Council not giving extra allowance for those whose bin dates not changed

[Cozc]

Depending on your bin day and when Christmas falls, your bin day can change. Those who have theirs changed, council allows residents put up to 3 bags of black bags by their rubbish wheelie bin.

Then what happens in areas of the town where the bin days are unchanged, people are putting excess rubbish in street litter bins or fly tip bags. Litter bins are not designed for rubbish.

If you do host Christmas gatherings at your home, you produce the same amount of rubbish regardless of the day of the week Christmas Day falls on. Then tip has reduced hours for the Xmas/NY period.

My parents were able to their late neighbours’ wheelie bin. As both died this year. Probably won’t have the opportunity again as the property has gone onto the market.

If councils allow all households an extra allowance for rubbish, there would be less rubbish about

I'd like to! I just tried to book and there are no slots. Our tidy out isn't anything a charity shop would want - a whole bin bag of non recyclable run-out felt tip pens for example.

Our bin is collected fortnightly on a Thursday
our recycling is collected weekly in a Thursday

Due to the day when Christmas/BD fell this year, our bin was collected as normal last Thursday but won't be collected until next Friday (slipped by 1 day)

our recycling does miss a week, this week and will be collected on Friday next week (slipped by 1 day).

Depending on where you are in the country, your local authority how big your family is, and the normal bin and recycle collection days, everyone has a different experience. So, most of our paper recycling, I just put on the bonfire as we live on the edge of a village. Next week there will be less paper for them to collect.

we compost all our veg peelings so we never put that out for collection. Any meat or fish scraps is wrapped in newspaper and put it in our normal bin.

it needs a bit more thought and planning at Christmas, but it's not the end of the world! I just think of the Birmingham bin strike, how have they coped with so many months of refuse piled up, that is far more extreme than the minor disruption of the Christmas and NY fortnight.

No extra allowance here either - you are just expected to fit it in, or hold any extra back and pop it in your bin after collection. The next one will only be a 10 day gap, so no issues over a build up. We are doing a tip run to dispose of gift wrap as soon as possible much of it is not actually recyclable.

Many councils don’t recycle wrapping paper and gift bags.

I've gone over to a Biffa contract since the council started wanting everything sorted and a half dozen bins, got a huge red bin, chuck everything in and they sort it for recycling!

A lot of supermarkets pledged last year not to sell wrapping paper with either plastic coating or with glitter/foil to make them more recyclable. It did seem a lot better this year, all my wrapping paper was marked with the 3 arrows.

No point saying just buy recyclable wrapping paper when

• Typically the gifts you wrap end up in a different household. You need to ask people who gift to you to use recyclable paper.
• It's only recyclable if string is used instead of sticky tape so request that too.

If everyone did that it would be ideal but you'd still have the issue of recycling getting full.

Our collection days have only changed by a day or two (recycling has been collected) rubbish next weekend however my bins are over spilling despite recycling so much. Where we live we get one bin however you can apply for an extra bin in some circumstances, we have two bins and both are full when it’s not Christmas and yes we recycle everything we can! I don’t know where we go wrong. Have to make a trip to the tip this week I think 🤦‍♀️

but yes in answer to your question, they should allow for extra refuse at Christmas!

Yes there absolutely is a point in always buying paper only wrappings. We need to think globally not just locally. If everyone only buys paper only, then everyone benefits.

we all need to get better at preparing our recycling, ie stripping off the sellotape before adding it to the recycle bags, it takes a minute or two, but it makes it recyclable,

the only thing stopping improvements to recycling is people's attitude. If it all about finding excuses as to why we cant do it, then nothing will change.

DH and I have been doing it for years, not because it's trendy, but because it's out contribution. That doesn't make us eco-warriors or anything daft like that, it's small things that contribute to big things,

Our council works a four day week and has shifted our collection day by just two working days. Can’t understand why some people have had to miss a whole week.

These kind of responses infuriate me. (Sorry Caspian, you’re just the latest one I’ve seen.) Can posters really not understand that other people might different to themselves?

What goes in my black bin? Well, overnight pull ups for my youngest who isn’t dry overnight, used sanpro, non-recyclable packaging, like shampoo bottles, mushroom trays, meat packaging, non-recyclable gift wrap/bags eg foil bows, paper with foil (why do people still sell it?), non-recyclable plastic packaging from toys, other packaging that is mixed, eg cardboard boxes with plastic, etc.

We’ve been hosting a large group all week and we’ve already had to do a tip run. Of course people have more rubbish over Christmas if hosting, it might not necessarily be much more rubbish overall, but I now have several other people’s rubbish as well as my own to deal with. My (smaller than it used to be, collected fortnightly) black bin is only just big enough for normal rubbish from my family of five, there is lo spare capacity for extras.

As well as food wrapping we have Tetra Pak cartons, cat litter, cat food pouches, sanitary products and those are the things I can think of off the top of my head. We're usually fine for a two week collection but if it went to four we'd struggle. We recycle what we can and use the food waste bin as that is collected weekly but can't cut down any more on rubbish.

That's unlucky. Nearly all the tip slots are available at my nearest one all week.

@Danceparty55 - yes. We have a child, and there’s 3-7 of us throughout the year depending. The black bin just doesn’t get full. I don’t know, we just all rarely have stuff that can’t be completely recycled or composted. Just a bit of non compost food waste and other odd bits I guess. Nappies etc were washable when Ds used them.
We try and buy less packaging where possible, and what we do is recycled mainly.

What goes in your black bin?

Mainly food. We don’t have food waste here yet (and it’s going to be a nightmare when they do from a pest perspective ). We live in a very urban area with urban foxes, rats and mice to contend with. Most people don’t have gardens so very few people do composting.

Sorry @WutheringTights Im probably going to infuriate you now but to your point

non-recyclable gift wrap/bags eg foil bows, paper with foil (why do people still sell it?)

the question we need to ask is not why are they still sold, but why are we still buying them, right?

my purchasing habits have changed massively in the past 5 or so years, I don't buy any foil bows, you can get paper ones in shop, or not use them at all. We can't keep blaming the shops, we are the consumers, so our power is far greater. If we say No More, then they will have to change,

I’m shocked at how many councils don’t recycle everything! Ours even collects thin plastic now, and my medication packets I take to my local Boots. That helps a lot.

My council put flat no to extra bag on top, even when my bin day moved from last Thursday to this morning.
The excess rubbish needs to go to the local tip. Luckily i don't need to book a slot

You can't compost all food waste, and even in our garden the compost bins get full and there is no more room. Our council is only starting a food waste collection in 2026.

My MiLs council put a flat no to wrapping paper, even to recyclable one

We wrote to our local district council to complain why they can't accept single use plastics. Their response was a lame excuse that they can't collect enough to make it economically viable to sell in the open market for recycling companies to recycle.

We have someone in our Parish council who professes to caring about the environment so we keep mithering them and hopefully they will eventually sort this out as the bordering county does accept single use plastics. It's impossible to avoid them, because the supermarket use them so much. Many supermarkets are now using molded cardboard like egg boxes for certain fruit and veg, but then you find them reverting back to plastic, it's a running battle!

We have 2 general waste and 2 recycling as we are a big family and all 4 are full.

Ok maybe it’s different where we live. But Tetra Pak packaging ie milk cartons is washed out and recycled here. So are soft plastics. It’s all collected. Just has to be clean ( this is only every 6 weeks so it would stink storing dirty plastic in summer)

I don’t buy things that are tricky to recycle. Things like cat food I swapped years ago to small tins so they are washed and recycled. I don’t think shiny gift wrap or bows are really sold anymore, most in the shops locally are paper based.

Glass we have to take to local point but it’s near supermarket so pretty convenient. Glass bottles and yogurt we pay a fee for at purchase and it gets refunded when we return to supermarket depot.

Is this true about wrapping paper? That really puts me off. I hate the increased use of paper over Christmas anyway - cards and wrapping etc, but now to discover that it's not even considered to be actual paper...

I wish this were true ... we have no food waste collection and very limited in what is accepted for recycling in our bin (plastic bottles - so no yoghurt pots, trays you fet fruit in etc ... glass and cardboard). If I could recycle plastics and food waste, I'd have very little. As it is ....