The Grumble Thread - No energy for a full on rant.

[Socks]

The same day we find out the council tax has gone up we find that the normal bin is moving from a weekly to a fortnightly collection.

Now luckily we only tend to generate a small bin liner a week so we'll be fine but a lot of the houses round here have a bin that'll barely close every week.

I'm sure this won't result in more littering and fly tipping.

One thing to bear in mind is that local authorities in England get about 80% of their budgets from central government.  Over the last twelve years successive governments have chosen to cut local government budgets, with the biggest cuts falling on the poorest areas.  For example, in North East England, a cumulative cut of more than 50%.

Alongside this, the biggest priorities (public health and social care for the elderly and vulnerable) have been ignored. 

Yes there are a lot of issues which may be less important than allowing frail elderly people to end their lives in poverty, lonelines and squalor.  But still more visible and in the public consciousness - bins, potholes, litter, anti-social behaviour.

For many years local authorities have been used as a convenient scapegoat for the failures of national government.

[Jasmine]

People still have weekly bin collections? Ours has been once every 3 weeks for several years now. We also have to pay separately for the green waste bin.  Round here that results in lots of people having bonfires, which really is quite regressive.

[ian]

Same around here, we have biweekly bin collections (rubbish one week, recycling the next, green waste paid-for) which results in a fair amount of fly-tipping of what is clearly domestic waste.

I personally wish local councils would be de-politicised and simply charge for a statutory defined level of services. If that costs a lot, then fine, it's the government's problem and we'd see it that way. We have pointless contretemps of a Conservative county council blaming a Conservative government for shortfalls and deliberate manipulation of council taxation to political ends.

[Basil]

Every three weeks for over a year here.  A good thing IMO. You learn to manage your waste. And your purchasing of waste!
Recycling and food being collected every week helps.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Rubbish fortnightly, recycling weekly here. Garden waste fortnightly for an extra charge (no idea how much). Big campaign about two years ago to get people to put food waste in the brown food waste bins not the black rubbish wheelie bin. Also, the wheelie bins got smaller.

[Ashaman42]

Oh yeah, I get that budgets are strained and there are more urgent things to spend what they have on. It was just the timing really that rankled.

Like I say we rarely fill our bin anyway.

[Kim]

We have regular-as-clockwork fortnightly recycling and normal rubbish that is supposed to be weekly, but actually only happens when the binmen can be arsed, which can be anything from 1-5 weeks between collections.

As usual, how much of a problem this is mainly depends on what your neighbours (or your neighbours' landlord's builders) have fucked into your bin when you're not looking.

We're fortunate not to have dedicated food waste bins stinking up the kitchen.

[hellymedic]

We have fortnightly landfill, weekly recycling and food & fortnightly garden waste.
Website wouldn't let me renew garden waste payment.
It's been 'upgraded'.
Wouldn't let me update my online Council Account either.
Will borrow a Windows computer tomorrow.

[fuzzy]

Fortnightly general waste. Fortnightly recycling, cardboard and garden waste (no extra charge) and weekly food caddy. Works very well.

[robgul]

Alternating weeks for rubbish (black bin lid) and recycling/garden (blue and green bin lids) - but have just had to pay for an annual licence for green bin collection.

Compost bins at home and at the allotment are used extensively wherever possible.   

It seems that our largest volume of waste is corrugated cardboard boxes from stuff being delivered.

Waste "real wood" (not ply/MDF etc) goes to a neighbour for his wood-burner (at least it does while they remain de rigeur)

[Cudzoziemiec]

We're fortunate not to have dedicated food waste bins stinking up the kitchen.

They don't, or needn't, stink up the kitchen. The way it works here at least is that you get a small "kitchen caddy" which you line with a compostable bag (usually special green plastic, can be paper) and then you empty the bags into a larger "kerbside bin". In fact, I'd say it's less stinky than putting food waste in the kitchen bin, where – due to the larger size – it will get emptied less frequently.

[Beardy]

Alternate landfill and recycling (no glass or tetra packs) here, with paid for composting same week as recycling. Food waste goes into the composting. It’s a bit of a cheek charging us for the composting bin because the council waste management company have an industrial scale composter from which they sell the end product!

[T42]

Alternate landfill and recycling (no glass or tetra packs) here, with paid for composting same week as recycling. Food waste goes into the composting. It’s a bit of a cheek charging us for the composting bin because the council waste management company have an industrial scale composter from which they sell the end product!

When they executed people by firing squad in Iran they used to invoice the families for the ammo - same principle.

Anyway, I usually carry a supermarket bag in my HB bag, and shove it under my jersey for long descents.  One time I found at the bottom that the supermarket had changed to "eco-friendly" (or summat) bags and I had a gooey mess next to my skin.

[Kim]

We have regular-as-clockwork fortnightly recycling and normal rubbish that is supposed to be weekly, but actually only happens when the binmen can be arsed, which can be anything from 1-5 weeks between collections.

As if to prove a point, I brought the bin back in^[1] this morning, and it had one more bag of rubbish in it than it did when I put it out.  Maybe next week?


_{[1] I think we and our immediate neighbours are the only people in Silly Oak who actually do this.}

[matthew]

I now¹ have weekly food waste collections, fortnightly recycling collection (no glass) and three weekly household waste collection. The protests from the parents of infants at the change from alternating fortnightly recycling and household waste at the smell of the nappies over this summer could become interesting. 


¹ It changed at the beginning of March, we have therefore yet to have the week when all three are collected and there won't be sufficient space at the location where the 8 houses are supposed to wheel their bins to.

[rafletcher]

Another fortnightly rubbish alternating with fortnightly recycling here. I think food is weekly, but we never use it. 95% comosted, 5% for the kites, rats etc. in the field - mostly chicken bones.  Green waste is paid for fortnightly, but we don't use it, most is composted, the rest, well I live 2 miles from a fantastic recycling centre, so take the balance there myself.

[Giraffe]

Garden and recycling bins fortnightly, alternating with garbage bin. Food waste* (what's that?) weekly.
Green bin sometimes full and more stored ready to go in; most of winter empty but a friend 50m away is seriously tidying her garden (with me doing the heavy stuff) so she fills both.
Recycling will go 6 - 8 weeks but I put it out more frequently in warm weather.
Garbage bin, if nothing exceptional, about 2 - 5 years at a guess.

*Food caddies delivered, washed off (splashed grit), dried thoroughly, nested and put in loft. Be handy sometime.
Most food stuff is OK on compost heap, odd bits go out for the birds, BEARS etc., then I do put odd little bits of gonegreen cheese on the heap - enough in a year to feed a small rat for a day.

[Polar Bear]

Alternating weeks for rubbish (black bin lid) and recycling/garden (blue and green bin lids) - but have just had to pay for an annual licence for green bin collection.

Compost bins at home and at the allotment are used extensively wherever possible.   

It seems that our largest volume of waste is corrugated cardboard boxes from stuff being delivered.

Waste "real wood" (not ply/MDF etc) goes to a neighbour for his wood-burner (at least it does while they remain de rigeur)

Same regime as ours.  We don't pay for the green bin and have composting on the go.  We try to grow some fruit and veg in the garden every year so the compost comes in useful.

I'd say that on average that both the blue top recycling and the black top household waste bins take between 6 and 8 weeks to fill.

[ian]

We don't have any issues with the biweekly alternating collections (they take the food caddy weekly, don't bother with the green waste as the lorry usually doesn't make it up the hill and the gardeners take it). But there's only two of us and we rarely fill either bin (the council gave us a smaller rubbish bin, but you could order a bigger one), usually more in the recycling bin.

The downside is that it does lead to some dumping of what's clearly black-bagged domestic waste.

[Flite]

Here we have alternate weeks for general waste and recycling (glass, tins, paper, cardboard, some plastics).
They are very reliable, even in the winter when the same crews are on the snowploughs!
No green waste collection (compost heaps for garden stuff, veg scraps and a lot of the cardboard)
No waste food collection (we don't eat meat or fish, and don't waste much food anyway.)
Waste disposal unit in sink takes any cooked bits to our waste water treatment thingy in the garden.

About the only thing our council is good at is rubbish....

[orienteer]

Are we in the London Borough of Hillingdon the only ones who get full, free collections every week? Three trucks: one for general rubbish in black sacks, one for recycling material in supplied clear sacks, and one for green/food waste for composting.  We compost waste uncooked food (mostly veg trimmings) in our own composter.

[MattH]

We are also in the alternating weeks of general rubbish and recycling. Green waste is an extra, you can pay for a small bag or another wheelie bin.

The only times we generally have trouble are around Christmas, if we've been doing a clearout or are in the middle of a DIY project. We actually have an extra black bin (no idea why, it came with the house), so we use it as a strategic dry overflow. If we've got too much cardboard for the recycling bin, for example, it'll go in the spare one for storage. If we've got extra bags of non-rancid rubbish that won't fit the black bin, they'll go in it. Then in the following weeks we'll gradually empty it into the main ones (in the past, the bin men have helpfully retrieved the spare from our garden and emptied it - we aren't cheeky enough to put both out). Most of the time it is empty, but it is very useful on occasion to save us doing a dump run.

[hellymedic]

Garden and recycling bins fortnightly, alternating with garbage bin. Food waste* (what's that?) weekly.
Green bin sometimes full and more stored ready to go in; most of winter empty but a friend 50m away is seriously tidying her garden (with me doing the heavy stuff) so she fills both.
Recycling will go 6 - 8 weeks but I put it out more frequently in warm weather.
Garbage bin, if nothing exceptional, about 2 - 5 years at a guess.

*Food caddies delivered, washed off (splashed grit), dried thoroughly, nested and put in loft. Be handy sometime.
Most food stuff is OK on compost heap, odd bits go out for the birds, BEARS etc., then I do put odd little bits of gonegreen cheese on the heap - enough in a year to feed a small rat for a day.

What do you do with banana and citrus skin & apple cores?

We also have chicken bones & strawberry calyces in our food bucket.

[jsabine]

Are we in the London Borough of Hillingdon the only ones who get full, free collections every week? Three trucks: one for general rubbish in black sacks, one for recycling material in supplied clear sacks, and one for green/food waste for composting.  We compost waste uncooked food (mostly veg trimmings) in our own composter.

A few miles away in Greenwich we get that too, only it's a three wheelie-bin operation. Green lid for compostable waste (garden and food, including meat: our own composter reduces what actually goes in here), blue lid for recyclables, and black lid for The Rest, ie landfill.

It's one of the things the council seems to do pretty well, although there are currently mutterings about charging for the green bin (or at least for garden waste) collections.

Edinburgh confuses me any time I visit but is, I think, weekly for food waste and landfill; alternating fortnightly for glass and for other recycling; fortnightly (summer) and monthly (winter) for paid-for garden waste.

[bhoot]

Are we in the London Borough of Hillingdon the only ones who get full, free collections every week? Three trucks: one for general rubbish in black sacks, one for recycling material in supplied clear sacks, and one for green/food waste for composting.  We compost waste uncooked food (mostly veg trimmings) in our own composter.

A few miles away in Greenwich we get that too, only it's a three wheelie-bin operation. Green lid for compostable waste (garden and food, including meat: our own composter reduces what actually goes in here), blue lid for recyclables, and black lid for The Rest, ie landfill.

Weekly and free for everything here in Tower Hamlets, although food waste + green garden waste is on a different day to recycling + general waste.

We are composters though so food waste is quite low output for us.