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?

Caffeine free Diet Coke- so that’s all recyclable packaging. Either cans or bottles. That shouldn’t be in your general waste bin.

I squash and recycle all cans. I never said I didn't.

That could be a possibity yes, DH orders a fair bit for the business. We will have to look at that.

It's interesting that there are posters that are in the same boat and others that don't struggle with it at all. I'd love to come round and see what you do to reduce waste. I would of course bring cake.

We have weekly collections. They do collect recycling but only in half the borough .

We take our recycling to the tip or recycling bins ourselves, and sometimes general rubbish to the tip.

We don't have food waste bins. That might be because we are by the sea and the seagulls would have a field day.

I really can't understand how people produce so much waste!

In our house hold there are 2 adults and a 10 year old we barely fill a black bin bag each week - I do understand that we don't have nappies.

We recycle what we can and waste is collected fortnightly.

You need to think about what rubbish you are bringing into the house. a family of 4 is not a big family- nappies or not

I’m wondering if your waste bin is smaller than most. Mine is the same size as my recycling bins- 240 litres. If yours is smaller then it could explain why you’re struggling compared to lots of people on here. I found it tight with two in nappies on a two week collection but we always managed. We’ve got two recycling bins that are nearly always full - mainly because of online shopping and boxes.

We're a family of 4 with two in nappies. My bin is at least half full with nappies by the end of the two weeks. I normally have to take a bag to my parents' bin a mile away as there's only two of them. Our council offer nappy collections but you have to go in to the council offices with birth certificates and proof of address, which seems a bit of a faff just for a few months' worth of collections. Also, there's no bin provided to put them in so you just leaves bags of nappies out on the street which seems a bit gross. The tip by us also now checks any general waste you take there and makes you sort it all if anything has got in that can be recycled.

We’ve been fortnightly since we moved in here in 2006.

It has been fine except for the time when we went away for two days to a wedding (on a Wednesday!!!!!!) and missed the collection. So we ended up with 26 days rubbish to fit in the bin.

Dd was ebf at the time so her nappies were not too unpleasant (and significantly less bad than food waste!) so we had a couple of bin bags of them in the garage with the plan to slowly reduce and replace. It was summer though so not great.

In the end I cracked and drove 5 miles to the nearest tip and got rid. Very bad for the environment (I try to never drive unless necessary) so I felt guilty though.

@MaidenMotherCrone

The troliboxes are a nightmare. My cleaner was spending up to 40 minutes some weeks resorting the recycling into the correct one and going through the general waste to take out more recyclables. It's certainly a much more complicated system than I have at home.

Anyway as a result I've now switched to a private waste collection service. Just one bin for everything, collected once a week and the sorting is done by the contractor at their depot. So much easier and worth every penny. It also looks much better than the ugly random assortment of different bins, boxes and bags which took up much of my frontage.

So many people seem to go to the tip. The non recyclable section is a little too popular at our tip. Everyone just takes the bags of crap they don’t have room for in their bin. So not sure how much less landfill they get as a result of reducing bin collections.

Fortnightly here too. One week it's general waste then next week it's recycling. Only food waste is collected weekly. Been that way for at least five years, maybe more.

Did the council work out your bin capacity requirement when you contacted them? Take a look online. Somewhere there is a calculator where you enter the number of people/bedroom etc and it tells you the amount of bin space you need. If you're below that amount request an extra bin, if you're above that amount you might need to just assess how much waste you generate.

There's only two of us in our house so not much waste. However if we ever have a party of make more waste than normal, I put the excess in our neighbours' bins. Most houses around us are student houses that are empty a lot of the time so there are lots of empty bins going spare. Could you do something like that?

Our collection has been fortnightly for at least five years.

We are still weekly for both recycling and general waste. I am wondering if we will get bigger general waste bins because the recycling gets full, but manageable. Where as our general waste can only hold 3/4 bags and they wont take them if the lid is slightly open, if its even just a little bit open you get a sticker slapped on it.

75% of my bin is pads/nappies during school holidays ( disabled child). We usually fill our recycling bin with big boxes needing to go to the tip. The collectors have been told to check the recycling bin and not take it if it is contaminated. My neighbours didn't get taken because someone walking past on collection day stuck a dog poo bag in it.

Ours has been once a fortnight for a few years now, as well as only being allowed to put 2 black bags out per household on the collection day. I thought we would struggle but we have just learnt to adapt & actually has stopped us buying so much stuff.

As for your nappy issue, our council say that if you have children in nappies and/or a lot of animals, you can contact them & ask for purple bags. They provide a years worth up front & you can put these out in addition to the two black bags. However these are also only collected once a fortnight, so it would probably be a good idea for you to invest in some type of outdoor/garden storage where you can store the bags until collection day (or put in your wheelie bin if your council allows them).

We have biweekly collections and no bin at all (we live in a flat, a large 5 bed so that’s no excuse for infrequent collections either) and no outside place to store rubbish. It’s disgusting. I’ve only ever seen this level of slovenliness in Britain.

Ours gets emptied on a Monday, then 2 Mondays with no collection and it gets taken the next Monday. So next month for example it will only get emptied once in the whole of October.

Oh and you can not have any extra bags or they won't empty it and you have to be very careful about the lid being shut properly because if it's open a bit because it's full, they may not take it, depending on who is doing the collections.

Our collections are fortnightly and we are a family of six. I have to confess to being surprised at your nappy volume.

We recycle more than is collected by our recycling collection and take it to our local centre. As such our general waste bin is usually no more than 1/2 full each fortnight so could easily go to 3 weeks other than over Christmas.

And we have a recycling trolly where we have a box for cardboard, one for plastic and tins and another for glass and the boxes are bloody tiny. Also a separate food bin.

We are fornightly where I live have been for a long time - green bin one week (garden waste) then brown the other with recycling collected every week - totally do able if you recycle everything that you can.

I don't think anywhere locally has had weekly collections for some time. Certainly I was still at school when my family home went to bi-weekly collections, and I'm 30 now. When DH and I moved to a different council area in 2017 we didn't even get a black bin as it's against council policy; we had to go and buy one from a specialist supplier. Luckily the 240L bins are the 'standard' size and are lifted without issue, not the 140L you see in some areas.

However Joseph Joseph do a compactor bin which might help you maximise the space within the bin you have.

Our tip is now getting rid of non-recyclable waste bins, and garden waste bins - so helpful.

They are doing it to "help" us recycle more.

@from123toabc you wouldn’t be in the house much though. We fill one bag a fortnight usually (four of us) but we have twice as much during school holidays. Alternatively you may not be recycling correctly. A lot of stuff that seems like it should be recyclable isn’t.

I don't think anywhere locally has had weekly collections for some time

I and some other posters (who don't sound like my area from their descriptions) have said we have weekly collections.

Where I am we get black bin waste, plus quite a good range of recycling every week. We also have loads of recycling points for the stuff that isn't collected at the kerbside, plus the tip which is open all day every day.

I also voluntarily contribute further to the Terracycle scheme which means I only end up with about a carrier bag of actual landfill about once every 6 weeks.

Every 3 weeks here apart from garden waste/food recycling.