Putting rubbish in a public bin

[HippyPippy]

Someone I know regularly puts a carrier bag or two in a public bin. It’s because her bun is always full and she doesn’t want to put the dog waste in her own bin.

She has said that sometimes people driving by will give her dirty looks and beep their horn as if she’s doing something wrong?

I personally wouldn’t bat an eyelid if I saw someone putting rubbish in a bin, but it got me thinking whether others think this is wrong and if so why?

Our bins are only collected twice a month so I regularly use public bins. When our collections went from every week to every other week out council tax bill did not reduce , and neither did my amount of rubbish that needed collecting so I give zero fucks about using public bins.

Our bins are collected every three weeks - a fortnight would be a luxury! I still manage to get everything in my bin (food bins go weekly, the regular bin, paper bin and plastic/glass bins are on a 3 week rotation). I even run a coffee/cake kiosk and my rubbish from that fits in too. I have neighbours that grumble about full bins, but their bins are never used well. Nothing is crushed or ripped up, so lots of space is wasted.

When I was cabin crew we had amazing machines in the galleys that crushed rubbish. I think every home should have one!

If your friend isn't cramming bags of noxious waste into an already overflowing bin that's only emptied once in a blue moon, then I don't see the problem, OP.

Maybe I should just get out more, but I find threads like this fascinating. Several posters seem certain that because x happens where they live, then that must be the case everywhere.

Others, of course, have pointed out that practices vary across the UK. (I know there have also been a few posts from non-UK residents.)

I've lived in the same town in south-east England for 30 years. When recycling first became a thing, we were asked to put our general waste into black bags inside black dustbins. Recyclable stuff was to be put into different bags of different colours (e.g. paper and cardboard in orange bags; glass in clear bags). All of these were collected weekly.

Later, people on my street were asked to put ALL recyclables loose into green wheelie bins - except for glass, which was now to go into black boxes. These were all collected fortnightly.

I moved three years ago, but I'm still in the same town. On this street, we have weekly collections of household waste (in black bags) and recyclable stuff (all mixed together inside pink bags). But my old neighbours, just a few streets away, tell me that their system is still as it was when I lived there.

(And by the way, I don't know of any part of this town where food waste is collected by the council.)

Is it any wonder that people get confused?

It's like the bloody hokey-cokey with our council. They keep changing their rules.

Food waste in the garden waste bin, then food waste in the non recyclable bin, then into food waste containers, then back into the garden waste bin then they stopped collecting it, so it was back into the non recyclable bin. At one point, they even decided that "raw/uncooked" food like fruit and veg couldn't be put in the garden waste bin, even if we'd grown it ourselves and we were just binning it along with the leaves/branches!

Same with recyclables, glass in the tins bin, then glass in the paper/cardboard bin, then another bin just for glass, then all in the same bin, then all separated again but in bags, not boxes.

In, out, in out, all they've not asked us to do is shake it all about!

I really don't think they've a clue what they're doing. Latest is that with a huge fanfare, they've announced they're going to start taking food waste and they've been out delivered small boxes (which are identical to the ones they gave out a few years ago then stopped collecting). Local media asked their spokesman why they were issuing everyone with new ones when most people still had the old ones, and she clearly hadn't a clue the council had ever done recycling previously! Like I say, they havn't a clue!

Had to come back to this thread as I've just seen an old lady emptying bags for life into a public bin! It's non day today as well 🤷🏼‍♀️

Its clearly not ideal having people put household waste in litter bins, but they are at least trying to put rubbish in a safe collectible place.

If councils reduce the rubbish collections, what do they expect - particularly during summer holidays when people with young families are at home more not school? This is actually a good solution when compared to those people who might just lob a bag of rubbish by the side of a road in true fly-tipping style.

In the grand scheme of things, it's not that big of a deal. But really she should be taking it to the tip.

This x 100

Its cause and effect really.

They keep cutting costs and making things harder for residents.

And then people act shocked when people put some of their garbage in public bins.

The baffling logic of some of the folks in this country is just amazing to me.