Help!! I missed the general waste bin day. What do I do??

[CarolingCarol]

As title suggests!

I have no idea how I’ll survive 1.5 weeks without a wheelie bin since ours is totally full.

what do people do in this scenario? Our neighbours all have young families and have very full bins come collection day, with lids struggling to close. The nearest tip is 30 mins away. 🙈

@Flatandhappy
Im Scotland our council will send them back even if you say you forgot. All this oh the bin guys note whose bin is missing; nonsense unless every bin has your door number on it, which they don’t.

Do you live on your own? Our recycling is filled to the brim in a 2 week period but as a family of 4 our blank bin is at least 3/4 full and if we missed a collection and had to wait 4 weeks between pick ups it would be a struggle. I don’t think many people could go 4 weeks and be fine, you’re definitely the outlier.

Don't do that. Some councils are monsters who'll fine you.

Pay a company to empty it. £15 ish

I now sort the plastics stuff you can recycle at the supermarket. That's further reduced the grey bin volume.

I tend to use the supermarket or petrol station bins. I have also noticed that often bins have been removed from lay-by areas too

There is no soft plastic recycling at my local supermarket. There may be one at the bigger supermarket 15 miles away (haven’t been in years, most of my shopping is done online) but even if there is I’m not sure the 30 mile round trip especially to get rid of it would be particularly economical.

We can recycle plastic now which I think helps. Even before that we'd rarely be half full on bin day for a family of 4. We don't buy much stuff and recycled soft plastics in the supermarket.

We all have different buying and use habits. We don't use kitchen roll (as a example) or wipes as we have washable versions of both.

Report it as a missed bin, they may come bsck out.
Put it in strong back bin bags and take to tip.
If you dont have a car/cant do tip run
Compress it.
Put excess in strong black bags and store ot next to bin and gradually get rid of it one sack at a time .
Ask neighbours if they have any capacity in their bins next bin day.
If you have any large public bins near you put some in there

Ours is every three weeks, has been for well over a decade. We’ve never had to do this. Family of four, couple of pets. We recycle everything we can and compost.

My general waste would barely fill a shoe box, and that's fortnightly. There's only me though, and I don't need nappies yet!

The council here have a very comprehensive recycling scheme, and I take the soft plastics and batteries which they don't recycle to the supermarket for recycling. Even the family of 5 across the road manage with just one bin, although they have two recycling bins.

Not round here they don’t; as if they have the time to tick off the house numbers on the bins they’ve emptied!

I think I would squash down what's in there as much as possible, make a serious effort to minimise the waste you generate before the next collection, store the rest in sturdy bags to add to future collections if need be, and put small amounts in random bins as you go.

People saying councils can fine you for putting stuff in bins. Assuming you are relatively discreet and it's a small amount of non identifiable stuff, I can't work out how they would know..?

As welll as the obvious services like education, child protection, adult social care, roads, libraries etc, council tax also includes costs for police and fire & rescue services.

My council used to put a leaflet in with the council tax bill that had a nice pie chart of where the money went. Waste collection and disposal was a tiny sliver of pie, with education and adult social care being by far the biggest.

What was better or worse 50 years ago would make for an interesting thread imo, although I realise it would be pretty much limited to us old farts.

I'm in the "almost everything is better now" camp, personally.

I bet you have very little food waste with 2 labradors though!

We have two tips and the nearest one open bags and they all stand there with sunglasses on and their arms folded looking like Terminator wannabes. With proper arsey looks on their faces so we go to the one further away where they are helpful and friendly.
We do recycle as it happens.

I dont drive so the tip is not an option for me. I have a relative who visits twice a week and his flats have huge public waste bins. He takes a black bag of rubbish away on each visit. Nothing drippy, just plastic cardboard and yogurt pots etc. This means that I can go far longer without having to put my own bins out. Do you have a relative with a car who can take rubbish away and put it in a public bin in a park or garage. Sometimes you just have to be a bit inventive. Are there any single people in your street who would take a bit of extra rubbish in return for a favour like putting their bins out/collecting them.

As others have said, go to the tip if it’s convenient or bag up rubbish in strong bags for the next collection.

Our bins are collecting every 3 weeks and I almost missed it last week 🤦‍♀️

How do you quantify what is and isn't food waste, though? I've been wondering that as our council (like most, it sounds) are preparing to start collecting food waste.

Is it purely food that was edible but was left over or went past its best? Does it include the less tasty parts like vegetable peelings, egg shells and such? Or are dogs just not fussy and will happily scoff the lot anyway?!

Yes, all food related waste.

From March 2026, it's a legal requirement for councils to collect food waste

2 adults. Next door have 4 adults.
We both have 6 containers : -

Garden waste (neither of us use it)
Paper/card/plastic - fortnightly
Glass - do
Food bins, inside & out - weekly
Anything else, fortnightly.

Even with double the people, their black bin doesn't go out very often.

I would put it in my mum's bin (5 mins away in the car) but I'm lucky that way

Great idea 😄💡

Rhetorical question, but what did the worker expect to find in a bag of general household waste? A kitchen bin could have rotten meat/fish, used cat litter, nappies, all sorts of gross things in. No one keeps a separate hazardous waste bin for their period blood... must've been really embarrassing for the woman

Obviously it will vary from council to council but its all done on a computer as part on the tracking system on board the truck. It’s not someone with a sheet of paper writing down addresses. The driver usually does it whilst the loaders a busy putting the bins on.

Plus most bin lorries have cameras fitted these days too.