3 week bin collections

[Desiredeffect]

The council last year made it so our general waste is only collected every 3 weeks and recycling every week. Does anyone else have this. I think it's not a good idea as by the time the bin comes to be emptied it stinks. I recycle to but feel 3 weekly collections is ridiculous

We have weekly recycling and food waste and 3 weekly for every thing else. Our bin does not smell as no food goes into it so it is find. I think we also have weekly nappy/incontinence collection which are in purple bags.

We have 3 weekly general waste collection, and our bin is usually about 1/4 full.

If you are filling a normal size wheelie bin every 3 weeks (and your council has provision for recycling glass, card, paper and plastic), something isn't quite right (obviously there are extreme cases, I get that, but we're talking about averages here).

What I don't get is councils who collect general waste less often than fortnightly but don't collect food waste separately/more frequently. That's where it becomes grim.
Making people collect food waste separately is one of the best ways of highlighting how much food gets wasted. It's a LOT. If you physically see it, you are much more likely to do something about it. 24 million slices of bread get wasted in the UK every single day - 44% of all white sliced bread sold. But whilst we can just chuck it in the bin without thinking about it, the problem just carries on.

There was uproar in my council area when we moved to 3 weekly bin collections, and we were 'forced' into weekly food collections. There was so much angst on all the local FB pages etc, but it soon calmed down and now it's second nature. People just don't like change/adjusting to new things, but taking food waste out of landfill is a big win for the environment, so can only be a plus.

3 weeks is just not ok. Ours alternates, recycling one week, black rubbish bin the next. Both my recycling and black bin are always full.

I think that’s fine. Our bin is always virtually empty.

3 weeks really is OK! What on earth are you putting in a black bin (assuming it's a normal size wheelie bin) that fills it every 2 weeks?

Cat litter, nappies, any food packaging which has been contaminated by food. We fill the bin every 3 weeks, but the problem is more the smell.

My council also don't collect glass or garden waste, so I imagine some people will be putting that in their bins.

My biggest problem with 3 weekly collections is that sometimes I forget to put the bin out (or am on holiday or something) and then it would be 6w between collections? Does everyone else have perfect memories or how do you deal with this?

Food packaging gets rinsed and put in the recycling, surely? If you have a dishwasher, then bung plastic trays in there. If not, a quick rinse takes seconds. Same for tins - just rinse out when you use them and put them in the recycling.

Our general waste is collected every 3 weeks. At the moment there are 3 of us here (me, DH, adult DD home from uni). We produce one black sack of general waste in that 3 weeks. Almost all of that is plastic wrapping from food eg crisp packets. Our wheelie bin will fit 3 or 4 of those sacks in it.

Our food waste is collected weekly along with paper, card, glass, plastic trays, tetrapaks, foil etc. Basically if it can be recycled or composted, it is collected weekly. Garden waste is fortnightly but you have to pay for that.

If you have a problem, talk to your councillors, but as a society, we are terrible at reducing our single-use materials. Think about that too.

@bingoitsadingo - I can sign up for weekly phone alerts via the Council's website. Hopefully yours allows it too.

All of our bins are collected every 4 weeks and have been for years. It is shit, but there are 4 of us including a baby and the (normal sized) general waste bin is usually pretty full but never overflowing. The paper and card bin is a pain particularly near Christmas time when we get more deliveries and also receive gifts in packaging.

The problem we have just now is strike action which means some bins have been missed lately, so we have e.g. 2 months' worth of glass, and 2 months' worth of plastics & tins built up. Hoping they actually collect next time and also don't start skipping the other bin types. 🤞

Oh dear. You’ve misunderstood my point.

What happens now is collections of non recyclable waste every 3 weeks. Over a year, that’s 18 collections the council has to pay for via council tax. In hot weather, the burden of harmful bacteria can become huge under this regime - dangerously unhygienic and smelly.

Alternatively..

The council collects non recyclable waste weekly for about 8 weeks over the summer. = 8 weekly collections

For the other 43 weeks, collections of non recyclable waste go monthly = 10 monthly collections

Total no collections = still 18, so the same, but safer and more hygienic for refuse collection staff and residents.

Of course there needs to be separate collection services for special circumstances such as adults in the household with double incontinence.

Our main wheelie bin has been collected every three weeks for a few years now and I hate it. We often run out of space and I have to take stuff to the tip rather than have a bin bag hanging around.

We recycle and that bin is collected every fortnight. There is no dedicated food collection, though; we're supposed to use compostable bags to collect it and then put it in the brown wheelie bin, which is for garden waste and collected fortnightly. That's fine in theory but I've been overhauling my garden, so the bin is always full!

I’m so shocked people filling a bin in 2 weeks. We could have one bin collection every two months. I think it’s a good thing to make people think about the waste they create

Our collection is every 3 weeks too apart from food waste which is every week. The bins are always smelly and luckily I have a lane at the the back garden so my neighbours and myself have decided to put our bins in the lane. We also put fly catchers near the bins and the amount of flies in them is disgusting.

Smell is one of the problems and volume is the other. MONTHLY refuse collections for most of the year is your idea of a solution? You think people would be happy with that because for 8 weeks of summer their bin won't smell as much? They will just complain instead that their bin gets full after three weeks 🤣

Maybe people should just get a grip – the bin smells, and that's not a massive problem because it doesn't live in the house, but if they want it to not smell they could find a way to not put faeces and food in the bin. Or they could clean it after every collection which might help, or use a bin liner.

What do you put in your bin that causes it to smell if you have a separate food waste collection?

Food waste surely HAS to be every week or that’s gross and a health hazard.

Feeling really lucky here, our bins are all collected weekly. The only one I need to put out every week is the kitchen caddy.

Everything else waits for a full bin which takes several weeks. I can't believe how much people put out for landfill, even without kids and pets.

DS's continence pads would be stinking if left in there for 3 weeks. We would also need 3 big bins.

Our recycling is fortnightly, alternating from plastics/metal to cardboards/paper so each bin is monthly. General waste is fortnightly and as a family of 5 (2 adults, older teens and 1 11yo) we don't get past half full because we're extremely thorough with our recycling. Every little thing is washed and crushed. The general waste is rinsed if it's contaminated with food and all food goes in food bags which are tightly tied shut and thrown into the general waste bin. This stops the smell issue and the crushing stops the space issue. Our neighbours (2 adults) just chuck stuff in and complain they have no more room.

Is it possible for you to reduce your waste space any more than you do now? Are there any changes you can make? I do get the frustration with this bing crap. The council get paid for recycling. They reduce how many times they collect in most counties too and yet where's our council tax reductions? Why are we paying more and getting less?

I don't live in the uk . But we have our bins emptied twice a day. I accept it's hotter here and it's necessary for pest control and smell but it's doable

The UK is screwed recycling is a lie, its pure cost cutting we have recycling bins that are emptied twice a day as well as the other bins

We've been on 4 weekly collections for a couple of years and the recycling system is complex.

It's inadequate so people sneak their rubbish into my commercial collection bins which I pay for to have collected weekly. So annoying.

In my area, you can sign up on the council’s website for email reminders. I get an email the day before collection telling me what is being collected that week.

Ours is once every three weeks. It works ok most of the time