Aibu to wheel my bin to council and empty it out?

[pumpkinsweetie]

Blue bin wasn't collected yesterday as a member of the public dropped one small piece of paper in it so they wouldn't take it as only plastics, cans etc can be accepted from that bin.

Although angry I was polite when I phoned and asked if I emptied said contaminant would they do a re shedule.

I was basically told tough and to keep it until next collection and apparently keep watch on bin day for litter droppers as it's my responsibility.

So do I camp out front from 6am bin day keeping watch or would I be unreasonable to walk the bin down to the offices under the cover of darkness and dump the recycling they refuse to take?

I don't own a car and I pay £115 in council tax a month!

They live in the garden and they do look a picture tbh

We also have a grey food bin indoors that is to be decanted into brown bin when full. A job I loathe as maggots frequent in the outdoor food bin

My brother works for the department in the council that deals with recycling. He works in the office. I can assure you he is very underpaid and very overworked. He is verbally abused on a daily basis by residents who have lost all perspective. Sometimes they apologise, usually not.

There are some unkind people on this thread.

pumpkinsweetiw I think you and I are neighbours (near the seaside?) as we have the same bins taking over our house and garden, on local FB pages the brown maggot bin is the one that gets to everyone. For me its the red bag, where am I meant to keep that thing its the size of a tent!

Theres a new bin czar in town who tightened the rules a couple of weeks ago but has now admitted he went to far, so apparantley it should get a bit better, so they say (whoever 'they' are )

OneStepCloser Me too! Am guessing your council starts with a 'T'!

Waves to ibsjob87 taps nose, the planes no longer fly.

I love my council's system. They dole out special binbags for recycling, paper, plastics, tetrapaks, tins and glass all goes in there, I leave it out on the street the night before bin day tied up so no passing numpties can dump contraband in there, and it gets sorted out by magic at the depot.
Food waste goes in a special fox proof box.
We get one slimline wheely bin of landfill waste collected per week. Crucially, all three collections are done on the same morning every week.

If only the handle didn't keep falling off my good waste box it would be a perfect system. Whenever I walk down a road where they've got an open recycling box system, with filthy boxes full of random crap (sometimes literally) I wonder how the hell anyone thought it was a good idea.

Yes seaside town, planes no longer fly but seagulls do

Fwiw I wasn't rude to anyone on the phone as I know it isn't their personal fault that are council are awful. All I asked is that my bin could be emptied and was told no and I left the conversation at that!

I have however got them sending me two more red bags so I have room for all my cereal boxes and such like

Oh yes and said council begins with a T!

This happened to an elderly couple I know. The binmen wouldn't take their garden waste bin because it had carrot tops in it. They're kitchen waste apparently, even if they are from carrots he grew in his garden

I do understand the frustration, OP, but the collectors aren't to know that your recycling doesn't contain things it shouldn't all the way down to the bottom. They have a very short period of time in which to do their collections, they have to make a judgement based on what they can see in the top of the bin.

And as pointed out by someone else on the thread, it costs under £1 a week to make waste and recycling collections. Quoting "what do I pay my council tax for?" (not saying you personally said this OP) to the poor sod who has to listen to crap from arsey members of the public all day just makes you sound daft.

I think in our town (no planes, but seagulls and begins with T) the binmen are just as fed up Tidy to be fair to them they are only doing what theyve been told, but there was no notice to this new regime and in this very hot weather people were frustrated.

The thing is we have all of this recycling we have four bins but the rubbish is actually being put into the same part of the lorry as the new lorries will not be in action until later in the year.

But I get your point, its not the people who make these rules who take the flack, always the way init.

Waves to pumpkin and OneStep, hello, neighbours!
Am enjoying these tales of logic and reason from other parts, but to us it's like listening to a fairy tale!
My kitchen is 8ft by 6ft. I can only fit a little food bin in it - the brown maggot farm has to sit outside, and I literally have nowhere to put the genius non-sealable bag for paper except outside and they won't take it if it's too wet so we don't bother, we just put bottles and cans in the right box - which isn't ideal but we have no choice.
Seriously though, I do think that recycling runs the risk of seriously decreasing with these methods - councils have to make it easier but seem determined to make it harder then blame everyone else for it.
I have often wondered if it would be easier to have big recycling vessels at the end of every street/block of flats instead?

Waves hello to fellow residents of crappy council

Yes it is who's fault who lies at the top and I guess the bin men and the people over the phone get all the flak.

I personally blame the idiot that came up with this nonsense. I guess he or she is rich beyond their wildest dreams and is laughing at us all from their mansion

ChippyMinton Spare a thought for the over-worked, underpaid council staff who have enough to do without responding to this kind of petty whinging

in a lot of places, binmen (and it is always men) are heavily unionised and amongst the most overpaid in relation to qualifications and experience best paid council workers about. Some get in excess of £45,000 pa once you take into account all that out of hours and weekend and Christmas working they just have to do to catch up with all those days its too windy/rainy/cold to do their jobs.

yabu
but I like the idea
our bins sometimes get used by passersby's if I get hold of the one dropping dog poop I will rip their head off and they sometimes use the wrong bin which will then not get emptied and get a great big red badge.

See, on first reading, pumpkin your initial post does sound a teensy bit unreasonable.
But now I know the full story and I feel your pain, I don't think it is unreasonable in the slightest. I say we should all do it in fact.
BTW, did you say we are getting ANOTHER bin next year?
WTF is that for?! KitKat wrappers only, but only on alternate Thursdays? With anyone accidentally putting a Twix in being punished by being thrown to the seagulls??

Urgh, hate all this stupid faffing about. Where I live at the moment, we have a recycling bin and a general waste bin. Perfect.

I used to have one of these crazy multiple bin "systems" and it was chaos.

I recycle much more now.

We have very reasonable bin men - they give the benefit of the doubt and would remove a single, solitary item.

Agree with poster who suggested local paper.

Our bin men are lovely. They don't mind if there is a small piece of something else in the recycling (we have green box for glass/tins, cardboard sack, paper sack, plastic sack, food bin & garden bin).

DH recently left some old doors on our front garden so that they were near the car for him to take to the tip. This happened to be on bin day. The bin men knocked on our door & asked if we wanted them taken away 'for a beer' We agreed quite happily to this, a fiver saved a lot of time & effort

Bag it up and take it to your local tip. Job done.

Small piece of paper accidentally ended up in the wrong bin, causing it to not be collected...

Well - what about wine bottle labels? How does that work then?

We have so many fucking bins. I know lots of people that refuse to recycle because it's ridiculous and takes up hours of time. I know they'd do it if it were a landfill wheely bin and recycling wheely bin method.
It would also limit the amount of litter the recycling people leave. If something drops out of the box they're emptying or they chuck it into the lorry and it misses, they just leave it on the floor! So much rubbish flying about when they've left!

Fucking hate our system.

Everywhere should be: two wheely bins, one for landfill and one for recycling. One food waste bin. Done.

Not another bin, in the Seagull town

ibsjon and pumpkin what do you do with your glass bottles? Are we allowed to put them in one of the bins, as at the moment I am carting them to the supermarket recycling as I thought they couldnt be put in any of the bins?

DH going to fill the car today with the bins that were not taken and take them to the tip as they both overflowing, he doesnt mind, a trip to the tip use to be a treat when he was little

I completely blame councils (not the council workers answering the phones) for this. i completely support recycling, but councils have seen it as a great excuse to cut costs, by refusing to pick up as much waste, and to fine people etc.

The 'no lids slightly open' rule is a great one. Basically people who actually care have to run round in circles to try and get their rubbish collected again, dropping off the excess at the dump and so on. Meanwhile people who just don't care let their rubbish pile up or dump it elsewhere on the street. Councils act like picking up your rubbish is a favour they are doing to you. Actually, not providing a proper service means everyone suffers because of flytipping and waste in the street. In my area, before they brought in that rule they replaced everyone's bin by a smaller one. Because we have three doorbells on our house (two flats and an old, broken one) we got 3 small bins. Our childminder got one small bin for a household of 5 people and has to take rubbish across the street to her mum's (same size bin for a single person).

If you look into what happens to recycling in many (not all) councils, it is shipped to the third world, and companies there are paid to take it. There are no checks on what happens to it, so if it happens to be worthwhile to recycle it, they do, if not it gets buried or burned...