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.

OP monthly for recycling and black bin would work for me. We have me and 2 kids in my house (neither in nappies).
I'd have to be a bit more squashy with my dry recycling, but otherwise it would be fine.

I would not be happy with anything less than weekly food bin though.

I only have patio out the back so very little garden waste, so I think monthly garden waste collection would be a problem for some.

I must say, I was initially dead against the food waste bins, but came to love the thing - the main bin was a lot more pleasant when it didn't have the dinner scrapings, not to mention, the foxes were much more likely to leave the dustbins alone.

Monthly is an awful idea especially in summer when bins can fill with maggots. We're a family of 4 with a baby in nappies and we struggle with a fornightly collections - it's not sanitary

Fortnightly sounds bad enough. However good you are at not collecting food waste, other people will not be so good so the policy will encourage Fly tipping and probably rats.

As far as food packaging is concerned my understanding (from the "love food hate waste" campaign) is that it is designed to make food last longer and therefore causes less food waste and therefore reduces green house gas emissions. Therefore avoiding anything in plastic is not necessarily beneficial for the environment.

Marmite I did try recycling plastic. The only problem is the nearest point that accepts it is 5 miles away and not somewhere we drive past. The nearest tip is 2 miles away and we pass a few times a week. The tip doesn't have separate space for plastic. So we were doing a 10 mile round trip, plus finding a place to store it in the meantime.

It was easier just to put it in the general bin then take any overspill once a fortnight to the place 2 miles away.

If I had a place closer I would recycle plastic. As it does take up a lot of space plus the environmental impact too.

Where I live they collect the food waste weekly but everything else is fortnightly. Week 1 they take black rubbish bin and plastic recycling (white bag). Week 2 they take glass/cans (green box), cardboard (green bag), and paper (other green bag).

Luckily we have quite a big front garden for all these containers. The recycling bin men don't put the bags back where they came from so we regularly lose one or the other, and when you apply for a new one from the council some other bugger will steal it and leave you their old dirty one.

The paper is collected at 7am and the cardboard at 2pm, so both get very wet, soggy and heavy.

They are halving the size of our black bin from April. As it's always full at the end of a fortnight that will be interesting. We have still got rubbish from Christmas because you can't put extra bags out.

The local tips will not take bags of rubbish. Our nearest one no longer takes tiles or ceramics so we have an 11 mile drive to go to the one that does.

As a consequence, our back alley regularly suffers from fly tipping from people who don't even live here. Our local FB page had pictures yesterday of the lastest pile of rubbish left. Someone left a double mattress up against my neighbour's garage.

A family with a detached house, a big garden to put bins outside but far from the house to hide the smell, a car to pop at the tip when needed will be fine.

Another family in a small flat, no outdoor space, no car will not find it that easy.

Is it such a great economy to reduce the rate of rubbish collections, when fly tipping increase to compensate? Since my local tips are charging (or increased the charges) for businesses to dump waste, you can see rubbish from building sites at the very least weekly on the back roads. A few years ago, there were hardly any.

I wouldn't keep a bin full more than a day in my home, what are people supposed to do when they haven't got an outdoor space? Ridiculous system.

It works fine. I was horrified when they brought it in in my county but it works. It does.

Recycling every week.
Nappies every week.
Bins once a month.
Anything big to the tip.

We are a family of 5 in a large detached house with 3 dogs and 2 horses. Plenty of mess and waste here, but it really makes you think about what you throw away, what you bring into the house in the first place, and recycling everything.

It really does work. I'd never go back to weekly, and I think monthly should be compulsory.

I think op has disappeared. Probably to check if her composting is coming along or have a peep in her neighbours green bins to see what level they're at.

We're a family of 4, we recycle, compost and avoid buying over packaged stuff and anything in plastic

Bully for you. We are 6, with 2 in nappies. Am I supposed to have dirty nappies in the bin by my front door for a MONTH?
Sod off.

In the other countries you cite OP, people largely cook from scratch. So not much packaging. Here people eat a lot of ready meals, so much more packaging. Thus more rubbish needs to be collected.

In Germany, people remove excess packaging in the supermarket and leave it there for them to deal with.

Perhaps people should start doing this here, or at the very least take all the used packaging back to the shop the following week?

Maybe we should move to communal sites that are collected more often, like they have in Spain, but then people would still moan about having to go to the bin at the end of the street, and of course there would be those that are physically unable to do so.

Even if you cook from scratch, a lot of fruit and veg are sold with too much packaging, like that:

(all the supermarkets are guilty of that).

It wouldn't be a bad idea to reduce this a little bit. Using laser instead of sticky labels is not a bad idea either .

www.ocado.com/productImages/230/23049011_0_640x640.jpg?identifier=6ac8261aed5736a33a2e21f77682f676

cdn.aldi-digital.co.uk/Bananas-A.jpg?o=PqJJIlUCm4YvYlZSE77wytKg4cEj&V=ZWL7

I live in France and we have 2 normal bin collections per week plus one recycling collection per week! For every individual house, not communal bins either. People here generally seem much less bothered about recycling than the UK. Not sure about the 'every other European country does it better' bit if the OP at all.

At least you can choose to buy loose fruit and veg. You can't choose to buy ready made meals with less than 2 layers of packing.

Our bin collection consists of a black bin for 'general' waste then a green bin for cardboard and garden waste and a green tub for paper and tin. A lot of stuff that is recyclable ends up in our black bin unfortunately- food waste/plastics/tetra packs etc. Our council would seriously need to up their game with what they will accept before I could even fathom fewer bin collections. We also have a fly-tipping problem in this area.

And walking (or travelling in a car as we are rural) is not an option- my partner is disabled with mobility issues and is not going to waste his limited energy levels on travelling to a household waste area. It would be a very disabilist policy to be honest.

we're a family of 4, and get our non-recyclables collected 3 weekly.
it's manageable - although I find it annoying that a lot of our waste is plastic trays for meat, fish, pots for things like crème fraiche, which I think other councils offer to recycle at the doorstep. we did alright when the DC were in nappies as well.

Problem is that there's absolutely no slack in the system, so anytime even the tiniest bit of extra waste is generated - a party, visitors, doing DIY, having something delivered that comes in lots of plastic sheeting - we have to go to the tip. it bothers me that the onus appears solely on me to reduce my landfill, and not on companies to consider their packaging, nor on the council to look at maximising what can be recycled at the doorstep.

Our only food waste is cuttings (pepper ends, onion skin etc). All food is eaten/leftovers for lunch, frozen etc. I'd be shocked if the scrapings from the odd plate filled a carrier bag in a fortnight.

However I find it almost impossible to avoid the packaging and as such our recycling is always overflowing.

Wine bottles, cereal.boxes, tins (chopped toms etc), it all adds up. More they would be even worse.

Our green bin whilst barely containing any food waste does have nappies, San pro, floor sweeping, non recyclables etc. So it's never normally full fortnightly but no way would it last a month!

If this is about the same council that was on the front page of the Mail today, then they were collecting nappies weekly, also food waste.

And their recycling provision seemed decent, so I can't really see what people were actually putting in their black bin to fill it so quickly.

Let's face it, our councils are absolutely broke, I'd prefer them to cut bin collections than elderly social care or children's services.

Bully for you. We are 6, with 2 in nappies. Am I supposed to have dirty nappies in the bin by my front door for a MONTH?
Sod off

Councils who do this provide sacks for weekly nappy collections.

countries you cite OP, people largely cook from scratch. So not much packaging. Here people eat a lot of ready meals, so much more packaging. Thus more rubbish needs to be collected.

Exactly. People don't need to worry about getting rid of waste, they just merrily send it off to landfill. So they buy overpackaged tat.
When you think about what you'll do with the waste, you find you buy fewer ready meals and cook more from scratch.

I cook a lot from scratch. When I have a flare up and am ill, I and my family survive on ready meals. So no, bin collection would make no difference. We need to get manufacturers to cut back on packaging.

How does "nappies every week, bins once a month" actually work, WellErr? Am I missing something, or does your county actually do a special collection for nappy bins?
And how is that more economical than simply collecting the main bins weekly?

Maybe a tax on any product that uses more than 1 layer of packaging?
So pizzas, some are just wrapped in plastic shrink wrap, others are wrapped in that plus a cardboard box. The latter pay a tax.

Rats round us - people who dump rubbish - we need weekly here

I'd want a bin for nappies. Sacks aren't secure enough.