite having a small garden, anything over and above two bags of rubbish a fortnight and glass jars has to be taken to the tip. Okay, it's not insurmountable but on top of caring for a disabled DH and working full-time, managing the rubbish is more of a job than it should need to be.

I am not sure it is legal for them to charge you for a wheelie bin. It is illegal to charge for ordinary collection of domestic waste.

GrandadGrumps, your suggestion that litter genuinely generated while out and about should be saved for home is, frankly, ridiculous and I genuinely fail to see what is 'proper' about saving an empty soda can until I get home, and I would think that 99.9% people would agree with me on this one.

Well I must be in the 0.1% then because I usually take my rubbish home with me. In fact, there have been occasions I have taken other people's rubbish home with me if I have been out and about somewhere nice and seen some dropped litter.

Well I must be in the 0.1% then because I usually take my rubbish home with me. In fact, there have been occasions I have taken other people's rubbish home with me if I have been out and about somewhere nice and seen some dropped litter

Why not throw it in a bin nearby?

I take stuff home to recycle
including from weekends away.

What are public bins for, if not the empty coke cans/crisp packets etc then?

Not on your own 5foot5, I remember all the anti-litter messages, "Keep the countryside beautiful - Take your litter home with you". Not difficult to do.

Some people feel entitled to chuck pee-filled plastic bottles, nappies, packets, cans, whatever they want - for other people to clear up. They're disgusting.

What are public bins for, if not the empty coke cans/crisp packets etc then?

Apparently you should take them home and dispose of them according to some posters

My friend lives in Finland and it sounds like they have a similar scheme to Germany. She said homeless people will often double as litter pickets as they can get some cash by taking it to recycling points in shops.

RATS, cockroaches etc, etc.

If normally responsible but increasingly financially strapped families cannot dispose of all their rubbish legally, sooner or later the levels of flytipping will increase. It'd be darn stoooopid to assume otherwise.

My council has also placed limits on the amounts of rubbish to thrown out every fortnight, and I'm left wondering if the only beneficiaries of this policy in the long term will be pest controllers. I don't think it will be council tax payers as I expect bills will go up to pay for the increased fly tipping clean ups and pest control invoices.

Our binmen refuse to empty our wheelie bin (fortnightly collection (Oops sorry, every other week bollocks ) just because we didnt wheel it right onto the curbside. It is up against the wall on the front grass verge, so on council land, about max 5 paces from where they are prepared to empty it. Overnight we had 60 mph winds so we wanted to tuck it out of the way so it didnt blow over and have litter flying around all over the village.

When we called the council they said, "it wasnt put outside your property" we sent them a photo of where it is. The woman on the phone who took our call rang back to say she had spoken to the binmen on our round and she told them what we had done. So they know only too well where our bin is, and why?

This means we have a month's worth of rubbish uncollected (we recycle a lot as we have a very good scheme in our area, they take pretty much everything). Also we compost all uncooked food waste like peelings, skins, etc. So thankfully our rubbish pile isnt too bad, but what are we paying our extortionate council tax for???

Short of writing a written complaint to our council, there is nothing we can do. We dont want to complain formally as, even though we think they are being jobsworth and a bit PA just deliberately ignoring our bin, I do think they have an awful job, so we are grateful when they do collect!

what if you have a neighbour who sneaks bags in to your bin? I just don't see how you can get round this happening - and it happens when they're limited to wheelie bins(which surely already dictate the amount you can put in and shut the lid?)

I don't think the rule of 3 bin bags is unusual. I live in Canada and last year they brought in a similar rule here. We are also allowed 3 bags of rubbish every two weeks, green food waste and blue recycling get collected weekly.

However here every household is given 10 'excess' labels to use when you need them, also after Christmas/New year is a garbage 'amnesty' where you can put out any amount.

We also have spring cleaning/household waste/large items picked up every month or so (old sofas etc).

In the summer grass clippings get picked up every other week also.

Surely anything that encourages people to have less rubbish (and therefore more green waste/recycling) is a good thing?

nicely I am all for recycling, but if the Council wants to reduce black bin waste then they also HAVE to improve recycling. We are fortnightly but alternate black (general) and green (recycling). Grass and tree clippings go fortnightly in the summer as well.

Our Council is very specific that they will recycle only plastics 1. 2, and 4. Supermarkets are appallingly bad at stating which kind of plastic it is - it just says "plastic - may be recyclable, check local recycling". Wow. Helpful. So I don't know whether or not I can... So I don't. Although no doubt I could recycle a lot more if it was properly labelled.

We have normal size bins but people still use ours as an overflow for some reason.