To think the French system of rubbish disposal is preferable to all these bins?

[Pottedpalm]

I have been spending a lot of time on Rightmove recently and it has reinforced my dislike of the system we have. In areas of small terraced houses the bins often have to be left at the front and locally every house has three bins. It’s even worse where there are no gardens and all the bins are lined up on the pavement.
One large house, split into flats, had nine bins under the front window of the ground floor property.
In areas of France and Spain and probably other continental countries, there are large bins on every street for the various categories of waste. These are emptied very frequently during the night. I think this is is a better system; food type smelly waste can be removed daily and recycling less often.
I suppose people might object if the bins are placed too near to their homes, but in places I have stayed the residents used the bins tidily.

Certainly in some areas of edinburgh this the system.

I lived in a city centre flat that had huge bins and the maintenance team took them out weekly to be emptied, it worked really well.

I had four bins in Germany. Plus glass had to go glass bank. The bottle return bottles were separated by shop.

Cyprus used to collect bins three times a week. None of every two or three week schedules.

Whenever I've been abroad I always say exactly the same thing to dh!

It's not all large bins where we live in France! We have wheelie bins: one for non recycling (emptied once a month) one for glass and paper and another for general recycling, these are emptied every two weeks.
We also get a separate bill for this, and get charged more if we want a bigger bin or more collections.

I've lived with both systems and prefer the large communal waste and recycling bins, yes. Except for when the collection is not frequent enough where it is problematic also.
I feel generally the problem in England is the infrequent collections, though.

I've seen these big bins in Portugal and they seem to work there. Considering the UK is a place where some people think it's OK to throw all their rubbish out of car windows or leave it in country lanes and playing fields I don't know how well it would work here. There would have to be some really strict laws about littering and fly tipping with appropriate punishments.

I didn't know this was a thing. I've often thought it would be good to have specific recycling bins in residential areas. I suspect a lot of my street wouldn't do it properly though.

That system has just been replaced in most of Italy as it meant that nothing was recycled.
Now there are the individual bins for differentiated waste.
The food waste bin is collected every other day, plastic, glass and paper once a week, and "other" also every other day.
So much better than huge stinking overflowing bins on every street.

@averylongtimeago

It's not all large bins where we live in France! We have wheelie bins: one for non recycling (emptied once a month) one for glass and paper and another for general recycling, these are emptied every two weeks. We also get a separate bill for this, and get charged more if we want a bigger bin or more collections.

Since posting I have been reading up in changes to the system in France; seems many areas are moving to a different system. We have three buns, we pay extra for the green, garden waste bin. Each one is collected once a fortnight.

(one of the worst things living alone in a flat with a baby was taking the bags out to a communal bin. Even with baby in a sling, it was awkward on the stairs and trying to open the big lids)

The underground bins in The Netherlands is the way to go.

We had these where I lived in Brighton. They were really good, you could chuck anything and everything in them, no questions asked. Not like the "bin police" we have where I live now, you can't even throw a microwave out without getting pulled up on it.

The only downside is their location. Some poor sod gets a massive bin dumped outside their home and it is a magnet for rats whenever the bins aren't collected for whatever reason. Where I lived the bin was a couple of doors down - convenient but smelled horrible in the summer months.

If they can be located slightly away from residential property then they are idea.

I think the massive bins for whole streets would work better.
Where my sister lives in part of Spain. Theres an area enclosed with a wall and gates, inside is a skip for rubbish, one for recycling, one for clothing and household items to be reused. Works great.

@Geamhradh

That system has just been replaced in most of Italy as it meant that nothing was recycled. Now there are the individual bins for differentiated waste. The food waste bin is collected every other day, plastic, glass and paper once a week, and "other" also every other day. So much better than huge stinking overflowing bins on every street.

I can see that huge stinking bins would be horrible. In Florence the residential area had waste ‘pod’ type containers and I seem to remember that the whole pid was loaded on a lorry and removed and then replaced with a clean pod. This was done nightly, I think. Or very frequently. The pods were not huge but there was no overflow, in fact I think there was a fine if waste wasn’t placed in the pods. Not sure how that would be levied!

in many dutch cities there is no individual refuse collection.
there are underground waste containers where you take it to. recycling containers in each neighbourhood as well where you take your paper/glass/tins/plastic.

Depends where you are in France. In our old house we had a recycling bin, though not for glass. In our present house, in the countryside, we have to go to the village to recycle everything. We have hardly anything in our grey bin now.

"We had these where I lived in Brighton. They were really good, you could chuck anything and everything in them, no questions asked. Not like the "bin police" we have where I live now, you can't even throw a microwave out without getting pulled up on it."

Most civilised people wouldn't put a microwave out with their general waste though, surely?
It's an item for the dump, isn't it?

@skirk64

We had these where I lived in Brighton. They were really good, you could chuck anything and everything in them, no questions asked. Not like the "bin police" we have where I live now, you can't even throw a microwave out without getting pulled up on it.

The only downside is their location. Some poor sod gets a massive bin dumped outside their home and it is a magnet for rats whenever the bins aren't collected for whatever reason. Where I lived the bin was a couple of doors down - convenient but smelled horrible in the summer months.

If they can be located slightly away from residential property then they are idea.

Agreed; the collection would need to he very frequent for smelly waste. If there was a nightly collection the pods wouldn't need to be huge.

Where I lived in France it was the same as here pretty much. General waste wheely bin and recycling green wheely bin. The underground bins nearby were just for glass etc like the large ones here are.

😮 Bin police.

Ok so my family have a property in france and it's not always perfect.

The nearest bin is too far away, it's a nightmare dragging bags of stuff to it. It's not emptied often enough so it attracts vermin and stinks to high heaven in summer. People don't sort recycling properly.

In reality though it's the same problem as the UK, collections are not frequent enough for the volume of people.

There needs to be more effort to reduce waste entirely - force supermarkets to stop adding surplus packaging etc. Promote and educate people about proper home composting. Incentivise washable nappy use.

@redcandlelight

in many dutch cities there is no individual refuse collection. there are underground waste containers where you take it to. recycling containers in each neighbourhood as well where you take your paper/glass/tins/plastic.

I’m always struck by the neatness of Dutch towns, and how pleasant the environment is.

I know what you mean OP. In my street in London (terrace houses) people only have a very small amount of space at the front and there are some people who treat the whole space as a rubbish dump - overflowing bins, bags of rubbish, cardboard boxes etc. It’s so unsightly!

@megletthesecond

I didn't know this was a thing. I've often thought it would be good to have specific recycling bins in residential areas. I suspect a lot of my street wouldn't do it properly though.

Out town used to have several mini recycling areas for things like bottles, card, paper, batteries, clothing, juice cartons. They were really handy but unfortunately the council had to close them because of idiots fly tipping.