could you cope if there was a bin collection strike in your area?

[Goldyyup]

I have been following the bin strike in Birmingham and the huge fly tipping as a result of the lack of collections.

How would you manage if that happened in your area? I don't have the space to store all the rubbish.

It has made me realise what an important job they do.

It boils down to who has access to a car really, as you can drive your rubbish to the dump

The flies and rats would send me into psychosis though, honestly so definitely couldn't cope

No. I have enough issues with the bins in my street and that's without them striking. It would be an absolute nightmare.

Can you imagine how big the queues would be at the tip if the bin men had been on strike for weeks.

They'd be bloody huge and you'd just want to avoid it

We’d manage a couple of months, we don’t appear to generate that much trash. Food waste we’d compost ourselves in the garden, the wheelie bin might get a bit stinky with the rest but we’d not be at the point of having to flytip like many people in Birmingham are doing.

Some areas of Birmingham are fine so presumably people are taking stuff to the skip.

Our local dump isn’t set up for individual drop offs so we would be screwed. Maybe they would
be forced to open and allow us to do private drop-off, even for a fee. Can’t imagine how that would work logistically.

I remember bin strikes in Brighton about 10 years ago and it was like Armageddon! The bit of town I lived in at the time had communal bins in the street because there’s so many flats and I didn’t have a car so it was a case of just chucking it onto the ever-increasing mounds of rotten rubbish. Seagulls, foxes and rats ripped the bags the rubbish was strewn everywhere. Buses couldn’t get past, it was chaos. If I recall correctly, it was maybe a fortnight and I remember at the time realising how precarious our infrastructure really is. It was awful!! 🤢

We did. For about 7/8 months from Christmas 23-24.

Didn't really see it as such big news as what's going on atm like.

Must not be as important.

Assuming the tip was still operating as normal, I would take my rubbish there a few times a week.

But, pretty sure the unions would encourage the staff in those sites to go on strike as well or it would quickly create a cottage industry of people paying local van owner to collect waste and take it to the tip?

Assuming I had to store the waste, I would be very careful with food waste (mainly veg peelings) to e.g pop it in empty milk cartons etc and double bag it etc, recycling would take a big hit but hopefully that would stop rats and smells.

Black bags would be lined up in my garden.

No, as I live in a flat above a shop. We have to leave our rubbish on the street anyway and it's collected twice a day. Would be horrendous if it wasn't collected for weeks and I don't drive so no taking it to the tip.

We are fortunate that we have a lot of space with no neighbours and a bonfire where we can burn most things but tins and glass. We compost food waste anyway. It would be a very different story if we lived in a town or village. It’s exactly why during things like the plague or vermin-spread outbreaks the people in crowded towns and cities died and the landed gentry in their big country houses did not.

You have to book a slot at ours, ever since COVID, it's a pita. It's only 2 minutes from me though so there's that. Wouldn't be able to use it during a strike though as they always picket at the entrance.
We usually have our bin strikes peak tourist season and the city ends up looking awful.

My daughter is in uni in Birmingham and her area is disgusting, she says you can smell the rubbish when you get off the train! Most students don't have cars with them so no option to drive to the tip. Also her street is all terraced houses so the streets are full of overflowing wheelie bins.

We'd be ok. My mum lives a 10 minutes drive south of us in another county and I have friends living in another local authority 10 minutes north of us so we'd just take our rubbish elsewhere to dispose of. We have a garage that's only used for storage so we could store lots of non-food rubbish there without creating a health risk.

It wouldn’t be much of a problem where I live, we’d all take it to the tip, not many people without transport in my village and tip only about 3 miles away.

I meant to add, there was a bin collection strike lasting months last year in the next LA to us. The tip was closed to residents so driving to the tip wasn't possible.

We'd be able to drive to the tip. Im surprised no one's offering a private service to cash in, or is it because they wouldn't be allowed to take large quantities to the tip?

Have garden, will burn shit. And clean excessively to keep the rodents from our door.

I live in Birmingham - we’ve just been doing tip runs each week. Annoying, but feel lucky we have a car and time to do this. Can imagine if you don’t have the transport how frustrating it would be

easily.... our family of 4 creates less than half of a black bin liner of rubbish a week.

Plenty of packaging is not ever bought by me to dispose of. I recycle as much as possible (by making bi-monthly trips to the tip for things like tetra packaging, glass and foil)

We have an excellent compost which deals with all of our garden and fruit / veg waste plus tea bag and egg shells and paper bags etc. We grow a LOT of our fruit and veg too, which helps avoid buying any packaging.

I try to avoid disposable products and opt for washable / refillable and reuseable instead

My black bin could not be "full" for several months.... (but we put it out every other week anyway, because i dont really want rubbish hanging around for weeks, and can see why no one else would want to live with months of rubbish lieing around them either)

Dh would take it to the tip or burn it.

Good question. I think this will be a much more common issue as councils, one by one, go bankrupt and are forced to scale back their duties to the bare minimum.

We don’t have a garden but in process of moving to new house; where I guess we would compost food waste but try to keep it to an absolute minimum. Everything else, food packets particularly from meat, would have to be disinfected and thoroughly cleaned before being dried and stored in the garage. Nappies would be an issue, I would basically have to quickly convert to reusables. I already use reusable sanitary towels and have enough to last a whole period so that shouldn’t be a problem.

It’s a mess ! Another meeting and nothing agreed. Embarrassing on the council’s front.

Where we live most is compostable in our own garden or recyclable. For this reason the recycling would build up and I would probably store it in th shed until the strike was over. Really therefore wouldn't be an issue. More rich nutrition for the roses in the garden !