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.

So it’s a you issue. Sorry! But you’re not recycling as expected for a standard household, largely everyone else manages it.

Have you checked through local council website whether you are entitled to a bigger general waste bin, now you have a baby? We were and it instantly fixed our woes.

You need to recycle everything we also have a baby and just manage to keep everything in one bin with no overflow even at Christmas. My neighbour has three kids and also just manages, sometimes the bons slightly open but it is possible to do.

There's always one...

We had a elderly neighbour who burned his rubbish in the bin. Cue a visit from the Fire Brigade.

Apparently, he was used to burning rubbish in the bin in the days when bins were metal and his brain hadn't caught up with the times.

Eventually he was moved into a care home where presumably he couldn't burn anything.

A lot of councils are going to 3 or 4 week collections and I bet those are the ones that have put the council tax up the most. Enjoy

Better things to do than save the planet? It really takes almost no time at all to squash a box.

Ours is 3 weekly and the nearest tip we can use is now 28 mile's away. Closed down local one and aren't allowed to use one in a different council area. It is a pain, having to clean everything for recycling but it's just something that has to be done.

I put rubbish in loose or smaller bags BC you get more in, just putting bin bags in doesn't maximise the space. I use a cardboard sheet on top to press it down. We can just go 4 weeks, 2 adults , 1 toddler, but it's a struggle. We could put tins in the recycling,but you have to rinse them out and it's faff or they go in wet and ruin the cardboard so I disagree that it's useful recycling. We use about 5 cans a week and I fill them with tbags etc so they don't really take up space.

You can compost food waste, but we have a rat problem so I stopped that.
Other thing is dry packets, eg the outer crisp bag etc, if we are struggling for space I put those aside and dump them in a passing waste bin. They are light and clean.

We have a fortnightly refuse and a fortnightly recycling. Next year this will move to three weekly for refuse and more recycling in between. At the moment we have no separate food collection but will next year, plus separating recycling more and adding bottle collection.

OP you need to concentrate on recycling more and stop whinging. The rest of us manage.

I think also one of your problems in Havering is that they still collect black sacks, rather than general waste going in a wheelie bin. Its quite old fashioned to still have operatives lifting bags and throwing them in a truck.

However, its almost better for the resident as you can put out multiple black sacks and not "fill the bin", so not sure why you are making such a fuss. Just store your full bags securely in a bin or shed and put them out on rubbish day.

It’s incredibly expensive to dispose of general waste though, much cheaper to get rid of recycling and can get money for some of it. My council sells wood, metal, glass and cardboard. Food waste goes to composter. The general waste costs £££s though. So they try and reduce.

Exactly and in Scotland you can add Education to that list. The amount allocated to waste collection will be a shockingly small percentage. This information will be on your Council's website. Councils have national targets to achieve for recycling and reducing landfill. The collection cycle is designed to help achieve those targets. However, we all have a responsibility to recycle and deal with our waste properly.

People who put rubbish on top of bins are the bane of my life.
I am constantly picking rubbish off my drive and out my garden which has blown from rubbish left by others.
I'm not just talking a bit of paper here and there. Because of the way the wind blows I get all the loose rubbish.

Me and my husband have had this discussion recently about why the bin men won't take someone's rubbish on top of the bin and what do we pay our council tax for. It is to do with health and safety but the daft thing is the council clean up team will come out and move the rubbish so that's another vehicle moving the rubbish the bin man could 🤦

Our cat used to have half a tin of meat a day the rest was left in a tin, you can/could buy plastic lids that fit onto them to stop any smells.

If worried about storing the tin in the fridge you could decant to a plastic tub like the chinese takeaway type.

I agree, you do have to have a bucket somewhere but putting the nappies into the washer doesn't take long. A modern heat-pump dryer isn't that expensive to run and also takes seconds to load, or a heated drying rack works well and is very cheap to run - I use one for my DGC's washing. I used the synthetic washable liners, so it didn't matter if the nappies dried a bit crispy. Smelly poo went in the loo so nothing nasty to go in the bin either.
I had four DC (last was born in 1985) and disposables were available then but I only used them if I was out and about so didn't want to cart dirty terries about.

I collect the sift plastic packing and films and take them to Tesco. This has reduced our normal waste/ rubbish substantially! Where we are (Scotland) they do general rubbish, recycling, glass bin and garden (extra). But the soft plastics I gather are equally a black bag worth every 2/3 weeks for 2 of us. A family would be even bigger. See if your local Tesco does it. There’s normally a big container thing near the door. I just drop them in on my way shopping.

We have a really excellent recycling service that takes everything except soft plastic which I can recycle at the supermarket or return to an online grocery store. We live on an estate so are very lucky to have large communal bins for card/paper, tins and glass, similar to the ones found in many large supermarket car parks.

Landfill rubbish goes into large communal bins too, and we're always shocked to see just how much recyclable rubbish goes into these - cardboard boxes that haven't even been flattened for example. People just can't be bothered to separate their trash, even if the recycling bin is just a minutes walk away.
I appreciate that disposable nappies are ultra-convenient but apparently they one of the biggest contributors to plastic waste globally
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/20/disposable-nappies-plastic-waste-diapers

I put my soft plastic inside the carrier bags when I return them to my online grocery store too.

It’s not really about health and safety, for the bin men anyway. That’s an old tired trope.

Bottom line is that the amount of waste we are creating has gone up massively. We buy so much stuff with too much packaging, we throw ridiculous amounts of food in the bin, we buy cheap goods then throw them out and replace them. Asking people (and businesses) nicely to think about this hasn’t worked over the last 20 years.

People, and businesses, (generalising) don’t want to pay extra for their excess waste and won’t engage with recycling unless they are forced to.

I’m generally quite an eco friendly person. I haven’t been on a plane in over a decade. I recycle everything I can. I used disposables. At my peak I had a toddler and twin babies in nappies. I was so painfully sleep deprived. I couldn’t take on more stuff. I know people say it’s just a minute but when you are already overwhelmed you can’t add more.

I really think it should be up to manufacturers to consider safe disposal for the products they bring to market. Disposable nappies, period pads have similar issues. For many years it was a struggle to recycle aplastic drinks bottle or milk carton as manufacturers made them out of three different plastics one for label, one for lid, one for bottle which couldn’t be recycled together. A change in legislation ( I think it was the Glasgow cop) pushed the manufacturers to take responsibility which is why we now have bottles that can be recycled as one.

Totally agree @Lovelysummerdays we need far for pressure (penalties) at source. If it’s import taxes on fast fashion, plastic do-dahs, on manufacturers at source or retail distribution centres then I’m all for it.

If it becomes too expensive for them to sell us over packaged goods or stop them putting 1/3 of the fresh food on the bin before it even gets to the shelf then they will very quickly find another way.

I used to work for the council and this was my area. Binmen are told not to take extra waste as if they do it once or for one person then everyone wants extra waste lifted. It’s the slippery slope arguement. Some people are excellent recyclers, some people will never recycle anything, lots of people recycle because they can’t fit everything in the bin
otherwise.

My council collects bins, recycling (mixed) and garden waste weekly with no limits. Heavily subsidised parking in council car parks too. It was honestly one of the reasons I was keen to buy in this area. It's not common but it is possible and I'm happy to pay my council tax and re-elect them every time.

That's normal.

Every 3 weeks and our won't take the bin of the lid is more than an inch open.

I watched them leave next doors the other week because it was too open.