To ask about your bins?

[Itsjustthesame]

So, like many areas of the country our bin collections are a bit up the wall at the moment. Where I live many of us don’t have wheelie bins but instead just put out the rubbish on bin day.

I’m feeling strangely self conscious as I’ve noticed that we have about double the sacks of anyone else. On a usual week three or four recycling sacks, maybe two food waste and one or two black sacks. (It’s just me and dh)

Everyone else seems to have one of each! (And these are all three bed homes).

So are we either - very greedy, plastic hoarders, something else? Does everyone usually have just a single bag of refuse at the end of each week?

Does everyone put theirs out at the same time?

We have wheelie bins. Ours is always only just full on collection day where as neighbours is always overflowing or some CF have two bins. I have noticed though we have twice as many recycling bags as every one else and they are always full.

We have one of rubbish, one of recycling and one food waste (we do have wheels bins but they're never full after two weeks).

Family of four here.

I do think that sounds a lot for a weekly collection.

When you say one or two food waste do you mean full size black sacks full of food x2? That's a tremendous amount of food waste.

@fatted yes pretty much. Without being too long winded (or outing), where I live there’s a “committee” who apparently are sniffy about wheelie bins - so the houses that don’t have back access are strongly encouraged not to have them (ffs).

So come bin day, all out at the same time - everyone has their dainty little one or two bags - while we have our mountain of recycling!

@BernadetteRostankowskiWolowitz oh god no! Food bags are like the little caddy liners!

I've never had a single bag of rubbish in my life. My bins are always full, recycling is always full.
Its only me, dp and dd, I don't feel bad.

Zero food waste

@b1 is that because you compost? Ours is generally just peelings, scraping of plates etc.

@squeekums glad it’s not just me! God I miss wheelie bins

Our wheelie bins are usually full to the brim, and we often have extra bags of recycling out as well.
2 adults and 3 DC here.

We’re not the only ones on our street with full bins, it’s common for one or more of our neighbours to have the bin lid open slightly because it’s so full of rubbish.

some CF have two bins
Not cheeky if they paying the extra rates for collection. We can add as many bins as we like as long as we pay

God I miss wheelie bins
Yeah what kind of weird logic is that? Why say no bins, it contains it all, looks better than bags too.
I'm in aus, If we had no bins, the bags would go so rank in the sun, be covered in ants and ripped apart by animals. Does that not happen in the UK? Like animals especially ripping it apart?

Have you actually looked at what your waste is? Like what is in the recycling? Are there lots of plastic bottles? Could you make choices where you don't drink bottled drinks? Do you eat lots of ready meals? Are you ordering excessive amount of items which come in separate boxes? Amazon have an option to group items to a single day delivery. Just think about each thing and how you can reduce consumption. I can't imagine what you are putting in the bin if you have two bags of recycling.....do you use your local tip/recycling for items like clothing, electrical etc.

We are a family of 5 and a typical week is green bin for food/garden, 1 to 2 black sacks, and 2 recycling (cans, paper, plastic). Our glass box is about once a month.

Do you squash everything in? We have a similar issue with bins, we're not allowed wheelie bins (conservation area). My neighbours always have loads of bags but they don't seem to flatten boxes etc in their recycling.
We can only store one extra bag in our bin in the back garden and so we are limited to two bags anyway. Sometimes we drive our rubbish to the tip if we are going to miss bin day and I know others take theirs to the big bins at the flats at the end of our road (probably not allowed to though!).

Our recycling bin is always full. I have a failsafe system now after once or twice putting the wrong bin out.... They are lined up against the wall and the one that is next due to go out is next to the garden gate... Then they are rotated each week.... I am then heard to shout over the fence each Sunday night to Mr Neighbour either, "BLACK BIN TOMORROW" or "GREEN BIN TOMORROW"
Our brown garden bins aren't being emptied at all at the moment...

Two of us here (most of the time - sometimes student DS is here). Our bins are emptied weekly (recycling one week, general waste the next) and sometimes there is only one swing bin bag full in the general waste bin. We usually have 2 black tubs of glass/plastic/cans and 1 bag of paper/cardboard.

We're on fortnightly collections here and our black bin is always full. We probably get through two black bags a week of rubbish, and we recycle. But we don't have food waste collection here so food waste has to go in the black bin. Garden waste collection is currently suspended too.

There's only two of us but we also have two cats, so their litter needs to be emptied and goes in the bin twice a week as well, which adds up to four bags of for life extra per fortnight.

No reason to feel bad at all. It's what we pay council tax for!

If I’m reading right are you saying you could have the bins but don’t because they’re frowned upon?! Seriously I would get the bins, as a pp said bin bags are easily ripped up by animals and are rank in the warm weather, it’s madness not to get a bin if you can. Especially at the moment I think there will be an increase in wildlife roaming due to reduced people movement etc. I know some counties have stopped their recycling collections atm as well as the garden waste.

@Mumdiva99 hmm. So we don’t drink individual plastic bottles but have maybe the odd bottle of lemonade (and of course wine). We get through quite a lot of shower stuff. Takeaway pizzas can fill up the bags. Must point out that recycling bags aren’t huge like refuse sacks - this is standard kitchen bin size.

@squeekums yes it’s a problem - we do have a “shed” where we store until bin day but it’s pretty grim. Also means you’re up at the crack of dawn to make sure the bins go out as you can’t do it the night before.

@Perpetuallytiredzzz we rent here so It was put in our tenancy so am loathe to do it. Hard to explain without being outing but it’s a part of a conservation area - but like a subsection of it.

That’s bad luck it seems crazy to me but not much you can do with that if it’s in your agreement. If you are wanting to compact your recycling waste rip up cardboard into smaller pieces before binning - our recycling bin was nearly full so dh squashed all the tins and bottles and ripped up cardboard and we gained half a bin back!

I may revisit it with our landlord when this is all over - about 40% of people here do have wheelie bins and I can’t help but think that the health hazard is worse than it not looking pretty.

Our recycling bags are similar in size to a standard black sack.

If you have 2 pizza boxes a week it doesn't seem excessive. I've recently tried to reduce bathroom waste - not perfect yet but we started to buy liquid soap refills (I know bars would be even better...) I now have a shower and a shampoo bar in the shower and will get them for the kids of they are good. They do cost more than regular gel and shampoo bit last longer.

Two small food caddies of waste sounds about right. For example one chicken carcass with peelings etc would fill one.

We live in a flat where bins are not possible and no recycling so everything has to go in the black bag. We only half fill a bag each week with 2 adults.

I used to live in a conservative area, like right in the middle of it.

Yeah, we ALL had wheelie bins. I think the caveat was, they weren't left out after they'd been emptied but I would imagine most places stipulate that anyway.