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.

That's exactly it. We moved from an area with a very comprehensive recycling programme where we never filled our bin to one where they recycle almost nothing and we're really struggling with our bin (we do have nappies to deal with) while the poor massive green bin sits less than half full every fortnight because it only takes card and glass (and we don't drink).

I have a normal bin, we can put a lot in recycling and have separate food waste and I put the general waste bin out maybe once every 6-8 weeks (fortnightly collections) HOWEVER I no longer have children in nappies so that will make a huge difference.

🤣🤣🤣🤣. So funny.

so far responses to my comment are as expected.

This thread is why I love MN.

Our recycling bin lid got broken in the bin lorry. I ordered a new one online ( there was even a special box to tick in the reasons for the request bit which said. “ bin broken during collection”) it took eight weeks to arrive. I had the new house number stickers bought ready, so when I was woken up by the arrival of the new bin at 5.30 one morning I leapt out of bed and went out in my pjs to formally number my new bin in several places before some chancer pinched it!

Oh dear God, I just read your post and thought, “Crap, it’s Thursday!!!!”

<black bin day, fortunately they haven’t been yet, big thanks to Addictforanex for the post and OP - best of luck- for thread 😂 >

I suspect it’s this. If all councils collected everything recyclable and food waste for composting then you’d have very, very little to go in the main waste bin. Ours don’t take most plastics or food waste separately so people do tend to fill their bins.

As I said on another post, our council recycles 'fuck all' . 'Plastics' only bottles (drink/shampoo type). My neighbour now takes both our 'soft plastics' to the supermarket when she goes. But still no way to recycle yogurt pots (& for various reasons no I'm not making my own) or food waste (veg preparation stuff/banana skins etc)

I couldn’t cope!

My childhood best friend’s brother worked on the bins. One day, he hoiked a metal bin on his back, the bottom dropped out of it, and a load of maggots and bin juice went down the back of his T-shirt 🤢

We bought our own 240l bin when we became a multigenerational family of 4. DS is 6, disabled and still in nappies and that definitely takes the bulk of our bin space up.

We've never had any one question it and it's always emptied.

We did call the council to ask them if this was OK and they said not really but they can't stop us. They also couldn't provide us another bin without proof of DCs incontinence and the wait list to see our paediatrics incontinence team is so long we still haven't been able to see them.

Good luck today OP. I'm sure they'll collect it.

🤮

Don't you have separate bags available for nappies? I've lived in 3 completely separate local authorities that all have skinny bins, but you just get plastic bags (admittedly you have to pay for them) that are only for nappies so we have always managed fine even when we had 2 in nappies

Our council actually invites you to their plant to see what happens to the recycling & fairly regularly sends out 'notifications' such as 'please don't squash drink bottles as the machine then diesnt recognise them when scanning & they get put into landfill'.

that's annoying as the bins get filled up much more quickly than when washing milk containers in hot water and squishing them very small. But if they then can't recycle then, needs must...🙄

so our council don't 'allow' much in our recycling, but they do seem to do a good job of recycling what they do allow.

shame the various neighbours are thicker than mince & put old toys/clothes/shies/broken household items into the recycling bins! 🤬

I mean, it used to be jewellery. Now we’re forced to protect our ugly pieces of plastic.

No wheelie bins at all…just bags. It honestly blew my mind when I moved here 12 months ago (from only 8 miles away, same county, different local council though!) It’s grim!

Also, to rub salt in even deeper, I pay MORE council tax here too! 😩

I don’t think that’s a very nice thing to do. The "swapping out”, as you call it, is actually stealing.

This thread is brilliant. Patiently waiting for shiny bin result

I bought a new lid for my wheelie bin when it broke. On eBay, I think. Not expensive.

If some1 has suggested this already, please delete.
We have a ‘clinical waste’, bin. It’s collected weekly, & only has DH’s ‘pads’ which are just giant nappies. Maybe there’s something similar in your area which could take your nappies, reducing size of bin u need for ‘household refuse’?

I have a bin with no lid, I refuse to pay £43 for a new one when it was the council who broke it!

House numbers boldly painted on the bins (non-drip oil based gloss is best) are very useful.

Apart from reducing bin theft swapping, ambulances and delivery drivers use them to find houses where the residents refuse to have house numbers that can be read from the road.

OP, if you really want to disguise it you can buy all kinds of themed sticky pictures to put over it. Flowers, insects, birds.

I definitely couldn't manage with a smaller grey bin. What a random generalisation.

We're the same.

We recycle a lot - which is the aim - and compost the cat litter in the garden.

If you get really behind you can pay extra and coucil for a sum will take large items and so many black bin bags.

But we can order new bins and new recycling boxes on-line with coucil.

Dmum in her ares has to pay for green bin collection - we don't yet.