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.

The communal bins at my flats are emptied weekly and are usually overflowing then so it'd probably be a sodding nightmare here as I seem to have a lot of stupid neighbours.

For us personally, it'd be the food waste bins that would be the biggest problem rather than the dry / recycling waste which I could stash in my garage.

To be fair to the council, now they can get the trucks out they have picked up a lot of waste. Out bins were emptied last week and people on flat bed lorries are going around collecting excess bags.

Lots of the city you wouldn't realise there was an issue. The student areas had loads of rubbish lying around and overflowing bins before before the strike, they always have done. Lots of the areas where there is a lot of rubbish dumped had problems with fly tipping anyway, it's got worse, it's not new.

We had a strike for around 3 months two years ago, our council organised private skips at different areas for people to drop of rubbishba few weeks in. Where I live the local community association orgsnised a private bin lorry twice, where we live is semi rural, we all paid £10 per household and got our bins lifted on 2 occasions. Our local recycling sites were also closed and we couldnt go to other council areas sites, you have to show ID. We managed the best and kept the recycling, cardboard etc until they got the dispute sorted and back to normal.

I would take the rubbish and recycling to work. They have large bins. I already have done when I have had a lot of packaging to recycle which won't fit in the wheelie bin.

It is easier and nearer than going to the tip.

I’ve noticed the poor people in Birmingham who
have a skip outside their house seem to suffer more.

It looks so bad overall.

We'd be ok as I have a car and the tip is fairly close by. I imagine our village would swing into action, helping each other out like we did during covid, with people offering to help others out who don't have cars. If I'm driving to the tip with one bag of rubbish, I may as well pick up a few others and take them too.

We are doing ok so far. We have had two collections since the strike began, and booked two slots at the recycling center. They are not taking the garden waste bins, and the paid service for those has been suspended, so we will eventually have a fair amount of green waste. We can't get a slot at the recycling centre this week, but I suspect that is more due to school hols and people having time to go there. Fortunately we don't make a lot of rubbish...maybe one wheelie bin in a month?

Our tip you don’t have to book but you do need a permit that lasts a year and to get a permit you have to of registered your car reg and council tax number. Outrage from a certain area as technically they shouldn’t have been using our tip but theirs is like an hour away compared to our 20 minutes. So if they had bin strikes they would find it harder.

Did not think about sending it to dh’s work they have the huge private bin collections.

I have room to store recycling, we do tend to put out a bit each week, but I could easily go to every 3rd week for recycling if I did a bit more squishing. But I suppose we could burn cardboard/paper on our open fire or have a bonfire if really necessary.
Plastics I take to the supermarket, so my actual bin I only bother putting out every 4-5 weeks or more, if that, again if I squished more I could last 3 months or more, I really ought to try it, as I've not put the actual bin out since February at the moment.
We don't have much food waste, all I tend to put out is bones, we compost veg waste & have a dog so not really an issue. I tend to save this up in the freezer and put out every 4 or 5 months anyway. I would simply not buy meat with bones.
So wouldn't be an issue for us. But we don't have much waste anyway.

These days you need a licence to dispose waste professionally. (Where I am) So you can take rubbish to the tip for free but a professional would need to pay per load. The only people who used to do it were gardening contractors as compostable waste is really cheap.

It’s a big issue people charge to take rubbish then flytip it in odd places. Costs my local council hundreds of thousands per year.

I wouldn't mind going to the tip with most of the dry non-recyclable rubbish; but people aren't going to want to have to put bags with sloppy food waste, other slimy waste and used nappies into their cars. If forced to, they'd probably put each bag inside 18 more, so not great for overall plastic waste.

Yeah, we're lucky here that you only need to book if you have a trailer or are taking a sofa as there's different rules in Scotland for soft furnishings.

We even have Sat/Sun and late evening opening hours in the summer although that does mean they are closed a couple of days through the week as obviously the staff don't work 7 days a week.

I would cope although it would cost me. I work for a family business and all of our waste is removed by a commercial company which is compliant with the new business recycling rules. So I would just bring my rubbish into work.

I can because I did two or three years ago. It wasn't that hard, once you accept that there is a pile of bin bags outside your property it doesn't seem out of the ordinary to keep adding to it. I certainly never considered keeping the rubbish indoors, at least when you're inside your home it's normal unless you're actively looking at the pile of waste and fretting about it.

The main thing I noticed is how much more waste I could fit in the wheelie bin if I used my bodyweight to squash it down. And I got better at squishing bottles and packaging up as tightly as I could.

A business needs a waste carriers licence just to even transport waste. So as a construction firm we have to have a licence to transport rubbish from one of our sites in our truck to our premises where it is collected by a commercial company for recycling.

The thing is, though, that most people would say that council rubbish collections are the bare minimum.

Council tax pays for lots of things - including numerous things that many people will never personally need to use - but bins are the one 'beacon' factor, I'd say - and the one thing that everybody uses.

Rightly or wrongly, if people who are child-free, are fortunate enough not to need adult care, don't use parks, don't walk along pavements at night, live in leafy non-crime-ridden areas etc. are told that they must pay for other people to choose/need to use these services, there's going to be a lot of unrest.

Drivers are already furious about the amount of VED that they pay (as well as an element of the CT, I believe?) when the roads everywhere are in such an appalling state of repair.

When I moved into my house we had no bins for three weeks until they were delivered. It wasn’t that bad. Every few days I’d go and put a bag for live in a public bin.
I don’t think you’re supposed to do this but I had no other choice and I wasn’t leaving them in a brand new house.

Well im due to have a baby soon, and nappies with warmer weather and bin strike would not fare good at all... Other than that it's a bi-weekly collection in our area anyway, so stretching it even longer really would not be nice.

Yes, I don’t disagree, and I have 2 small kids who will use the public school system.

I’ve said for a while now that council tax is essentially now a social care tax for the elderly and kids with SEN - something like 60-70% of all council tax goes on this area alone, so every household is making something like a £150 contribution directly to this every month (and this doesn’t take into account core spending on the elderly and SEN in the form of benefits, pensions, hospitals etc).

This is why demands for more to be spent on social care/welfare will fail, as I think there will be a revolt if people earning 25k are forced to spend yet more on propping up other people when they can barely prop up themselves. I think saying people on benefits should be entitled to holidays as a human right etc is madness when they would happily take yet more tax from working people who can’t afford a holiday themselves.

I actually said to DH long before this all started that our bin collections would get less frequent and we’ll start to see the return of rats and infection. It sounds Dickensian and I think he was sceptical but he noted last night at least where Birmingham is concerned I’m right! I did a stint working in LA and the amount spent fulfilling their statutory obligations to 1 child are staggering - tens of thousands per week in some cases, on just one child. Some families cost the LA hundreds of thousands a year in special school places, therapies, bespoke packages, social work etc

Our bins often don’t get collected as our back street is regularly blocked by cars - we’ve gone 6-8 weeks in the past. We managed fine as we both drive and the tip is only a mile away.

Personally I would be able to take it the tip several times a week. I'd help out neighbours where I could. I live in an area with a lot of fly tipping. The general excuse is, I don't own a car. Personally if you are replacing furniture etc you need to work out how ro get rid of the old, because dumping it on the street isn't on.

There are ways around it, though - even if illegal.

Our county tips turn away any commercial vehicle - which includes an odd-job person with a Fiesta van, even if that doubles as their only personal household transport, with their own domestic waste - but there's no restriction at all for non-commercial vehicles.

We have friends with a VW minibus - they refer to it as 'the van' because that's essentially what it is: a van with windows and seats - but the back two rows of seats are fully removable.

They use it for their own household waste and when helping friends and family with their own (household) waste; however if anybody were thus inclined, it wouldn't be difficult to buy a similar cheap old vehicle, leave it unmarked, and charge many desperate people on an 'ask no questions' basis to take it all to the tip as free household waste, time and time again.

Not that I'd condone this, of course; but if councils are not delivering one of their most basic essential services for which people have already paid council tax, I think you could sympathise with the people's predicaments.

It's ironic that, if a rogue trader took people's money in exchange for agreed services and then didn't provide those services, the council trading standards would pursue them; yet in this case, effectively by the same logic, the council are the rogue traders!

Yes - that's a very good summary of the situation.

It does also then raise the question of elderly people having to sell their homes to pay for it, if they need to go into care homes in their final years.

If they object, people will ask "Well, why should other people pay for your care needs" - but if they feel they can justifiably argue that they have already paid for it themselves in their council tax for several decades...!

I would find it hard as disabled and can’t drive. I expect as with many things it hits the people in the most deprived areas hardest as less likely to have access to a car and neighbours the same.

Live in a rural area and a rat ate through a neighbours wheelie bin. Double bagging rubbish will not even deter cats never mind rats. Just so you are aware not to be argumentative 😊