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.

YABU. DH is a caretaker on a housing estate. It's bad enough when they miss a collection. The residents never shut the bins properly, so the foxes get in. DH then has to clean up the mess.

My local council have hit on a very good solution.
They did do fortnightly collections for a while, but the sheer number of complaints made them think again.
Instead we are given a set number of "official" waste bags. They're bright blue. Anything not in one of those bags isn't collected.
There aren't enough of the bags to put out two every week, but if you only put one out a week you have some spare. If you produce more rubbish then you have to go and buy more blue bags from the council.
I think it's a very sensible system. Recycling is collected weekly too, no more black boxes overflowing with plastic that blows away!
Monthly collections would be nothing but grim. Even if you're very efficient you've got to have somewhere to store a months worth of waste that wont be got at by vermin. Hard enough to do if you've got a decent garden, but impossible if you live in a cramped flat.

I'm in Scotland - we have
Green bin -general waste -collected monthly
Blue bin - recycling -collected fortnightly.
Black box - glass/small electrical -fortnightly
Grey bin - food - weekly.
Special nappy bags - not sure how often collected but at least fortnightly
Total uproar when it started but it actually works quite well.

We have a fly tipping problem where I live, street bins are filled with household waste.
so god knows what monthly bin collections would do.
It works for you and your family, well done. To be honest it would be mostly ok for us. But I know for many families it wouldn't work.

An area close to me has communal bins as the streets are very narrow for bin lorries. It's awful, attracts fly tipping and takes up several parking spaces as people just leave stuff once they're full. No way are they hygienic.

Wouldn't work for us.
We have:
Food waste - goes to the council for composting, collected weekly
Recycling - fortnightly collection, sometimes I can squash it down and only put it out monthly.
Garden waste - collected fortnightly during set months of the year. We pay extra for this service.
General waste - collected fortnightly. Must not contain anything recyclable or compostable or collection can be refused.

We use the bins completely as they are intended, and whilst the general waste bin often has space remaining, it certainly couldn't push to a month's worth. We had almost three weeks between general waste collections at Xmas/NY, and many collections were being refused because the lid couldn't close completely

Marmite I think that composting food waste at home is better, as it doesn't have to be transported and it doesn't take up physical landfill space. I think it also produces less greenhouse gases if you compost it at home rather than in landfill. [I am not an expert!]

They don't offer a food wastage collection where I live. I live in a small flat, so it's just not practical, we recycle, our communal bins get ridiculously full. Even with recycling we still have to empty our bin at least once a week, the nappies alone would stink our flat out. We use a mix of cloth nappies and disposables. It's great that you have the resource to do all this, but not everyone does.

They don't offer a food wastage collection where I live. I live in a small flat, so it's just not practical, we recycle, our communal bins get ridiculously full. Even with recycling we still have to empty our bin at least once a week, the nappies alone would stink our flat out. We use a mix of cloth nappies and disposables. It's great that you have the resource to do all this, but not everyone does.

I'm in Scotland too curlycat, that was our old system but they decided it was too difficult. They made our big Green wheelie bins for all recycling- except glass- then introduced a much smaller wheelie for general waste. Blue boxes for glass still exist but we use so little glass that we don't bother having one

My local council are really picky about what you can put in the green bin - so much of the plastic is not allowed anymore because the company with the recycling contract won't take it. They also don't do glass recycling anymore; you have to drive it to the tip or a bottle bank (there is only 1 in the town and it is always full).

I don't have a garden, so where is my compostable waste going? My kitchen is tiny (the bin lives in a cupboard because there is no floor space for it), so where is the food caddy going?

I do my best to recycle and I seem to spend an age taking batteries, lightbulbs, water filters, tins and glass to various recycling points (none of them in the same place). I suspect that many of my neighbours just bung it in the black bin though. Moving to monthly collections will simply increase the number of people that fly tip. I know a council who has just changed the rules at their tip so that you can no longer take ceramics and rubble and tiles there - you have to pay the council to come and collect it for you. All that's happened is that fly tipping has gone through the roof instead.

Our recycling bin is full to bursting and we have a fortnightly collection. Our rubbish bin is never full. But a monthly collection would be unhygienic and nasty - think of the smells of nappies etc in the summer. We have no food collection, so food waste goes in our normal bin too.

We live in Germany where recycling is really big but we still have weekly bin collections, it's just that the bins tend to be smaller (we have an 80L) and you pay for each collection, so you can choose not to put your bin out if it's not full. The problem with the monthly plan is that there's absolutely no flexibility - if we really wanted here we could have a 160L bin and have it emptied every week, we'd just have to pay for it. When we were in the UK we had newborn twins in nappies and we'd have happily paid for a bigger bin but the council would only give you a bigger bin if they judged you to be in need of one. The girl in the council offices most helpfully made me aware that you could get reusable nappies, I think this was when the kids were about 12 weeks old and I was getting my sleep in 5 45 minute chunks a night.

In Switzerland you pay for the waste disposal through the bin bags. It's about £3, the same as a bin collection in Germany. I think in the countryside it usually works OK, people have wheelie bins or bin stores but in town (and especially in Basel where the filthy, tightfisted buggers just voted down a plan to get communal on-street bins) you get these festering piles of overfilled bags, there's rats, it's horrible. One thing I will say for the Swiss, they take paper recycling arrangement to the level of an art form. Once a month these beautifully folded, razor-sharp rectangular bales of newspapers appear on the pavement and you take out your own ones, two Migros paper bags overstuffed with things hanging out the sides and you know, in your heart, that your neighbours are looking on and silently judging you for your slatternly ways.

It would only work with sufficient recycling options. Where I am we have a black bin, fortnight and recycling bin, also fortnightly.
No glass is recycled or additional boxes for this, no food caddys, no garden waste, but you can pay £40 a year for your green bin for garden waste.
I have to drive to the bottle bank as the village one was removed.
The tip is only open 4 days a week.
Our bin for a family of 4 is a slimline bin.

But you go ahead with your wonderful plan of monthly collections

We have fortnightly collections and they work. I have a small landfill bin, but my recycling is always full. I've missed putting both out and it was such a stress, but doable. There are four adults and one teenage living in the house. We don't have much waste, as we mostly eat from scratch. There is a recycling centre in a supermarket close to me, which is very handy if I miss putting the bins out (though they are on my drive and easily accessible for the refuse collectors).

I think supermarkets should reduce more waste, and all of them should provide better recycling facilities - I'm lucky where I live as the two main supermarkets do have good facilities.

I think once a month is a tough call for lots of families, however it could be used for parts of the area where there is sheltered housing.

Yabu.

Not everyone has aspirations to live the good life and not everyone has the same choices as you.

You want a monthly collection then put your bin out monthly and pat yourself on the back for a job well done.

We are a family of 4. I cook from scratch. We recycle paper and card and glass and tins. That's all our council collect.

Our black bin (general waste) is always overflowing on a fortnightly collection. We jump in it to squash it down. And we still have to do a tip run once a fortnight.

In my current bin bag waiting to go out is plastic bottles, some wet nappies, bits of last nights tea, some wet kitchen roll, a couple of teabags probably, yoghurt pots. Just general waste.

We have no space in our garden for a compost heap and no food waste collection. No plastics are recycled.

What do you suggest I do with it?

This evoking 'Europe' is a bit of a lie - I've lived in 5 European countries other than the UK, 3 recently, and in none of them is rubbish handled in quite such a poor manner. Where I am now, they're only just implementing recycling, and bins are taken every day but Sunday, alternately recycling and rubbish. In other countries I've had massive hopper bins at the end of the road taken every day, or similarly, communal recycling bins at the bottom of the road/block of flats.

It's only the UK where I've had 5 different types of bins outside and inside my house, and that's what makes it so tough - we're already in tiny houses, so having to store our own rubbish for up to a month is crazy.

Mine are past nappies, but in a flat that just wouldn't bare thinking about!

We have a trial in our area for 4 weekly collections happening at the moment, all I see is in increase in fly tipping. It's bloody everywhere, the council will call it a success though and roll it out throughout the rest of the borough (stubborn and to them failure is not an option)

We also have fortnightly recycling, garden waste and food waste and nappies collected 2 weekly (but only up to the age of 2 as all children should be out of nappies by then )

It only works for a few and not the vast majority.

We live rurally and seeing black bin bags dumped everywhere saddens and worries me.

Not read the thread, but if monthly collections are implemented this will lead to both (a) an increase in fly tipping (b) even more members of the public just dumping their unsaleable shite on the charity that I volunteer for

As a family of six we already struggle with fortnightly collections despite separating everything properly. All that happens is that anything left over either gets snuck into our elderly neighbours bins or goes to the tip.
I really don't think moving to monthly collection would make people go the way of the op as most people just don't have the time or inclination to be composting etc.
My dm lives in a more deprived area and since the bins have moved to fortnightly every street corner is filled with rubbish, food waste, bags of clothes everything - I visited yesterday and we were having this very same conversation. Most people out there will not suddenly decide to become an eco-warrior. They will simply fly tip and cause more mess for council,workers to sort out. Fly tipping is a massive problem anyway and it's only getting worse. Monthly bin collections would just exacerbate this.
And in response to your every other week their green bins are bursting I really have to say: GET A LIFE OP!!

Who has it fortnightly?
That sounds bad enough!
We have ours weekly. We don't have a front garden so no wheelie bins just bin bags.

We'd struggled - we occasionally do with fortnightly.

Family of five. We recycle everything we can - however ever so often - when we've had family staying over pushing numbers in house up - or at Christmas with polystyrene packaging - we get too much waste and it had to be stored and fester while we wait to get some space back. we don't drive - so can't just go to the tip - or like some others take it to work to dump.

This area already has issue with fly tipping and rats - why would we want more of that?

Do you have a car op?

We are a family of 4. I cook from scratch. We recycle paper and card and glass and tins. That's all our council collect.

If your council takes paper, card, glass and tins, then most of the real bulk filling up your black bin is probably plastic (can't believe they don't take plastic). So my suggestion would be instead of doing your fortnightly trip to the tip, separate out your plastics and do a run to the nearest recycle bank instead. No skin off your nose, and a huge help to the environment

I always found it odd that each house has the same maximum. Surely a family of say 6 (as we were as kids) with a few pets would be expected to have more rubbish than a single person?

I think most people could do more with their recycling and food waste. But there are many issues which haven't been covered in your OP.