So tomorrow is the day of the bin-off.

[Anonbindrama]

So the bin men broke our bin. Just gobbled the lid. Hardly that deep.

Rung the council to request a new lid. Nope, don’t do them. Ok.
New bin.. yes but we can only give you a 140L skinny bin (previously a normal size 240L).
We said sorry that won’t work for us. Don’t worry we will buy a bin.
We are not allowed to buy a bin.

Much confusion. Multiple calls. All jobsworths. Stalk the street. Many an unbranded bin so I think we will be fine. Buy a bin. But ours is shiny.

I have thought about rubbing mud on it but then that’s not nice for the bin men so shiny it is.

Will they take it? Big mystery.

And if not then I have no idea what we are supposed to do. But I will worry about tomorrow.

I think it is quite common to pay for garden refuse. We do. We just put a paid for sticker on the side of the bin. They do have a list of paid for addresses anyway.

They enforce it here by not collecting additional bags, they put a sticker on and leave them. You can apply for an extra bag for nappies or they will give you up to £100 towards reusables. They take unlimited recycling- paper and card, hard plastic, glass and tins and food waste. I think it's fine. There's four of us, we have cats and we never fill our black bags.

@Anonbindramawhat time does the bin lorry usually get to your road? So we can all check for an update 😀

I work for a council. Bins are the one thing that send everybody completely doolally.

Firstly, all councils are different. You can check yours to see if they collect medical waste, confidential waste, nappies etc.

Most councils will allow a bigger bin for families of 5 and over.

Most trucks have CCTV, as well as information about what type of bins you have, whether you need an assisted collection etc. So we check to see if your bin was where you said it was on collection day. Your part of your contract with the council is to have your bin out by whatever time they tell you in the place it should be ( 6:30 where I am.) Dealing with people who forgot to put their bins out and who expect us to just return for them as of that’s not a major undertaking in itself, takes up quite a bit of my day.

Government funding for local councils has been reduced. They have to find the money to pay staff, run trucks, fuel trucks, buy new bins, mend old bins, pay for agency staff when people are off sick/ on holiday from council tax, rates and things like parking.

There are of course times when things go wrong, and yes even I sometimes think we could do more, but the amount of people I speak to who when they complain their bin is full and they need a bigger bin also admit to never using their recycling bin because they ‘can’t be bothered’ is quite significant.

That said, I really hope your bin is collected! Come on Shiny Bin!

This sounds great, I would love that!

I’m in Germany and there’s plenty of scope for bin drama here too.

Every bin in our area has an RFID chip and an address label. When the lorry comes round, it weighs your bin and logs how much waste you’ve produced to your account. Sounds fair on the surface (no worries about bin thieves) but everyone’s absolutely paranoid about CF neighbours putting their bags into your bin in the dead of night, leaving you to foot the bill. In fact, the very first conversation I had with our new neighbour after moving here (from a council with a much more relaxed system) was a stern warning to never, every touch someone else’s bin because you would immediately make yourself look very sus indeed.

If you have kids in nappies or an adult with incontinence issues, you can apply for a small rebate - but only if you provide a bloody doctor’s note for the latter to the council. Red tape galore.

The fees are based on how much waste you produce and how often you put your bins out. Collections are only fortnightly anyways, but the whole setup means stingy or skint people end up pushing it to monthly or even longer intervals so our otherwise quite pretty village stinks to high heaven in the summer. All in the name of being "green". 🙄

Good Luck! Cornwall council took all the old bins away and gave everyone new, smaller bins. I have steps and cannot lug a bin up the steps, so am allowed a Seagull proof sack. (I had to request this on line with photographic evidence of my steps). I had to have a new sack which was smaller than the old one, but comparable to the capacity of the new bins. They only empty the new bins and bags.

We moved house and inherited two black bins which both get collected fortnightly, that's 480l of rubbish if needed! I cannot tell you the feeling of contentment this gives me.

Can't wait to find out what happens OP.

@TheyFuckYouUpYourMamAndDadno wheelie bins at all? Just bags out on the street? This is effing madness.

I imagine that while the council says they won't take a bin not provided by them, the bin men will not give a fuck and will be too busy to be checking brandings on bins.

Our bin men are fab. The lid got broken off our green bin, I took fucking ages to do anything about it so it was full of water by the time I reported it. They came much sooner than I'd anticipated (was planning on trying to tip the water out, you wouldn't believe how heavy it was) but I just came home to the old bin gone and the new bin there. I felt incredibly guilty that they had to deal with that.

A seagull proof sack.

☺️

Before the late 80s every household had one small metal bin. Imagine that.

Don't leave us hanging - have they taken the bin?

Good luck shiny bin I hope you're emptied today.

We are long past nappies but we put less than one 40l bin bag out a fortnight. I actually keep meaning to buy a smaller kitchen bin as it starts to smell before it's full.
Hope your bin gets emptied 🤞

Only here for the update! Our black bin is only ever half full but at least once a year we need the full size.

How do some people produce so much waste? No wonder the environment is screwed.

All these posters rooting for Shiny Bin. He’s a binfluencer.

OP doesn’t want them to BUY her a bin, she wants them to ACCEPT the bin she is willing to buy. It’s not hard, is it? This is exactly the characteristic of a jobsworth, trying to make people’s lives unnecessarily harder just because they can.

Err why not just change the bin liner before it gets full?

I have been waiting patiently for an update since I woke up and checked this thread at 6am.

Have they taken shiny bin??

Shock horror-don't all bins have council logos engraved on them? Fellow MNers can we compile a list of which counties do brand their bins, for no reason whatsoever?

I had a small paring knife from Amazon delivered in a box within a box, full of paper packaging to stop the smaller box moving about in the bigger box. The bigger box measured 15” by 15”.

The majority of my recycling bin is from this ridiculous amount of packaging.

@EquinoxQueen read the OP properly before you berate anyone.

You might lose that Public Sector Shoulder Chip if you actually listened.

Our black bin gets emptied every other week.
If the Council change that to once every three weeks, I'll just pay for someone to empty it every week.
I'm already paying extra for garden waste.

c'mon shiny bin. 🤞