Bin men! Ridiculous

[SassyCrab]

Has anyone else got this problem with there local council! The bin men take the rubbish every 2 weeks, so our rubbish mounts up to the point we have to put it on top of the bin, bare in mind we have baby and a dog so we have quite a lot of rubbish in the two weeks when they bother to collect. They’ve come yesterday and emptied our bin but just left the rubbish on the top!!!!! So now our bin is full again and still got 2 weeks to go. So annoyed with it, I just don’t understand why they can’t come every week.

I hope that everyone has checked their council website before just chucking everything in recycling

^ Good point.

If you put the wrong stuff in they may not take it.

At our council, if you report a missed bin collection they will collect a few days later usually.

Also environmental health, and Fire and Police services come in your council tax bill.
Recycling is usually unlimited. They will take cardboard outside if the bin for example.
Batch cook your short date food or don't buy it, or reject it if delivered or there are apps you can share food on.
We are a house of 4 inc. two teenagers. We produce about 1.5 bags of rubbish a week.

You say your food recycling bin is tiny. Are you sure you’re not just using the kitchen one? The one that gets collected from outside is much bigger. If that’s getting full too quickly then you’re definitely wasting too much food.

We have to pay, and book a slot. It's only open for half the week during working hours.

My council winds me up because I have to pay for a business bin. Fair enough, it's my business ... but it's the same size as the family bin, they take the family bin away, and they empty the business bin into the same lorry at the same time. They also say all business waste has to go into it ie my recycling can only be family recycling, not business recycling. Make it make sense.

I suspect there’s a lot of “wish recycling” going on, probably from the same people who are wetting their cardboard to fit more in the bin and in the process contaminating the whole bin and rendering it unrecyclable 🤷‍♀️

Seems to be an assumption on the thread that all councils collect food waste (ours doesn’t), accept unlimited kerbside recycling (ours doesn’t), collects recycling weekly (ours doesn’t) and has an open, accessible tip (the one thing ours does right!)

It’s fairly usual to have fortnightly collections now. We’re a family of four plus dog and our bin is hardly ever full. We recycle pretty much everything we can including food waste. Unfortunately I think you need to look at your recycling habits.

Do you have elderly or single neighbours, chances are they put out half empty bins.

Just ask them nicely if you can top them off when they are out - I have been known to scurry along the road putting extra bags in bins at night!

Only do this of course if you have asked first.

Bins round here, it's the same people week in week out overfill their bins then can't work out why the bin men haven't taken it ( thick or what?!), bag up rubbish in the recycling bin then can't work out why the bin men haven't taken it, leave bags with the bin then can't work out why the bin men haven't taken it.

It's not the bin men that are the problem.

I also live in an area (suburban Melbourne, Australia) that collects rubbish one week and recycling the other, plus a green waste bin that’s collected every week.

We have a child in nappies and ended up paying for a second recycling bin and a larger rubbish bin.

It’s council cost cutting and it’s annoying but life is too short for me to struggle with rubbish bins every week so I just accepted the extra cost.

It’s about £350 per year, before they reduced to a fortnightly collection we would have managed without the larger bin and second recycling bin.

That must be fun in summer!

I just think your lifestyle needs a rethink.

Not being nasty, I get it that life is busy when you have young DC, are working perhaps etc but think about the money being wasted for want if investing in fixing the freezer?

I sometimes shop online but it can be difficult to plan the food week as the dates aren't always what you'd hope and you don't want two back to back similar meals. This is where the freezer is needed really.

We have very little food waste. Ours goes in our garden waste bin (which we pay extra for) so being completely honest, I don't always recycle food waste when I don't have garden waste.

I tend to cook from scratch but I'm lazy and will use frozen veg or prepared chicken so there is little waste. I keep bread in the freezer and just take out what we need. We also tend to be members of the clean plate gang...

Just have a think about how much money you are wasting and what you could do with that.

Where I live there's no food waste collection, and the list of items you can recycle is fairly limited. The only plastic permitted is plastic bottles, so no soft plastics, yogurt pots etc, no foil, no cartons, no shredded paper (not that it stops people from filling up the recycling bin with all of these things).

I don't have a wheelie bin, just a big communal bin as I live in a flat. I assume a wheelie bin fits about three bags? I can easily see how a family in my area could end up running out of space.

@Grammarnut
Why must it be fun in summer?
Rinse out all plastic recycling and anything non recycling that's food related.
Freeze any food waste as it is created, take out night before bin day/day of bin day depending when you put your bins out and pop in food waste bin.
General bin should not have any smell, because nothing . Nor should your plastic recycling or food waste bin - the food waste bin may be slightly damp inside from the ice congregating on your frozen bag, so simply invert to drain off and that definitely won't smell either. I actually find by the time our bins come in any condensation has usually dried off.

This....

Just another one on this planet that thinks everyone else is at fault but themselves.

But let's answer their question.

Bin men! Ridiculous
No...not the bin men in this case.

Because business waste isn't domestic waste

Business owners usually know this

Did you read the post? They took my family one away as a result. So I pay and get less. And they just chuck it in with all the domestic waste anyway.

How much waste needs to go in your black bin? We have black, green and brown wheely bins. Black bin rarely full as a result, Brown bin (food waste etc) fills the quickest. As all food waste is in brown bin there is nothing in black bin to smell and no urgency for it to be taken. We also personally recycle our glass and plastic bottles. People need to start taking responsibility for the amount of waste and also how much they are putting into landfill (black bin)

Ours are monthly and there’s 5 of us and we manage to not overfill. Likely you just need to recycle better or visit the tip,

Do your council do purple bags? We use them for nappies and I'm not sure but you might be able to use them for puppy pads too.
It's free, they don't need to be in the bin and they collect it with the black bins. Might save a bit of room .
You just go on council website to order them.

The rounds are based on how much rubbish the truck can hold.

if they take lots of extra bags then they will have to return to the depot earlier, which might mean others don’t get their bin emptied at all.

i bought a gadget that squishes everything down, that gives me a bit more room, but it looks like you may be throwing too much away.

I’m not sure how much rubbish a dog creates ? We have 2, & it’s just the odd poo bag that I’ve not thrown in a street bin), plus the bags from their food once a month.

Exactly! No couple with one child, and one dog, should have a full general waste wheelie bin, AND extra bin bags full of general waste at the end of the fortnight.. Not for every collection!

This. ^