Monthly bin collections is a FAB idea

[jdoe8]

There is outrage over this on LBC. But I think its a really good idea, I remember the same outrage when they went to fortnightly.

We're a family of 4, we recycle, compost and avoid buying over packaged stuff and anything in plastic (especially veg and fruit!). As a result the bin only goes out once a month and often isn't full. If you don't have a garden then a weekly food collection pickup is available.

I see other people with only one or two people in their house and every other week their green wheelie is bursting. I know from times they have used ours that they put alot of food waste and packaging in the bin. We are rather wasteful in this country compared to just about every other European county.

[minipie]

As so many pp have said the issue is not volume but hygiene.

It would be utterly utterly grim if food waste and nappies are left for a month in a plastic bin especially in warm weather.

We recycle, avoid food waste and don't fill our bin very quickly (even with nappies - we don't change DD that often ). But the rubbish we do put in it really couldn't hang around.

In theory I like the idea of "metered" waste to encourage more recycling and less wasteful behaviour but think it will lead to problems with fly tipping.

Actually I think the best solution is more regulation of packaging directed at manufacturers and sellers. I buy an aubergine from a supermarket and it comes in its own mini plastic bag... WHY fgs?

[BarbedBloom]

This would have been awful where I used to live. No bins there, only bags and even after a week animals were ripping them overnight. Plus some people would be putting their bags in your bit so then it was full when you went to put yours out.

Here it would also be awful as there is so much packaging that they don't take for recycling that has to go in the bin. Only plastic that is collected is bottles. Apparently they are improving this next year.

It does rely on a reduction in packaging from companies as well as being able to recycle a lot more

[minipie]

Foureyes I agree about Amazon overpackaging but at least they mostly seem to use card and paper. (Although to be fair I haven't bought anything delicate so maybe there is more plastic and polystyrene used for delicate stuff).

[KayTee87]

Well aren't you just fabulous op.

[GinIsIn]

Congratulations on your virtuous life, OP! Glad that it works for you. The reality is that it simply won't work for everyone. We live in a small terraced house. Rubbish is collected weekly, recycling every 2 weeks. You get 1 small box for recycling. We are a couple, although about to be joined by a baby in the next few weeks, with a dog, and whilst we could probably cope with the bins being 2 weekly if they gave us a decent sized recycling bin, there really isn't any way we could produce less rubbish. What are the alternatives - keep the overflow on the pavement to be shredded by rats and foxes? Keep it in our back garden then trail a month's worth of stinking rubbish through our house as there's no garden access?

I've requested extra recycling boxes from the council as We are very careful to recycle everything, and even with 4 of them, we would still run out of space in the regular bin if it went longer than 2 weeks. Plus in a street of closely packed terraced houses and flats, the smell in summar would be unbearable!

[myfavouritecolourispurple]

There are only 3 of us and it wouldn't work for us. We are not particularly profligate with our waste and recycle everything we can, have a compost bin as well for the food waste and another bin for garden waste but the general rubbish bin still fills up.

What I would like to see is a national recycling policy where anything that can be recycled is collected at the roadside and everyone has the same policy. At the moment, some areas don't recycle tetrapaks and others do. Some recycle plastic bags, ours only recycle plastic bottles. We can't recycle our yogurt pots etc. So we probably could have a lot less general waste if our council recycled more. At one point I used to collect my yogurt and margarine pots and take them into work to recycle but I don't work there anymore and that council stopped recycling them anyway.

[GinIsIn]

Summar? Summer, obviously. Stupid iPhone!

[Helenluvsrob]

Never mind monthly bins we can't cope with fortnighly recycling! ]

We are clearly A1 recyclers... or possily get too much from amazon but we have way too much paper /card and bottle type stuff .

I need to start leaving the cereal packs in aldi as I saw someone else did the other day and just taking them home in the bags!

[FizzBombBathTime]

Oooooh yes please, I would love to live amongst dirty nappies for a month. The smell of rotting baby shite... Delightful.

[Oblomov17]

OP is deluded and ignorant if she thinks that most people can cope with monthly. The hygenie of keeping rubbish in a bin for a month, in the heat and sun of summer? The stink?
I still object to the move the fortnightly. Both our bin and our recycling is full every fortnight.

[CountUpTo3]

We live abroad and have rubbish collected twice-weekly. But taxed bin-bags are obligatory and cost £1.60 per bag for 35 litres, i.e. smaller than a normal black bag, so only rubbish goes in that can't be disposed of in any other way.

The council has put recycling points in walking distance of every house for metal, glass, PET, clothes, paper, batteries and food waste. Cardboard and 'junk' is collected once a month. There's a special collection for Christmas trees in January...

I understand that councils aren't being properly funded in the UK, but they have all of the equipment, it just costs fuel and wages to have refuse-collectors out every day. If it were me, I'd feel it was a huge backwards step to have festering bins of rubbish out for a whole month in the summer. And unspeakably gross for the poor buggers who have to collect it!

[JanuaryMoods]

There would be a revolution if they tried that in these parts.

[TheKitchenWitch]

MONTHLY? Pfff. This is how it's done:
edition.cnn.com/2016/07/04/us/lauren-singer-zero-waste-blogger-plastic/

[Caken]

Good idea OP, because it's easy and fine for you we should all have it 🙄.

[Sundance01]

This would work as long as manufacturers stop over packaging food and all other items, a different system for nappies and food waste is developed. Everyone has large enough kitchens and back gardens to store recycling/composting items to reuse.

We have back gardens but no access for our bins so they all have to sit on our road - no front gardens either. Larger bins would be awful. As they would for people who have yards instead of gardens. The smell in the summer from fortnightly collections can be dreadful - monthly sounds awful. Bins are over flowing now in the vast majority of homes.

Plus we live in an area with a high transient population. Moving house always generate extra rubbish - its inevitable and we struggle now with rubbish left by people moving in and out.

The complaints made when we moved to fortnightly collections have not been proved unfounded - they are real and cause massive inconvenience and nuisance every day now. Moving to monthly may work in certain areas where everyone has capacity to deal with this but for many people this is simply not possible.

I would definitely prefer larger communal bins collected more regularly but looking at our street - there is nowhere for them to go.

[StealthPolarBear]

Burnt bum if the bin was blown over then surely the stuff would have spilt out anyway? Regardless of whether the lid would close or not

[Ncbecauseitshard]

I lived in a first floor flat, in a converted house with bag not wheelie bin collection. It was a good job collection was weekly, due to foxes we couldn't put bags out until the morning of collection. A months worth stacking up indoors would have been awful.

[MycatsaPirate]

It may be fab for you but not everyone else.

In our street we have:

A lady who has had a stroke and is bedbound. She requires pads and these fill her bin after a week - she now has TWO bins just to accomodate them after pressure from her family.

A 91 year old lady who struggles to get her recycling into the bin in her front garden - 9/10 one of us goes and does it for her. Not everyone has a neighbour to help them out.

We recycle everything we can but a weekly collection would be much better. By the time the bin is emptied, it's refilled almost immediately from the stuff stacked in the house.

I order a lot online because of my disability which means packaging, boxes and as much as I flat pack all boxes and burst all the bubble wrap stuff it still means that we have a lot of recycling.

The black bin is fine except for over Christmas when we had no collection for four weeks due to bank holidays. That was a nightmare. I can't imagine how we'd cope if we had 4 weekly collections all the time.

The fly tipping would escalate imo.

[cuphat]

We have fortnightly collections and they've also recently swapped all the normal sized black bins for ones almost half the size. We're a family of four and we're managing fine (we recycle everything we can), though we have had to make use of the council's nappy disposal scheme (where they pick up nappies on the weeks without a black bin collection).

[cuphat]

We have bags for recycling which works well as there's no limit. The black bin is for general waste and we have a green one for garden waste.

[AnchorDownDeepBreath]

We still get weekly; the bin is rammed before three days has passed. Recycling is every two weeks but only what fits in the bag. Monthly wouldn't work, there'd be rubbish everywhere and the poor people who live near the bin store...

[calilark]

3 of us in our house. Our council don't and will not do a food collection so food waste has to go in the bin. We already have a full compost bin. Our recycling bin is often full to bursting every fortnight. We could probably managed fortnight black bin collections but no way could we manage monthly.

As an aside, we are both working full time and are reliant on supermarket delivery - so packaging-wise, we are totally at their mercy. There is not a local greengrocer, it's 25 mins to drive to where the nearest market is, so low packaging isn't really an option. Supermarkets and retailers need to tackle their food packaging and that would make a difference

[OdinsLoveChild]

My council has just reduced the number of items you can put in the recycling bin. They have to go back in the general waste bin because the company responsible for collecting the recycling no longer recycle certain items.
If they went to monthly collections it would be dreadful.

We can no longer put food waste in the green/garden waste bin. Only grass clippings and plant trimmings are permitted now. No weeds, no tree trimmings/cuttings, no roots, no fruit, no veg, no meat, no bones. All of these were permitted before.
In the dry recycling we can no longer put broken glass, pottery, metal (other than cans), no glossy magazines or glossy cards/leaflets, no envelopes due to sticky glue, no corrugated cardboard no painted paper/cards (kids paintings).
Its so complicated now everything ends up in the general bin except newspapers
I just wish they took everything and then sorted it themselves.

[Oldraver]

We have weekly recycling and food waste and fortnightly landfill bin and garden waste (alternating)

I am religious about food not going in the landfill (grey bin), have a bin clean and bag and we still get fucking maggots...a monthly one I would combust

When my Mum lived in Spain they had communal big bins likem businesses have here and they were collected every other day

[MarmiteDoesYouGood]

I know from times they have used ours that they put alot of food waste

Is composting food waste yourself any better than putting it in a landfill? What's the difference?