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.

I like the separate bins and I definitely recycle more because of the set-up. When I was in a flat everything went into a communal shoot and went from there. I’ve been on holiday to turkey where there was just a communal bin in the street with no ability to recycle easily. It’s not a system I’d want to go back to.

I agree about different systems depending in where you are in France.

My parents bins (individual house) are down the road, one bin for several houses. Same with my friend. So they both end up keeping a few bags in rubbish in their garage until they out them in the boot of the car to drop them in the common (really big) bin. In summer and high temperatures, it’s not great tbh.
Recycling is in the village so again you have to wait a few weeks to make a pile and then drop them at the recycling point.

Basically you need space to store your rubbish.
And from what I’ve seen, people are less likely to recycle because of all the faf on.

When I was living in France in a flat, there was a common bin too. But that, imo, makes much more sense and was practical...

Like a PP pointed out, this is the system in much of Edinburgh (and I assume Glasgow) and it can be a real PITA. Recycling especially can’t be collected in pace with demand so either you end up with mountains of recycling in your flat as you wait for a time when the bin is empty or people dump it by the bins. Lots of flats also have single glazing still so bin collections 2/3 nights a week can be very disruptive.

Lots of areas with tenements are also swarmed by seagulls - the overflowing bins provide an endless food source!

I’m not sure there is much of a solution in densely populated flats like those, but I certainly won’t be asking for it on my terrace.

The Dutch system sounds great. People really need to take more responsibility for their surroundings. But that’s never going to happen in the UK, is it...

I have a wheelie bin in France, emptied once per week, but the village also has big communal recycling bins, a dechetterie for garden waste and also a junkyard/dump with big skips for old furniture and other bigger items.

@Pottedpalm

The big ones were emptied every morning, but were still stinking by then. You weren't supposed to take your rubbish out till after a certain hour, but people wouldn't respect that necessarily.

I agree OP. We've rented apartments in Spain so have used the communal bins. You just get used to taking a bag or box of rubbish out with you every time you go out.

I bet a lot of people would complain about the bin wagon coming round at 5 am every morning though.

Agree. It’s a much better system. I live on a terraced street but we have reasonably long front gardens, so most people have space to tuck the FOUR bins away. Terraced properties that front straight onto the street or have a small yard don’t have that option and it looks really awful.

In Madrid, they put street bins out overnight and take them away every morning! You have to remember to take the rubbish out at the right time. Can't imagine what that would do to my council tax...

Having lived in a flat in Edinburgh, it is a pain to separate rubbish in the flat until you've got enough to go downstairs to the various bins, otherwise you'd be in and out all day. And my area didn't have on street glass recycling, so you had to put that in the bottom of the buggy and go to the supermarket to recycle. Again, I'd save this up which meant taking about a dozen bottles in the bottom of the park - kinda not the best look... I think the main problem with the big bins is that people are less likely to make 'special trips' for a certain type of rubbish.

Having seen the sheer amount of rubbish my neighbours generate week in, week out... and their entitled, selfish attitudes... no thank you.

What would happen is that they would continually fill the bin with their crap (including stuff which shouldn’t be binned) when there is no come back because no one knows who the waste is from.

The communal bin would be filled to overflowing by them, and we’d never be able to throw our small amount of rubbish away as the bin would always be full.

“Communal” only works if you have nice, considerate neighbours.

In Barcelona I was amazed when the bin lorry came round to empty the bin outside our holiday flat. What looked like a small bin was actually massive but mostly underground, and it rose up from the pavement to get emptied. Cool! And avoids big smelly bins everywhere.

Yup. My husband is absolutely obsessed by the bins on our street - how many there are, their storage, how they block the pavement permanently/for days at a time - and while I’m not as het up about it as he is, I think the UK system is rubbish (sorry ). I’d also like a better setup for recycling working used goods - a designated area to take them to, or “Free stuff Sundays” when everyone who had something put it out on their doorstep, or whatever else.

Systems like that are good until you realise you have accidentally binned something you need and can't root through to get it back. Like I do, often.

I don't think that would work here as - perfectly demonstrated during the past year - we're a pretty selfish nation.

People would fill the bins with all manner of their shit - microwaves for example, and household clear outs - meaning that others couldn't fit in their rubbish, and that many items wouldn't be disposed of properly.

@HoldontoOneMoreDay

In Madrid, they put street bins out overnight and take them away every morning! You have to remember to take the rubbish out at the right time. Can't imagine what that would do to my council tax...

Having lived in a flat in Edinburgh, it is a pain to separate rubbish in the flat until you've got enough to go downstairs to the various bins, otherwise you'd be in and out all day. And my area didn't have on street glass recycling, so you had to put that in the bottom of the buggy and go to the supermarket to recycle. Again, I'd save this up which meant taking about a dozen bottles in the bottom of the park - kinda not the best look... I think the main problem with the big bins is that people are less likely to make 'special trips' for a certain type of rubbish.

I disagree. You just tend to have a 'non recyclable' bag like a normal kitchen bin, and then the plastics/cardboard and the glass.

Find a way to store them in/just outside your property and take them out when you go out. What does it matter if you take a month's worth of wine bottles out in one go? Do people really care about such things? .

On the matter of the microwave and other electrical items, you can take it to the dump or if you can't do that for whatever reason, leave by the bins and the scrap fairies will probably beat the bin wagon to it.

I want to know more about the Dutch system! What do you drop your rubbish into for it to get underground? Are there lots of these or do you have to drive there with your rubbish?

The places I've lived in France have had the knee high waste disposal 'bins' - actually a shute to underground area - no smell. Cardboard collection on the street & another Shute for glass

Where I lived in Spain they had communal recycle:refuse on the streets. Easy to use & not smelly.

Austria was a bloody nightmare. Far far too many different coloured personal
bins & not collected often enough & taking them to the recycling station (a few miles away) was a complete ball ache.

Other countries with wheelie bins type systems weren't so bad as the U.K. because of the lack of terraced housing.

I want a proper bin in my garden. I don't want to be walking up the street every time disabled ds has his pad changed. We are not allowed to keep bins in the street here. They have to go in your garden or yard and can only be out for a short time on collection days. Those who leave them out longer get fined

When I lived in Brussels, you bought your recycling bin bags in the supermarket and just put them on the kerb. It was great as you paid for what you needed, through the bin bags. When we moved out we had piles of stuff to recycle, all just went on the roadside.

I agree to "communal bins" I lived in a terrace in Birmingham and didn't even have bin bags just had to put the black bags out. It was horrible.

@DumplingsAndStew

I don't think that would work here as - perfectly demonstrated during the past year - we're a pretty selfish nation.

People would fill the bins with all manner of their shit - microwaves for example, and household clear outs - meaning that others couldn't fit in their rubbish, and that many items wouldn't be disposed of properly.

I agree with this. It just encourages everything to be chucked in with no thought for what space neighbours need, nor for the responsibility to recycle.

We need to reduce our waste and reuse more stuff, then crack a great system of recycling and then hopefully the mountain of non-recyclable waste will become a much smaller problem. Very much easier said than done however!

Our flat in the city centre had this, and we loved it.

We also had an informal system between the residents of placing things in a space in the hallway to be claimed within 48h - furniture, electronics etc.

Would be great to incorporate that into a communal area - like freecycle without the hassle.

I agree with you.

I live in a small city that is very, very organised on the recycling front, which is great. But we have three different types of big wheelie bin plus small compostable food waste bins. They are all collected on a 2 or 3 weekly rotation depending on the contents.

It's also a city with street after street of narrow roads of terraced housing with very little frontage, no rear access to the gardens from the street, and no offstreet parking. Lots of the houses are multiple occupancy due to a high number of students.

Go down any of these streets and it's an ugly, cluttered mess of multi-coloured wheelie bins with stickers and door numbers scrawled all over them, overflowing and creating litter, blocking the pavements and just being a real blot of the landscape. I love Victorian and Edwardian properties but this TOTALLY puts me off buying anything in these streets.

The last place we lived had communal bins - small cul-de-sac of eight houses. We had lovely, considerate neighbours and it worked really well (people would warn in advance/apologise if they were overfilling the bins) but we used to get lots of people from round about dropping rubbish in our bins, which was a pain.

Also, I could see our front door from the bins, which meant I could leave my sleeping baby in the house when I put the bins out in the evening. We lived in a flat before that and it was a complete pain having to take the baby with me when I was home alone and needed to take the bins out.

We have this system in Edinburgh, there are lots of tenement blocks with no space for private bins on ground level. The alternative used to be black bags left out on the street, ripped apart by gulls and foxes. Streets were awash with litter which vanished overnight when the on-street bins were introduced. There are now on-street bins for general rubbish, tins/paper/packaging, glass, food waste, and ground floor flats (with private front gardens) can have individual bins as well. It takes up some on-street parking spaces and opening the big lids is awkward - probably they are deliberately hard to raise far to stop people climbing inside. It's a very good solution compared to the old way though!

Smelly or overflowing means they're not being emptied often enough. That's a separate problem.

@FolornLawn

I want to know more about the Dutch system! What do you drop your rubbish into for it to get underground? Are there lots of these or do you have to drive there with your rubbish?

sometimes with, sometimes without flowers. some areas use key fobs to open them.

they are dotted about the street, you would need to walk 200m max.

they havd sensors and get emptied when nearly full.

recycling containers are spaced further away.