Bin day - Now once a fortnight

[RibenaMonsoon]

Anyone else have their general waste taken once every 2 weeks?

It used to be once a week, they've changed it to once every 2 weeks and Im really struggling. I've got 3 (yes 3) recycling bins, which for the most part get used to capacity. There's always a little room left. (Myself and DH aren't driving yet so we order a lot from Amazon)

I recycle everything that can possibly be recycled and I've scoured the website to make sure I know what can and can't be recycled.

My issue is that I have 2 young children in nappies. I've tried reusable nappies and I can't find anything that doesn't give them nappy rash. Also excema runs in the family and DS is riddled with it, the reusable nappy irritates it. So those are out of the equation.

I emailed the council to request a bigger waste bin and explain the situation. They have fobbed me off. Offering another recycling bin. Which would leave me with 4 bloody recycling bins!!
The nappies alone fill the general waste bin in a 2 week period.

Is anyone else in a similar boat? What did you do?
AIBU to be really cheesed off that the council have just sent a pointless, unhelpful, generic email back and haven't listened to the problem?

I live in conwy and its every 4 weeks for general waste and then every week for recycling, food waste and nappies. Some months we do ok other months not so great. We are decorating atm and we found out that you can only take 2 bags of general waste to the local recycling centre. Anymore and they can turn you away. So it could be worse op.

I should clarify, her disability means she has a lot of medical waste. Hence all the extra rubbish.

We have a food waste bin ( and caddy for indoors )
Blue sacks, once a fortnight.

Black sacks the other week ,.
Food waste every week
We’re currently allowed 4 black sacks a fortnight , we rarely have that many ( no babies here now )
Glass not collected
We live very rurally , and the bags are frequently attacked by crows or foxes
We now have to take proof of residency to the tip , to prove we live locally ( but the tip is fantastic , really well organised , and the men that work there are super helpful)

Our black bins are taken every 3 weeks - it's a nightmare with 2 children in nappies. My family regularly take rubbish back to theirs to put in their bins.
Recycling is every week but we have 3 little boxes that we have to separate our recycling in to. Rarely a week goes by when I don't struggle to get all the recycling in the boxes.

How many nappies are you using? Your 2yo should be on one overnight and 3-4 per day. Newborns need more but theirs are smaller.

I'm surprised how much extra rubbish you are producing. We average half a bin bag per week as a family of 3 with a 2yo. Admittedly we only have overnight nappies but the rest is recycled.

Week 1 general waste and paper/cardboard recycling.
Week 2 good/garden waste and glass/plastic recycling

And repeat.

Instead of trying to recycle more we all need to reduce. You should see where your recycling actually ends up.

I’m usually not a fan of the competitive environmental-ness on here but I’m a little bit aghast about the amount of waste your family generates, OP. Have you not heard of an Online supermarket shop? Absolutely no need to be doing so many Amazon orders.

And you really need to be thinking about your general waste. As everyone has said, weekly collections really hasn’t been the norm for the vast majority of people so no one really has any sympathy.

Write to your councillor and suggest food collections as well - it’s a nice eco friendly initiative to suggest, as well as bringing down the amount of general waste you have.

Can you track absolutely everything you throw away and recycle for a couple of weeks, OP? That will help you pinpoint where to cut down.

Dangle the nappies over the loo and flush before wrapping up tightly and throwing away - that should help with the smell (and is something you should be doing anyway tbh).

If you get any non-food plastic bags etc (e.g. from your tonnes of amazon orders) then don’t throw them in the bin - start a bag of them to store somewhere and then you can get rid of them / take them to the tip at your leisure - you won’t have to worry about them smelling up the place and might free up space in the bin.

Check your council recycling guidelines again to see if you’re missing anything else you can recycle - for example mine has just allowed plastic food packaging trays if rinsed.

Weekly here but I know it's unusual.

My DM up in Scotland, gets hers emptied every 4 weeks.

I do sympathise. Bins here are really small now but also communal as we live in a flat. No one else recycles at all so bins are full literally the day after collection now. Landlord won't let us put locks on the bins either. I do notice though the amount of stuff that can't be recycled still.

Here it has caused issues at the tip as there are always queues backing out onto the main road and fly tipping is rife. They want to scale back to 4 weekly collections and that does worry me

Alternate weeks (so every fortnight) for green/blue and black bins.
Green (garden and food) goes down to every 4 weeks in the winter.

Been fortnightly here for over five years. You have to go to the tip if needed with rubbish - you'll get used to it.

We're fortnightly on rotation (one week general and garden, next week recycling). But the council will allow one bin liner full of rubbish next to the general bin as long as it's not full of bricks!

You won't get a bigger bin unless there is more than 6 of you in the household also in our area. It's irrelevant how many are in nappies.

How do you have SO much waste that you fill 3 - THREE - recycling bins per fortnight? For two adults, a toddler and a newborn?

Even with ordering Prime, you shouldn’t have that much waste. Rethink what you are consuming.

Lots of plastic food packaging?
Plastic bottles?

Slight aside, but it does tickle me about how every council seems to have different colour coding for their bins - on here, people have now described “green bins” as garden, general waste, and recycling! You’d think it be the sort of thing that would have been easy to standardise, but no, apparently not...

Also mega jealous of those who get glass and food recycled - i’ve got to traipse to the nearest bottle bank every so often to do my walk of shame with all my cider bottles

l've had 2 weekly waste collections for over 20 years. Both up north and in Yorkshire, where l am now.

Thank you to the poster who provided the terracycle link. I didnt know that existed and found loads of things I buy that can be recycled through it. I’m now going to contact my local councillor and see if he knows about it and can get drop off boxes for things set up locally.

Weekly general rubbish here, anybody with children or disabled adults get a bigger bin for rubbish that has nappy’s etc, 1 large paper bin that’s collected 4 weekly , garden and glass can plastic bin collected every fortnight

We also have recycling bins in a car park below our house and you can hear loads of people getting rid of empties as soon as it gets dark

Do you just wrap up nappies with their contents or flush the poo ?

Every 3 weeks for 3 bins- General Waste, Cardboad/Paper, Mixed Recycling. Every 2 weeks for Food/Garden Waste. We are allowed larger recycling bins for free.

We've had 2 weekly collections for years. Our council have 2 bin sizes larger families of 4 or more can have a larger bin, I that an option?

Fortnightly here. If you have two kids in nappies you can request a second bin. Ask your council of they do that

You'd probably be better off getting supermarket deliveries over Amazon ones to cut down packaging. Amazon isn't always cheapest either.

Otherwise I'm not sure how your filling the general waste bin with just nappies if it's the normal sized one. We've had fortnightly collections for about 14 years and have only ever filled the general waste bin if we've forgotten to put the bin out. There's six of and we had two in nappies at one point.