to think reducing general waste collections to every 3 weeks is unrealistic?

[HazelMember]

The council has reduced general waste collections to once every 3 weeks instead of twice a month. The general waste wheelie bin is already half the size of a normal bin.

I already recycle as much as possible. Cardboard plastics food waste glass tins everything. I am genuinely trying to do the right thing environmentally. But even with all that the general waste still builds up especially with a family.

Three weeks feels like a long time to store rubbish. I keep seeing just recycle more as the answer but I am already doing that. There is not much left to recycle.

How are people actually managing this? Are you just producing less waste somehow or are your bins overflowing too?

AIBU to think this change does not reflect how households actually live?

No, it isn’t. Most do in densely populated residential areas. Some have twice per week collections. Those who do not have daily collections for what they classify as “general” waste and collect this less frequently also have to do far more frequent collections for biological waste because it’s mandated in law, and any EU countries that don’t collect such biological waste daily all year round (generally because they have colder winters) tend to drastically increase the frequency of collections of biological waste in summer for precisely the reasons I’ve mentioned.

As I said, not a single EU country as far as I’m aware permits collection of general waste as infrequently as 3 weekly UNLESS it is mandated that biological waste is collected separately and far more frequently (not just food waste) when many UK Councils are being permitted by our Government to inflict this on UK citizens - leaving excrement and sanitary products rotting in bins for 3 weeks at a time creating a public health hazard - which they could not do if the UK was still an EU member. As the UK is not now part of the EU its citizens are being subjected to these unsanitary conditions because UK citizens are not protected by Article 22 of EU Directive 2018/851.

If you do actually have an example of an EU country which does similar (allows biological waste to remain uncollected in residential areas for 3+ weeks) then please do share your example. Presumably the citizens of that country would have reported it because their country/ Councils would be breaking the law and they could therefore take legal action to enforce more regular collections.

I'll try harder.

Yes. It reminds me of those cold weather threads. Where people’s heating only goes on when it is 12°C and even then they are sweating in a T-shirt.

Yes, the public is of course to blame! You must do better.

No, no food bins here/no food recycling. And many posters have mentioned the awful stench in the summer/the heat, not just me. 3 or 4 weekly collections is simply not good enough. We ALL pay council tax - some more than others, they better keep them fortnightly.

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Exactly. Some people are really not thinking (even remotely) outside of their own situation. Pretty narrow minded.

Ours is only collected every four weeks and has been for 9 years

It's a nightmare. Luckily our neighbour is a single woman so doesn't mind us using her bin if she has space left.

That's gross.
I'm all in favour of nonrecyclables being collected more infrequently but food waste should always be separate and weekly. Our nonrecyclables bin hardly ever smells at all because nothing smelly goes in there.

I’d totally agree with this, I had twins and toddler in nappies and tbh life was hard enough without adding in having to wash / dry / store dirty reusables on top of everything else.I’m sure someone will be along to say it only takes minutes but those are minutes you don’t necessarily have when you are dealing with multiple tiny people.

😆

And as for 'you made the CHOICE to have multiple children.' 🙄

Ridiculous isn't it? People are still producing the same amount of general waste, whether they are putting it into the recycling centres/skips/tips, or whether the council collect more often and THEY take it. The councils are pretty narrow minded and short sighted doing less regular pick-ups!

Those threads really annoy me. And why do there have to be 10+ of them every single year, like these people have never experienced winter before or noticed that some people feel the cold more than others? One wonders how they have survived to adulthood with such an inability to grasp that not everyone is identical to them.

The competitive coldness is presented as though they think it’s some kind of virtue and we should all be carrying out a daily endurance test in our homes, and they are apparently oblivious to how dangerous cold conditions are to young children, the elderly or many people with medical issues (quite aside from being extremely unpleasant for anybody who doesn’t enjoy being freezing). I’m convinced these are the type of people who would have been Puritans in centuries past and tried to ban Christmas carols, Christmas decorations and mid-winter feasting etc. “I don’t like this so why should anybody else have it?”.

If they love being so cold one wonders why they don’t just move to the arctic circle and build an igloo to live in: at least with the minimal internet access in those regions the rest of us wouldn’t have to endure so many posts every year from people who apparently lack the capacity to understand that age, height, weight, circulation, metabolism, certain medical conditions and sex (as well as other factors, I’m sure) impact people’s capacity to withstand cold and being able to tolerate it isn’t a “moral virtue”.

These same people are probably also the ones banging on about how “unbearable” it is when we have a few days of actual summer when the temperature goes above 25 degrees and expect huge sympathy.

Someone in this thread actually responded to another poster with “having children is a choice” when the poster had stated that it was a bit much to ask her to pay a huge Council tax bill each year that ostensibly covers waste collection while also using reusable nappies when she has enough to do already taking care of multiple children and holding down a full time job, or demanding that alternatively she should take rubbish to the tip herself because the Council don’t want to carry out to an acceptable standard the waste collection service for which she is paying already via Council Tax. Apparently, now people are meant to plan their family sizes based on possible future changes to waste collection services by Local Councils!? The mind boggles.

There appear to be some very strange and clueless people on Mumsnet these days.

Yeah, me and DH are 60-ish, not elderly but 'senior' age, and we never fill our general waste more than 40-50%. But no way would I be allowing neighbours to use our general waste bin to put all their extra shit in, even if they did offer to bring our bin onto our drive! LOL. That's a small price to pay to regularly dump their crap in your bin all the time - bringing the bin up for you. I can bring it up myself ta. 😎

@LivingInMinecraft I won't quote your post as it's a bit long-ish, but I agree with every word. There are always loads of posters on here who run as fast as they can to a heating thread, to claim they always have it set at 9 degrees C or less, and never higher, and act like anyone who has it on higher is a moron. They do seem to think having the heating on a single figure is some kind of moral virtue. And yes they ARE the same ones who whinge about it being too hot when the mercury hits 20 degrees C in the Spring/Summer! 😆

There was a thread on here a few weeks back, where at least 50% of the posters claimed they never had their heating on overnight - even when it's minus 5C to minus 10C... or colder. The thread was asking what temp do you leave your heating on overnight when it's well below zero celcius at night, and at least half of the posters said they don't have the heating on at all overnight Even when it's 5C to 10C below zero. (Or colder.)

I don't know anyone - in real life - who doesn't have the heating on when it's below zero C, even at night. They have it at on low - like 8-10 degrees C, but it's still on when it's freezing, or below freezing temps. I find it batshit that some people don't have it on (well, they claim they don't!!!)

Same with this thread, some people saying they only half fill the general waste bin with a family or 4, 5, or 6, and it's only collected once every 4 weeks, and how on EARTH do you manage to fill a general waste bin in TWO WEEKS?!

Ya know what, some people just do. Some don't, some do. And it doesn't make you a better person if you produce less general waste. 🙄

awaits the rush of posters claiming they never have the heating on at night, even when it's minus 10C! 😂

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If you read my responses you will see that I have not disputed any of this, only your assertion that most European countries have daily bin collections, and that communal bins are not the panacea they you seem to believe they are, particularly if the European country you are in is not one of the “most countries”.

I note that you have seen fit to add “in densely populated residential areas” since.

Yes, that was astonishment at the daily refuse collections. Having skips at the end of the road sounds like a better idea, but it wouldn't work for people with mobility issues.

All of my comments were about how unsanitary these policies are in residential areas, going back to my first comment on page 1 of the thread. This is not something I have just “added”. Clearly my reference to “most countries” was comparing like for like between densely populated residential areas in the UK and densely populated areas of other countries, not comparing densely populated areas of the UK to someone living on top of a remote mountain in another country miles from anybody else.

Clearly if you live on a remote farm of many acres then the public health hazards which I have been describing (maggots, flies, rats and disgusting smells in residential areas) would not be relevant.

As explained to you, even in rural areas in EU countries the biological waste which was the subject of all of my posts on the thread is required to be collected frequently.

If you have an example of an EU country that allows biological waste to be combined with residential waste and collects this on a three weekly basis then please specify which country it is. I’ve asked this several times now and you’ve not been able to provide an example. As stated, the reason for this is that these other countries had the sense not to leave the EU and are their citizens still have the protections granted by EU law which include prohibiting such unsanitary conditions, so this would be illegal in EU countries and their citizens would have legal recourse to force their Governments not to do this.

I specifically stated in my posts that different arrangements are required for people who cannot access the communal neighbourhood bins.

Sorry, I read through your post too quickly.

Our council haven't collected any paper or cardboard since before Christmas and won't until next month, so I took a load to the tip this morning, along with everyone else. Last year it was glass, plastics and cans that didn't get collected due to the snow (to be fair we did had a lot and it staayed for 10 days). The supermarkets had to cordon off the bottle banks because it was getting ridiculous.

It’s so tiresome, isn’t it? Along with the deliberate attempts to misrepresent what other posters have said.

Perhaps they missed the point that this forum is meant to be a discussion board and a source of support (when required), rather than a channel for them to attempt to boost their own egos for spurious reasons by telling us all how oh-so-virtuous they are.

I also tend to find that such pious people are usually huge hypocrites. What springs to mind for me when I read such post are the “Christians” who looked in disgust at “Borat” when they found what appeared to be a homeless man in need of help lying on the doorstep of their church on a Sunday morning. They stepped around him as if he had the plague without it even occurring to them to help him or check if he was alive and found his presence there a huge imposition. 😆🤦🏻‍♀️ I don’t think they even realise how transparent their hypocrisy is to the rest of us.

Ours has been every 3 weeks for years. It has never been a problem, even in the height of summer. We rarely have even 2 full bin bags. Recycling though, is a problem and we don't have kerbside glass collection yet.

Same here. It must have a particularly significant impact on families who cannot afford a car to travel to the tip and people with certain disabilities that preclude driving.

They've also introduced more frequent nappy/incontinence item collections here- people have to stick theirs out in brightly coloured bags. It doesn't affect my family but this not only means there's clinical waste on the pavements but also that individuals with continence issues have to let their street know that they are using them!

YABU. We're on 3 weekly and our wheelie bin went out yesterday - it was about one third full. That's a household of 3 people and one pet. Our recycling wheelie bins go out every 2 weeks completely full.

We generate very little that won't go into the recycling bins.

We meal plan, so there's virtually no food waste. Certainly nothing that's gone out of date, just the "leftovers" from what we've not eaten on our plates which usually isn't much as we don't cook/serve large portions, and save anything unserved (i.e. half a chicken or half a roast etc) to be used the next day.

We tend not to "snack" on rubbish food so very little in the way of chocolate bar/crisp/biscuit wrappings etc. Tins, packet foods, and plastic yoghurt/butter/milk/juice containers all go into recycling after a quick rinse if needed. Obviously, cosmetic/toiletries/shower gel/shampoo containers can be recycled so don't go in general waste either.

We just have a small bag of "waste" from the bathroom each week (wet wipes, cotton buds, floss, tissues etc), and a larger bag of kitchen waste we put into the general waste every 2-3 days containing the leftover food waste, kitchen tissues/paper towels, wet wipes, etc., as well as other general household waste such as dud pens, foil/plastic pill packet inserts, kitchen foil from the oven, etc.

To be honest, we could probably go to general waste collection every month and still wouldn't fill the bin.

On threads about cars and driving when posters say they don't need a car because they have great public transport/a bike/walk everywhere I often wonder how they get stuff to the tip.

I must admit, that being at a different life stage to most posters and no longer having pets, I had forgotten how much room nappies and cat litter took up and, being post menopausa,san pro as well, although tampons never took up much room anyway.

Do countries with daily refuse collections have higher taxes?

Our general is every other week. Food every week and garden waste extra paid for every other.

We have an extra large general bin and two recycling bins. They are bursting full days before collection. We already put out extra recycling and got permission to use an empty houses bins.

If they made it further apart there would just end up being more fly tipping and more people burning waste late at night than already happens. One neighbour is often got some fire with black smoke going and the local green has a new fly tip as soon as the last is cleared.

Half our city actually now cannot use the local recycling tip as they have moved to proving you are resident via council tax and some parts of our city are actually a different borough so those people would now have a 40 minute drive rather than 20mins and I hear a horrible booking system.