Council announced rubbish collection soon fortnightly, not weekly.

[Oblomov]

My bins will stink in the summer. my bins are already 3/4 full each week. how is this going to work ?
rats. amggots. what can i do to help myself. i don't want to run my rubbish to the skip. i pay huge council bills. why should i have to ?
They re-cycle weekly and collect rubbish weekly, two days later. currently thye only collect tins, botttles, newsapapers.
but i also collect plastic and cupbaord and take that to the re-cycling centre myself. no hassle/ so them collecting this from now on, is fine, but doesn't change much.
my bins will still be the same full, becasue i re-cycle as much as i can anyway. so if 3/4 full each week, they will be over flowing fortnightly, surely.
and why do they smell. what am, i doing wrong.

i am cross that the council are doing this. i am sure they are trying to encourage re-cycling. re-duce costs. but i already do alot.

'Here in France, rubbish is collected daily.

Why do you put up with fortnightly rubbish collection? Especially given the council taxes you pay. I would have organized a rebellion. '

And this place is filthy, too.

But you know how Brits are, Cote.

I think it depends on how much the council is prepared to recycle.

Our local council will recycle plastics (all forms - bags, bottles, packaging etc anything as long as it is not black), clothes, paper, card, tins, foil etc. We compost ourselves and so actually struggle to fill a wheelie bin (family of four) once a fotnight and have never had smelling bins. But really, once you take out the compostable stuff and everything the council recycles, what's left?

If the council is not good on recycling, then I can see that there could be a problem

It's not really about how much council tax you pay...

A simple fact... we are fast running out of space in which to bury our rubbish.

Another... we are using resources faster than they can be replenished.

We have become far too accustomed to throwing everything we don't want away without realising there is no 'away', it has to go somewhere.

Take responsibility for yourself and use less, then you will throw away less. It is possible for some then why not all?

I know a bit about composting, if you do it right you won't get rats and it won't smell - if you want some pointers feel free to ask and I'll help if I can.

I hate having a fortnightly collection especially as they forget to come about 50% of the time - penalty of being rural apparently

I do pay for an extra bin as have 2 in nappies. However they now want to come and go through my bin to check I am recycling everything I can. They are quite welcome to go through 2 weeks of stinky nappies.

We've had it for a fair few years too.

It certainly makes you recycle more. (and use disinfectant)

Fruitloaf - It is related to how much council tax I pay! Why, when I pays lots every month, do they not offer a recycling scheme that allows us to recycle even half of the packaging that has the recycling symbol on it?

I am taking responsibility for my waste:
-I compost ALL biodegradable waste myself
-I go to Aldi for my fruit and veg because there they understand I don't need my cucumber wrapped in plastic etc
-I use the freecycle network to give away items that I have no use for anymore, rather than putting them in the bin

But still my bins are full.

Mjin - No I don't actually use my compost either, its just a means to an end to reduce the amount I have to put in my bin.

Why, when I pays lots every month, do they not offer a recycling scheme that allows us to recycle even half of the packaging that has the recycling symbol on it?

Because, even though we pay lots of council tax, it, combined with the government budgets afforded to local authorities, is not enough to pay for everything that a local authority has to pay for.

They have to make cuts, and if the choice is between fortnightly rubbish collection over weekly or reducing family support for struggling families, keeping social work vacancies open for months before recruiting to save on salaries, etc etc, then boo hoo, recycle more, drive your rubbish to the tip if it bothers you that much.

Yes it's horrible having rubbish hanging around, I have lived in a flat with no outside space and no communal bins, I know how gross it is, but in case you hadn't noticed, the country is almost bankrupt and local authorities even more so, weekly rubbish collection isn't a priority.

We have fortnightly collections, like pinkmook, its domestic waste one week and recycling the next.

I do find the bin gets very full and sometimes I take some rubbish to the tip as my bin gets so full. Having said that I do throw all food waste away so composting would help.

I have also had some problems with smells and maggots when it gets really warm. I have found that double bagging rubbish, being very careful not to have any loose rubbish in the bin and making sure the bin inside and top is clean helps to dissuade the flies from laying eggs.

I have fortnightly collections of rubbish and recycling, plus once a month garden waste collection.
Although my recycling bin gets full and I have to take any extra to the recycling bank, my black bin is never filled, even during the 9 week strike I only had to go to the tip twice.
I can't understand how people manage to fill those huge wheely bins in just 7 days tbh. Where does it all come from?

We have had fortnightly collections for ages - recycling one week, black plastic bags of the rest the other week. All food waste in a green bucket collected every week.

No problems here, no smells (well only in the bucket but that has a lid) and no problems with rats or cats

we have a small garden. so no need for composting. it backs onto a huge communal area. but am happy to look into composting. thanks for offer fruitfrocks.
wonder whether council will offer to collect food, will check that out.

but re fruitlocks other points re burying rubbish and disposable nation. i don't mind re-cycling. but i do wonder if the stuff i take time to re-cycle actually gets shipped off to the far east.
i mean the fatc is thta no business in the uk are fighting over getting hold of our recycleables, are they. it is not a viable business idea, no money in rec0cycling. else everyone would want our rubbish. and no one does.
so recycling is all very well. but it doesn't solve the problem does it.

and as someone else said, how evionmentally sound is it iot belach your bins and have to drive tot he tip, all the time.

all makes me wonder.

Eric - My problem with that is that our council tax was put up and the flyer we all got explaining it was that this was due to the 'fantastic' new recycling scheme we were getting.

Taxes went up, new scheme (pre credit crunch etc) is crap, like no thought went into it.

We have waste one week and recycling the next. It's awful in the summer with maggots, agree with double bagging though which does help.

Winter was bad as well it was about 6 weeks we had rubbish piled up because of the snow and bank holidays took them so long to catch up. Couldn't go to the tip as we have no car so rubbish just piled up along the street.

We don't normally fill our black bin but recycling is full sometimes that I just stick it in the black bin buried at the bottom

Don't think it works tbh

But it is so hit and miss isn't it? I am in one of the cheapest council tax areas in the UK and rubbish is collected twice weekly. Once they missed our bin out and I called them and they came back to get it later the same day. So I can see why people who pay more are a bit pissed off and getting their bins collected much less frequently.

I think what helped us to focus on reducing landfill was the fact that we lived approx 200 yards from a landfill site and all the shit that goes with it. Despite the fact that they company doing the landfill had reached the end of their contract and were supposed to be returning the countryside to it's natural state (well as natural as it could be with an a enormous grass covered pile of rotting waste) they applied to extend the site and their license.

Talk about rats and stinks? We couldn't open the windows in the summer. Add to that the blown litter everywhere, hedgerows smothered in plastic waste and roads covered in foul slippery sludge from the the carriers and we were glad to reduce our landfill and recycle.

It still feels pretty pointless though, when the waste management company is shipping in landfill from the other end of the country.

i thought i was doing quite well with my re-cycling.
i do alot more than some people you know !!

Our council will provide as many recycling boxes as you want, and if you've got too much to fit (or oversize cardboard) you just put it out with the box and it goes.

Fortnightly collections here. No problem in terms of overfull bins as almost everything except nappies and meat waste is recycled here. Maggots are a huge problem in high summer though. I double bag, I spray the bin with nasty chemicals, I hose it out after it has been emptied and still we get them.

Same as Grimma but the list of what they will and won't take is so bloody confusing I haven't got the time to be checking it everytime I need to throw something away. So I basically recycle most things with the recycle sign which means I cannot leave a box out as the dustbin men will check it (and leave it behind if one item in there is incorrect) so I have to use the waste bin when the recycle bin gets too full.

As a side note, the recycle boxes are awful, the rubbish blows everywhere and makes everywhere look dirty and a mess. Recylce wheelie bins are much better

Still we all have the microchiping to look forward to .. and the extra costs that will bring so maybe we shouldn't be moaning just yet and counting our blesses.

You all seem to be missing the point.... recycling should be the last resort.

If you reduce how much you use in the first place you will have less to get rid of.

I repeat if some people can do it then why can't everyone?

If you don't need compost yourself offer any you produce to your neighbours or people with gardens.

A wormery is an alternative as it enables you to compost cooked kitchen waste too.

I lived with a courtyard garden but composted everything I could - a note in my window offering it free to anyone that needed it generated enough interest that I could always pass it on to someone. Occasionally I even got given some fresh veg as a thank you.