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?

If you have incontinence contact the council. We have a white bin for my mums pads that is picked up by a specialist company for medical waste.

And for people who don't/ can't drive? - Sorry, just saw your last sentence. This is an issue! I would be happy to go on foot but I have no access to a vehicle and taxis aren't an option (not that I could afford that either!)

Do you have a single or elderly/mobility impaired neighbour who has room in their bin and would allow you to use it? In return you could offer to put out and return their bin so they dont have to bother. A win-win situation.

I live alone so I dont produce much waste. I dont have access to a car. However a relative visits twice a week. He takes away a black bag of general waste and puts it in the communal waste bins for the flats where he lives. If its heavy he just leaves it (under cover of darkness) in the waste bin in the park.

You just have to be creative.

It’s fortnightly here but the bins are tiny so the second bin bag sometimes has to be squashed down a bit depending on how long we’ve left it before it goes out. We must have massive bin bags compared to some as two is about doable, three then they’d have to be half full or the lid would be open. Sometimes they take an open bin, sometimes they don’t.

It’s purple for general waste then we have a blue one for paper and cardboard and a big grey one for metal and plastic which are taken once every four weeks each (alternating between the purple bin collections). Food waste is weekly at least. Still didn’t stop the fun maggot summer I had one year.

The grey one used to have glass as well but our council decided it was costing too much so they installed public glass bins all over the place for people to use instead. I’m disabled and struggle with that so we pay a private company £5 per month to take it away for us and we have their box at the top of our driveway where they collect it from.

There are also green bins for garden waste but they have an annual fee and we don’t have enough garden waste for that so it goes in our purple bin.

Not all areas have a food waste bin, so a lot of mine is nappies and food waste. Also we seem to have so much food packaging which isn’t recyclable

Have you birthed multiples or had kids in close succession? Our large bin used to be overflowing with nappy bags. Some households need more space.

@SunnySideDeepDown no, my two are long out of nappies now. Regardless, as other posters have said, if you have 2 or more children in nappies then you can request a larger bin. Or use reusables.

I think this is coming to us soon as well. It's going to be a nightmare, particularly for recycling. For the general waste, its already an issue every 2 weeks in the summer as it just stinks.

But what i find most frustrating is the council guilty-tripping everyone by arguing it's about the environment, when the reality is that's it's just about them saving money.

Can't it be both? About the environment and saving money?

Also. Council tax paysfora lot of stuff. Care, roads, social housing, planning, leisure facilities, parks, etc. Am sure most people use most of these. All underfunded and much closing.

Everyone complains when council tax goes up. Everyone complains when the services they receive are insufficient.

I don't understand why shit goes in the general bin. Whether that's cat liter, dog waste, nappies, incontinence. Its a question of hygiene. For some of this you can request special collections. The rest? The council doesn't collect my horse shit. I have to deal with it. And it's a lot.

For those who don't have food waste collection. You will soon. Made a huge difference to us. What can be recycled goes up before black bin collection goes down.

What else causes smells or risk of rats and flies? Food packaging is almost all recyclable and should be washed first.

We are the same - family of four, no nappies any more and no pets but we would struggle to go three weeks. Our council doesnt recycle tetra paks (they used to) and there’s no separate food waste bin. Our tip/ recycling centre is a fair distance away. Seeing people’s responses, it seems the differentiator is having a food waste collection. We did used to compost when we first moved here (we have a hot bin) but the smell…! Also slugs got into the hot bin so we didn’t use the compost it produced either! So. Composting was a bit of an expensive and smelly exercise. I anticipate the council could only make this work by giving us food waste collections.

Two of us here most of the time with two dogs and two house cats. Dd home in holidays. Bin is fortnightly and it’s full, mainly of cat and dog poo possibly. If we went to 3 weeks we’d be fucked. We both work full time, they shut the nearest recycling centre and it’s a 45 min drive to the next and I hear reports of people queuing for an hour to get in.

We both work full time, I don’t have time.

I don’t have anywhere to put a big industrial biffa bin and not sure why i should pay £45 a month for one anyway.

i can see why people flytip to be honest. I hate seeing it but when the service provision is so poor i guess people get desperate. It would certainly be easier for me to sling a bin bag of rubbish out the car in a country lane nearby 🤷‍♀️

And we recycle everything, recycle bin is always full, we have two. One for cardboard and one for glass and plastic. I often end up burning excess cardboard and paper to get rid of it. We have a compost bin in the garden and food waste goes in there.

We are fortnightly and usually have to make a trip to the tip as a result.
Anyone remember the good old days of weekly collections and bin men slinging bins over their backs?

Yeah its a joke. But still our council tax increases 😡

I’d have to start putting all the dog poo in the village dog poo bins I guess. That would save some space in our wheelie bin. Or lift the manhole and put it in the sewer which I know you’re not supposed to, our neighbour has been doing this for years.

Having multiple children is a choice.

It’s ironic that recycling is about saving the environment, yet the centres make it difficult for those on foot.

This thread is making me laugh. ‘We are a family of 16, and can barely fill one bin bag a month. I don’t understand what other are doing..’ 😏

It's absolutely shit, OP. I do a weekly tip run now - our main bin is full within 3 days and often we have so much recycling it overflows into the main bin as well. I've just factored a quick weekly tip run into my schedule as we just can't wait two weeks each time.

And this can’t be good for the environment if everyone is doing a weekly tip run, sure the council might save money on sending a bin lorry out but they’re still ending up with the same amount of waste to sort out.

Some of us are fortunate to live in parts of the world which still have weekly rubbish collections - although the bin men don't even have to touch the bins now, they just drive the truck!

It makes a surprisingly huge difference if you collect flexible plastics for recycling (we have to take ours to the local co op or Tesco).

agree with nappies and sanitary products in there three weeks is too long

We've been on 3 weekly general waste collections for around 10 years now. As long as you do use your recycling bins it isn't an issue. The only time of year we struggle is Christmas.

I already recycle everything I can. The general waste bin is half the size of a regular bin.

@HighStreetOtter Exactly that. Also, fly tipping in our town has increased dramatically since the weekly bin collections stopped. It's quite telling that the tip always has a large queue of people no matter what day or time you visit and it's mostly people with general waste bags.

The elderly neighbours have larger bins because they have medical waste and theirs are already overflowing so I wouldn't ask them.

I have no doubt people can adapt but surely it depends on how many DC you have, if you have pets or someone elderly living you who needs incontinence pads etc.