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.

What you suggest is a good idea in principle, but here the streets are so very overcrowded with parking that I don’t think there would be any space for giant bins at frequent enough intervals for the necessary capacity.

We are so much more over crowded than on the continent.

Also, councils seem bent on removing about 75% of public bins ( where I live anyway) so they would probably neither supply enough giant bins nor empty them frequently enough.

@amusedbush

A few months ago the local council moved from fortnightly collections to every three weeks, which is ridiculous. It’s only me and DH in our house and we recycle but the green bin is still full after two weeks.

Although the entire area is covered in potholes so deep you can practically see Australia so I don’t know where the saved money is going.

There’s three adults here and our non recycling bin is collected fortnightly despite being less than half full most of the time. We opted for a small bin with larger ones for the recycling (one paper etc, one glass, plastic, tins etc). The recycling is usually pretty full each fortnight.

@ScrollingLeaves

What you suggest is a good idea in principle, but here the streets are so very overcrowded with parking that I don’t think there would be any space for giant bins at frequent enough intervals for the necessary capacity.

We are so much more over crowded than on the continent.

Also, councils seem bent on removing about 75% of public bins ( where I live anyway) so they would probably neither supply enough giant bins nor empty them frequently enough.

If you look at Redcandlelight’s post at 9:35 ( sorry I have tried, and failed, to copy it), the part of the bin above ground is relatively small, not much larger than a telecomms cabinet.

skirk54

And I thought Brighton was supposed to be a green city. And what in the name of Mary, Jesus, Joseph and the little donkey is any personal delight in putting anything you want into any bin?

To PPs - I like the idea of a sunken bin accessed by a key fob which stops CFs unloading. But what happens when you lose it? Or pass it on to some miscreant?

I also agree with PPs who say supermarkets should step up. What's with "generally recycled"? how do you know if it is or isn't? They could dramatically reduce waste all on their own

Also we should get rid of packaging where one part can be recycled, but not other parts, and they are stuck together. An example being sandwich packaging used by dome supermarkets

Em cheers @BarbaraofSeville - I think I'm allowed to find storing lots of rubbish in a small flat with no storage a pain though pal. I did it because I care about the environment, but it was still a pain. People who care less about the environment won't do it because it is a pain. Changing behaviour on a societal level has to either be easy or enforced.

DH is French, from the south. Every time we visit they’re complacent about the communal bins not being collected and emptied often enough, which leads to people just dumping rubbish next to the over-flowing bins.

On days when there’s a Mistral (strong wind), it blows everywhere, and in the 40C+ summers, it stinks.

Here in Switzerland, you have to buy special bin bags and take them to the recycling centre yourself. It avoids the French problem, but it’s a pain having to do this.

I don’t think anywhere has it nailed tbh.

Can we have the French sense of style as well please? I'd even prefer Mr Macron to Mr Johnson, but there again I'd probably prefer most democratic leaders.

@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.

Throwing a microwave into a bin?

This could be good but only if the bins were never too far to walk to.

I live in the Netherlands and my options for recycling are very limited. Recycling isn’t collected, there are underground containers with a chute at street level, however, the paper, textile, glass, plastic and paper containers are several bus stops away.

@amusedbush

A few months ago the local council moved from fortnightly collections to every three weeks, which is ridiculous. It’s only me and DH in our house and we recycle but the green bin is still full after two weeks.

Although the entire area is covered in potholes so deep you can practically see Australia so I don’t know where the saved money is going.

It's going on services that can't be cut, because councils have a statutory duty to provide those services to a certain standard.

If you're in a unitary authority area, the biggest budget item is education and most of that is delegated to schools under a formula, so the council can't cut that. It's damn hard to cut the next biggest spending department, adult social care, too.

Central government's grant to councils used to be 90% of spending, with only 10% collected via the rates (as they were then). Now, it's a fraction of that and from next year, many will get nothing. All their spending will have to come from the 75% of business rates that they are allocated and from council tax.

@GhoulWithADragonTattoo

This could be good but only if the bins were never too far to walk to.

A friend has a house in rural SW France. They have to drive 3 miles to drop off their rubbish.

I'm in France and have 3 wheelie bins and a bucket for glass. They do get collected much more frequently than in the UK though.

All chats I’ve lived in have had a communal bin shed with giant bins.

I live in a high rise apartment. We have a garbage room in the underground parking. It has two dumpsters for regular garbage, and one for paper. We have a row of wheelie bins for plastic and glass. We also have two wheelie bins for organics. The room is locked and usually stinks.

The dumpsters are dragged to the street by our caretaker using a little tractor thing several times a week. It makes a hell of a racket. Wake the dead type racket. They are then emptied by huge trucks on the street and then towed back in.

The recycling bins are emptied once a week. A truck parks in our drive, right below our window, and are dragged out and emptied into the truck. Again, huge amounts of noise.

The organics are emptied the same way.

I watched Frontline (American PBS) the other day, about plastic pollution. I did not realize that the clamshell type packaging used for lettuce etc is not recyclable. It is sorted out and much ends up in places like Indonesia. Very depressing really. Things need to change.

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

We stayed in a Dutch AirBnB once and it took us a while to work out where to put the rubbish - great system and doesn't ruin the street.

A friend has a house in rural SW France. They have to drive 3 miles to drop off their rubbish.

So do I, mine's about 1.5 miles away so it could be worse. No collections in rural areas.

One big issue is that too many people here just don't give a fuck, will dump their crap wherever and then later complain how horrible everything is.

We've just received recycling wheelie bins for the first time ever. I'm sure we're one of the last places in the UK to finally not have just one grey bin collected weekly with zero recycling.

We all received a short, simple booklet letting us know what to do. All pictures and simple format.

I saw my neighbour taking rubbish to his bins. Bottles of Coke with coke still in, cat food cans half full of food, nothing rinsed and nothing squashed. I told him he might want to rinse them out like the booklet says and he said "nah, fuck that".

I just shrugged and thought, I'm glad I won't have to go anywhere near a bin full of 4 week old half full tins of rotting cat food and no bin bags in sight.
Those booklets are simpler to understand than a stage one Biff, Chip and Kipper book but people are bloody lazy and don't care.

Communal bins would be abused to the point of being completely useless. Car tyres, microwaves, commercial waste dumping.. you name it, they'd be stuffed full of it.

@SunflowersAndLavender

Also, too many people in the UK STILL refuse to recycle and sort their rubish properly so we always being left with overflowing bins that the bin men refuse to empty, and they stay there until the council is eventually, reluctantly forced to remove them because they are becoming an environmental health hazard.

My local authority has been very lax and has accepted recycling bins filled with non recyclable rubbish in the past, which is why we currently come very low on the Good Recycling Councils list. They have recently announced that they are soon going to refuse to empty wrongly filled recycling bins. I am dreading it, especially as it is going to be summer soon. I also hope they are going to train their bin people in conflict resolution tactics because they are going to be the recipients of the flack.

Those bins are why rat / vermin infestations are really common in some European countries, because they often don’t get cleared enough. It’s far, far better to have smaller bins per household because they faciliate more frequent collections
This doesn't make sense. It is far quicker to empty one big bin than fifty small ones!

We had a bank of recycling bins across the road. People didn't use them. Now it goes into one recycling bin/bag. Better rates of use.

you can't even throw a microwave out

Don't do that. Take it to the municipal dump and put it in with the electrical goods. I'd be pissed off if people misused our shared bins like that though there isn't much I could do about it.