Well, am I?! HONEY, WHO SHRUNK THE WHEELIE BIN?! I'm overheating and the f*****s have stolen my wheelie bin!!!

[PimpMyWheelieBin]

NC.

Got home today to find my large wheelie bin has shrunk!!! In its place is a miniature version!!! Toy Town!!! No warning, no contact from the local council, nothing. I am not pleased.

Now locally, with DCs using nappies, or if you have a large family, then you are entitled to the large bin. We qualify on the nappy front.

A few months ago, the local council sent out forms to everyone to check current status. I diligently filled in the form and sent it back. The waste management team came round and exchanged a few neighbours' (now only with older DCs) large wheelie bins for the small ones, but as expected they left our large one. All seemed well.

Until today, when a swap of ours was done out of the blue.

We are not huge consumers, and all our garden waste and recycling goes into the separate bins without fail. With a family, and pets, and DCs using nappies, the large wheelie bin is full for the fortnightly collections. We live rurally, there is no nearby household waste site, and of course we'd never, ever flytip. With the best will in the world, we couldn't manage with a smaller bin. If we could, we would.

The best, or worst, part of this scenario - and the bit that has me flapping around doing forehead-slapping impressions of a sweaty Victor Meldrew in a flowery dress and wedge-heeled sandals - follows:

Our old large wheelie bin was nearly half full, mainly of bagged nappies. These nappies have been taken out and transferred over to the new miniature wheelie bin, leaving it pretty full already. The next collection is over a week away.

What sort of useless article does that?! Comes to do a bin swap, sees the old one is half full of nappies, and carries on anyway?! Did this fooly mcfoolface not stop to think for one minute, 'oh, this must be a mistake, these people have the nappy entitlement to a large bin, I'd better leave it and go back to base, or ring, and check. But no. Instead he, (for it must be a he), took the time and trouble to decant all the nappies over to the new miniature bin. He didn't even knock on our door to check, (because someone was working at home all day).

I am not one of those 'I pay my council tax!' kind of people, and I usually really really appreciate the jobs people do for us, that keep our communities and lives ticking over. But this lack of any contact from the local council, and the lack of initiative from the person who did the swap, beggars belief!!!

I know it's hot, but is the weather that hot that even our wheelie bins are f'ing shrinking?!

It is these straws that break our hardworking backs. 😣

Ifeelsoextraordinary it's infuriating here isn't it! We live on a little narrow mews street with no gardens (one or two back gardens but none at all at the front) so all the bins just sit on the street - and so everybody pretty much shares as the bins get clustered in certain spots rather than outside each house. Which wasn't too bad until several of the houses/flats started being used for short term lets who seem to generate way more rubbish and don't bother their arses recycling.

Ok we don't have nappies in our bin (and when daughter was in nappies they were washable), but I only put my bin out on average every 3-4 weeks. Could probably go longer if I squished it down, but thats 3 adults and a dog. Recycling goes out every 1-2 weeks, as I have a lot of card, paper etc for various reasons.

Now I know you say you;'ve not the time to use washable, but actually there'#s little more to it than shoving in the machine and hanging to dry. No shopping for more. No taking bin bags out to the wheelie bin. I'd suggest pop along to your local nappy library and look and see what might work for you, and borrow a kit if you can. If you JUST used them when at home, you'd save more than half the waste and loads of ££.

Also look at cutting what comes into the house, composting, etc.

This is what I miss about when we lived in Norway. No bins, just a little one in the kitchen, that every day Dh would take out on the way to work, to this little metal tube thing sticking out of the ground that we had a little key for and you just put the bag in there. It dropped down into some underground rubbish cave thing and once a week a big lorry came, opened up a bigger tube thingy and sucked it all out.

God, that sounds like bliss, Bears

There's no recycling bin for my block of flats when I moved in, so I was told by the council that I should purchase a bin at great expense for all and sundry to use...!

No wonder no one in the block recycles - we literally can't. And the council wonders why recycling rates are low.

I asked our council for an extra recycling bin as I could fill one and a half easily and leave my normal bin half empty. They wanted to charge me £50.
Needless to say my normal bin now gets filled.

Thanks for all the replies. Wheelie interesting, especially Bear's Norwegian cave system! I bet they do snow with less fuss than us too! Will try to reply more later, but just a quick update for now:

Wheelie sorry to have to tell you, but last night's clandestine bin hunt was curtailed by a fractious DC and flat batteries, so no news on that front yet. All pretty good neighbours nearby, except for one anally retentive, self righteous ( you can see I like them!) household who haven't been very pleasant over the years and there's a longterm mutual ignoring situation going on. I'm not accusing them, not least because I've no proof and my money is still on the council, but they have been sneaky in other ways and do seem just the sorts to covert our big bin. Their bin was taken away a few months ago as their DCs are nearly grown up.

I have phoned the council this morning, but I could only leave my details for someone to get back to me.

That's funny @AvocadosBeforeMortgages, I manage blocks of flats in London and they LOVE to give out recycling bins down here - to the extent that they just give you extra ones which you have no room for. There's a lack of joined up thinking on this, I feel...

We have a large bin and it took me ages to realise none of our neighbours do, I have no idea why though as that’s just us what we’d wear when we moved in. But we were a bit miffed the other day to find a sticker on our bin about using the food waste bucket! We hav3 never had one and have very little food waster as we have A) waste disposal B) two homes so are not always here to create food waste anyway I guess I need to call the council and discuss my lifestyle choices or ge5 another sticker

@LBOC This is a London borough (evidently a different one!)

I complained to the council and was told to pay up or shut up (in a more wordy fashion). Even an email to a local councillor got me nowhere.

It's mad.

I need to call the council and discuss my lifestyle choices

I'm feeling lucky not to have ever had 'a sticker' now, Tara, because we've never used the food waste bin in the years we've had it! We just don't waste food. We buy just what we need, and any unusable tiny bits and bobs can be composted or whatever.

To sticker, if it goes beyond an occasional encouragement, seems intrusive like the PP and her home visit from a council worker to check she had a DC in nappies. I would think nappies in the bin would make it pretty obvious.

Wheelie bin detentions next.

No call back from the local council yet, and I assume they're knocking off for the day around now.

You don’t live in Wyre by any chance? My cousin was moaning at me about their bins!

LBOCS2 I'm also in Croydon and don't want all these fucking bins.

I live in a maisonette. Next to more maisonettes. We have a little alley between the blocks. Between the 2 upstairs and 2 downstairs we are now going to find room for 13 bins

Should have said, now going to have to find room. There is no room. I don't want to live in a tip.

I'm embarrassed to say I had to look up where Wyre is, heat, so no, not there!

wedge-heeled sandals

You lost me there.

Also you’re a bit try hard to be funny OP.

I have two big bins as when they were introduced here I had three, yes three children still in nappies.
They are all teens now and I still have my big bins.

Maybe I should sell one ?

I live up a private road and the council refuse to give us recycling bins despite us having masses of room to store them. We have one large bins which is collected weekly. It is always almost empty when it goes out as we recycle assiduously then have to cart it all to the recycling centre. I can swap a large bin for a small one but i live in Scotland which might not be convenient!

Reading these makes me more grateful for our council, waste bins go every week plus when my bin was swallowed by the machine they replaced it the next day plus they have started putting addresses on them

Talk of all these bin forests springing up around our homes has made me think back to growing up. Never mind the price of butter, what about the price of bins?

Now, we locally have 3 large 240l bins for rubbish, recycling and garden waste, (all collected fortnightly), plus a tiny bin for food waste, (collected weekly). For the majority - small/average sized families and ones not using nappies - the rubbish bin is 140l, (collected fortnightly).

Yet when I was growing up, I remember we had just one bin. It was the round metal alley cat type. The bin man used to come once a week, sling it up onto his shoulder, usually whistling as he went, carry it all the way from the back garden, tip it into the bin lorry, and return it to the back garden. He would also take anything extra left alongside the bin. The only thing my parents had to worry about was catching him to give him a small tip at Christmas to show their appreciation.

I'm all for recycling, as previously mentioned, but comparing and contrasting the service then and now it doesn't seem like progress.

Perhaps we need to re-employ all the miners and steelworkers and copy Norway's example.

If your bin is damaged here, ilove, you have to pay for it to be replaced, even if it's the lorry or collectors who do the damage. We found the insert in the recycling bin, (fits in the top, for putting paper and card in), was broken. I did suspect that it had been swapped by the nasty neighbour...

The speed they got your new bin back to you is impressive too. I suspect everything takes weeks here, even getting a call back...

And weekly rubbish bin collections, ilove? I thought everyone was down to fortnightly now. We even lost our local recycling centres, where you could leave overspill recycling. Local businesses used them too. Nothing now for quite a drive.

There's talk now we're going to loose our garden waste bins, or perhaps have to pay extra for them.

It all seems designed to discourage recycling and encourage the scourge of fly tipping.

*lose not loose, sorry.

WalkingDeadFangirl, How do you propose someone recycles dirty nappies?