tell me about your council and it's non collection of open lid/ extra bags please

[grumpypants]

Council have just introduced fortnightly alternate recycling/ black bag waste collection plus weekly food bin collection. Today, extra black sacks not collected. Anyone else have this? Now I have to drive to the local waste site (v ecofriendly ) and I am obviously not alone - on the walk to school several bins had open lids/ extra bags.

We have fortnightly collections too, and have had stern warnings about not collecting extra bags or emptying overfull bins.
There are separate waste food collections which are weekly and we also compost a lot too which includes waste from our gerbils.
Saying that our wheelie bin is pretty full by the time it is collected.
(There are also collections for paper, glass, some plastics, metal and fabric, I also collect and recycle tetra paks myself)

Weve had this since November already recycling loads and still have left over waste it's horrible we dont drive so are stuck with this extra waste which is hardly hygenic, mabye if we didnt have to pay £1350 a year council tax we could afford to run a car.
It just baffles me that every week we have to cart out this huge green bin that is near enough empty and we get a smaller bin to last every 2 weeks
I really dont see how this is helping the enviroment.

Its easy to say dont fill it then but we do and so do many others. I always recycle and even walk to the nearest recycling centre for me its the problem of things that are broken like now I have a broken plastic toy box outside that I am unable to get rid of, just leads to people dumping waste elsewhere if you ask me.

We have a wheelie bin with a weekly collection and it is only ever half full. We have monthly collections of cardboard, glass, paper and plastic.

Our council is not precious over bin lids closing and will take extra cardboard and paper if it is in the correct bag. (they issue specific bags for all the different types of waste.

I love my council - the last one where we lived was pretty inflexible over everything and the bin men were foul mouthed.

Round here if you want an extra bin you have to fill in a waste diary for a month to prove your entitled to one and pay £20-£30 for it. You can only apply if there is more than 6 people in your household so usless to us

bibbity - you can buy large compostable bags but I tend to just lob whatever straight in the garden bin - mostly straw or sawdust.

We have weekly bin collections - a black bin for "nromal waste" and a similar sized blue wheelie bin for all recyclables. They won't take extra bags but they don't bother about the lids closing and will take cardboard for reclycing. I would be furious if we went to two weekly bin collections, given that I pay approx £2500 in council tax every year.

Fortnightly for all bins, we recyle all our food waste and our bins are never full.

I think you should consider ways to reduce waste rather than complaining about trips to the dump.

Can I ask what sort of receptacle do you get to recycle food waste? I'm neurotic about mice and rats so is it vermin proof and sealed? Not keen on maggots either.

W get these small green biogradable bags that we then place in the large green bin they are very flimsly though and nearly always split I am dreading summer though its going to smell awful, going to bleach my bin out next week.

We get a small compostable bag lined bin that goes next to the sink- cereal box sived, then those bags go in a much larger version of same with a lid that clips down.

We have been told that animal bedding (straw, hay, sawdust etc) cannot be recycled which is a pain as our teeny black wheely bin (it really is small!) is full of nappies and guinea pig 'waste'. It hasn't been too bad in the winter, but I'm dreading the fortnightly collections in the summer.

We have 4 bins that have to go out on seemingly random parts of the month. The green 'garden' waste bin always has just 2 small food bags in which seems so pointless. We are good at recycling and if we could just find a way to get rid of the animal waste then our black bin would just have nappies and the odd bit of food plastic in.

I don't understand why councils all have different policies on what is classed as recyclable

''I think you should consider ways to reduce waste rather than complaining about trips to the dump.''
That's SO helpful. Six of us, one in nappies, normal black bin collected every fortnight. Not all food packaging or clothes packaging is recyclable. we don't have a compost bin so pet litter goes in the black sack, as does sanitary stuff. If I composted in the back garden there is no flower bed to put it on. We recycle what we can, and we use the food waste bin.
I AM p*ssed off about it - council tax is huge, I am trying not to use the car much, and this seems ridiculous. If our green/ food bins were empty I could see that maybe they thought we were just chucking stuff in wherever.
Thanks for the replies tho.

No need to be so arsy - if you have a food bin, why isn't all your food waste going in there - I put all my food waste into the green bin which is picked up from the council - I have no need for a compost bin.

Yes council tax charges are huge but the more rubbish we create the bigger the billa will get - why should people who are careful about recycling waste subsidise those who don't?

All the food waste goes in there - not the packaging tho. I can't put pet litter in it tho, and I think I am quite hot on what we can recycle and what we can't.

Have you phoned the council to discuss this - quite often they have a helpline to work through the initial issues with changing the collection frequency - they may even have a recycling person who will come to your house, assess your situation and offer some suggestions.

yes, i did that this afternoon - altho i am not sure you would approve of their solution - they are issuing a bigger bin...

Well we have two weekly land fill collections and the week in between, plastic, paper, card and food waste. It's a really good system IMHO. Once a year they give you two bags of compost back for your garden from the food waste.

They tend to be more hardcore when they have just set up the system to force people to try and comply. But ours are quite relaxed if your bin is open now and again (not every time).

I would leave your packaging at the supermarket IIWY. I try really hard not to buy overly packaged stuff as well.

Thanks - obv i have no issue with recycling; it's the stupidity of leaving rubbish at the house where the resident is clearly complying and forcing either flytipping or a car journey.

grumpypants - we have a bigger bin (historical reasons - I have no idea why the previous occupants got one but ho hum). We can have unlimited recycle bins (we have to pay £20 for each though) and there is very little (bar glass) you can't recycle here. So our bin is entirely nappies and plastic film wrap, which is not too bulky.

oh, thank you - I might find out a bit more.

Sorry as this is going to be a long post (and by the time I am finished typing it the thread will probably have moved on quite a bit) but I feel passionate about rubish!

We have (provided by council)

1 black wheelie bin : for houshold wast (wrappers...) collected every other week (the black Wheelie bin is slightly smaller than the other ones)

1 brown wheelie bin : for plasic bottles, cans and glass collected monthly
1 Blue wheelie bin : for cardboard and paper collected monthly

1 green wheelie bin : For garden waste and food wast (we have a also recieved a little green basket with bio degradable bags that we keep in the kitchen and then bas go into big green wheelie bin, collected weekly

I remember that people were complaining (before scheme) that if bins were collected fortnightly, it would be terrible because vermin would get to the food waste, bla bla bla. Council took that worry on board and made the food waste collection go with the garden waste weekly. People are now complaining that it is stupid to have a weekly food waste collection as it is less volume than the rest of their rubish. I am puzzled by that, there is really no pleasing some people.

Now WRT not collecting bins that are overflowing, our council made an exception to it for the first few weeks of the scheme to let people get use to it but now does not collect overflowing bins with open lid anymore. I agree with that because the point is to make people thingk about reducing their rubish rather than them going to the tip themselves with extra bags. I think we have to start thinking "how will I reduce my wast enough to fit in that bin?" rather than "how will I get the excess to the tip myself"

I do not want to ask people what they put in their bins to have so much rubish but am actually wondering . Without being a "recycle freak", by just putting things in the correct bin, it has reduced our waste dramatically and for us (family of 6) a black bin collection every other week is really fine.

We have weekly black bag collections but no limit on the number of bags to take (no wheelie bins allowed here) and...

1. blue bag for cardboard - they won't take it if it doesn't fit in the bag so you have to either cut it up or keep it for the next week.

2. Food waste bin and indoor caddy. They gave us an initial supply of bags but then we have to buy more (cost £3.99 for 20 in the post office) or you can wrap in newspaper (we don't get one).

3. Recycling box for a huge number of things inc glass, aluminium foil, tins, plastic bottles (apparently food trays as well, but not black ones ).

4. Green bin that used to be for cardboard as well. Collected fortnightly but you have to pay a fee each year for collection. We gave ours back once they stopped collecting cardboard because we weren't producing enough compostable waste.

Basically, once we've filled our recycling boxes/bags everything goes in black bags to landfill. We could probably ask for more recycling boxes (were on the waiting list for over a year for a new lid) but we really don't have space to store any more.

Then there's the whole "December" issue, where they don't bother coming if it's snowy/icy/slightly damp because they don't grit the roads and you end up taking everything to the tip anyway. They had to get the police to organise traffic at our local tip for several days because of this.

They're not terribly helpful at the tip either - they'll happily sit there under their little umbrella, listening to the radio and watching you struggle with bags etc. Unless you have more than the limit of bags of soil - in which case they'll be straight over with a helpful little leaflet telling you why you can't bring it to the tip (opening hours 8am to 4.15 weekdays and 8am to 3.45 weekends all year round - household waste only, no vans except with permits).

our council has fortnightly alternate collections of waste and recycling. It only takes extra bags at christmas but doesnt seem to mind about lids being closed. We are also allowed a free bigger waste bin for families of 5 or more although we were able to buy one (before they improved what could be recycled).

we have 3 bins - black for household waste, blue for recycling (excludes glass at the moment but will take cardboard) and brown for grass cuttings, plant waste (only collected March to November) etc.

It does depend on what you can recycle all those wine bottles go in the black bin as some councils won't collect e.g. glass

we have fortnightly recycling/nonfoodrubbish as well. We have a wheelie bin for each but if you put out extra they take it
We had 2 recyling bins and a load of cardboard boxes today