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?

We have a whole load of urban foxes locally - I've never seen any evidence that they can defeat the locks on our council food waste bins. Do yours not lock shut?

There used to be a bin in our park that residents in the local flats regularly used for their excess rubbish. The bin was regularly overflowing, with additional bags dumped beside the full bin. The council’s solution was to remove the bin. Now the park has no bin at all.

You take it to the household waste centre like everybody else does… not just fly tip it because you can’t be bothered to go.

Every householder has a duty of care to dispose of waste correctly- usually in your bins. If waste doesn’t fit in these bins then you have to dispose of it to a licensed carrier or at a licensed place - that isn’t a public bin. Most “flytipping” offences are prosecuted under s33 Environmental Protection Act 1990 and that includes disposal of household waste in a public litter bin.

Because not everyone has a food waste collection? My area doesn't! All of my food scraps (no meat, I'm vegetarian!) has to go in my general waste bin!

Someone used to do this to the bins at the McDonald's where I worked - drive in, dump a bag of dog shit in a bin, leave. It's absolutely, utterly disgusting, especially with waste that gets compacted 😑🤮🤮🤮

I don't have a bin at my flat. We don't have a communal bin either. We're 'supposed' to store our rubbish in black sacks for a week and then put them out on collection day.

My flat is a tiny studio and I am not doing that. So everytime I go out, I take a bag with me and shove it in the nearest public bin. I don't generate that much waste but I'm not storing it in a tiny space for a week.

Nobody has beeped me or anything, and tbh idgaf if they ever do.

Around here it is enforced. Council fine you if you use public litter bins for household waste. They regularly post videos of repeat offenders.

Not have a dog.

Anyway human poo needs to go down the loo so it can be treated appropriately and not leach into the waterway or sit in a bag releasing gases

The thing with the dog poo is council workers who empty it can expect it to be there if it is a combined dog/rubbish bin. They wouldn't expect a human poo. It's a health and safety thing.

No it’s not! Street bins were never intended for people’s household rubbish. Imagine if every single house did it! Street bins are just meant for bits of rubbish when people are out and about. Wrappers, cans, dog poo bags etc. Imagine the vermin that will be attracted by household rubbish… Extra household rubbish should be taken to the tip. You can pay for an extra bin if you create too much rubbish.

If there's one thing this thread has shown, it's that people have zero comprehension that waste is managed completely differently between areas of the UK.

I'm in Cornwall. We have a weekly collection of waste and no separately bins. They are currently 3yrs late delivering that model and who knows when they'll start it.

I only have a wheelie bin because I bought one at a shop. I was sick of the seagulls shredding the bin bags left outside each week and sick of the smell of rotting waste in my garden in the height of summer.

Having normal household waste in a bin in your house for a week doesn't seem like a huge imposition.

Like most households I imagine, we have a flip top kitchen bin with a bin bag in, which we periodically empty the smaller waste bins/vacuum cleaner etc into, along with the kitchen waste. At the end of the week we change the bag and put it into our wheely bin. And that's with four of us, so I assume the single kitchen bin you'd have for one would be smaller. I know you said take it out frequently at the moment, but not having a bin in your home at all is surely unusual.

Where it gets tricky is nappies and cat litter. I'd be gagging if I had to keep a week's worth of cat litter for ten cats (I'm fostering kittens at the moment) in the house in the summer because you can't flush cat poo down the loo.

I guess the thing about wheely bins is that they do require a certain type of town layout. My memory of rural Cornwall has a lot of front doors opening directly onto the pavement or tiny gaps between front door and front wall, and a lot of very steep random inclines.

Then change your cats food. Never any left over in the bowl here!

It's common here for individual bins to be missed out on rubbish day. Anyone puts a drink can or dog poo bag on top of your rubbish, your rubbish isn't taken.
It's become a hate your neighbor thing. Drop a can or bottle in on bin day!

We also have huge commercial public waste bins, recycling bins, and a greenery waste bin shared by local businesses and residents. Most businesses closed since business rates shot up.
Many other disabled people whose vehicles attract charges at the dump, use them. (Large no parking zones outside dump to stop pedestrians/ wheelchairs) Once they're full, locks go on, and you take it back until they're emptied.

We do get some free dump runs annually, but unlike our neighbors who have free access all day everyday, they have to be booked in advance according to what suits the dump, not when disability allows us to be driving and bag lifting. If you can't use your slot, it's treated as if you have.

Apparently it's just too difficult to allow disabled adapted vehicles (or campers, etc) to drive in with a single sack etc in case we're really builders or unlicensed waste carriers getting away without paying charges.

Nope, they're all visibly using big payload mucky SUV's that are free all day every day, without booking or being checked. The massive unfairness has made me and others stop caring.

They're now cutting back on large public recycling bins because people actually use them. Did they expect to just be box ticking?

There are also always those who dump fridges, tyres etc, at the bin bays but imo better they're all dumped in one place, than fly tipped all over the borough. Both ways round, our council taxes will go on clearing it up, as well as on disposing of the waste our council generates.

My local household waste centre does not accept food waste. It only accepts cooking oil, no other food waste.

Yes this is a really good point. We also have no outside bins. Whereas my mum in the east midlands has 3 outside bins.

We have fortnightly rubbish collection but weekly food waste collection so the black rubbish bags don’t smell and we just keep them until it’s time to put them out.

I think the point some of us are trying to make is that not all areas have outside bins and they are not provided by the council. We manage with this most of the time as our rubbish is collected weekly (separately for household, food and recycling), but if we are away and we miss bin day for a week, we do not want food rotting in our food bin for 2 weeks. The local waste centres do not accept food where I live.

Oh dear - we do this with nappies too! If we put nappies in the outside bins the foxes go in after them and scatter them across the street. We live in an area where there’s no room for big wheelie bins with proper lids so everyone has small trash can type things which are full well before collection. We can’t drive so can’t get to the tip so not sure what else to do really.

We do double bag the nappies though.

People are a bit strange about bins (and household rubbish in general). There’s a man round here who wanders about with bin bags looking for a neighbour’s wheelie bin to put them in (sometimes mine). I’ll be amazed if his bin is full - I think he’s just got a weird aversion to putting stuff in his own bin.

Someone upthread said it was unacceptable that any meat goes on the bin. If it’s whole chunks of meat then I’d agree but sometimes someone stops eating and leaves meat on the plate. That’s not going back in the fridge or freezer, it’s going in the bin (or on the garden for the crows to eat).

If it’s hot we get maggots. I hose out the inside of my wheelie bin and tip it out onto the driveway. The birds will eat the maggots fairly quickly.

I think a lot of Councils are clamping down on this now, I have noticed in our town all the public bins now have signs on saying 'not for general household waste' or something like that. Not sure how easily it is to be 'policed' but I once reported some fly tipping to the local Council as I found an envelope with a name and address in, I believe it was followed up but obviously I didn't hear the outcome but the fly tipping stopped. (I wasn't being a nosey neighbour - the rubbish was being left right in front of an area for which I had responsibility for).

I do get cross when people put dog poo bags in my bin. Mainly because, until recently, the bin men would have to grab the bags themselves and would refuse if there were dog poo bags in there. Plus someone going into my bin has to walk a way to get to it - it’s easier to use the public bins.

I think it's fine, why is it different to having a picnic in a park and then putting rubbish in the park bin. I'm pretty shocked people are saying they are filling their bins in a fortnight. We barely fill ours in 2 months, do people not recycle and separate food waste