Fortnightly refuse collections.

[Hugh Jaleak]

Losing our weekly collections as of 1st August, not a problem in itself, but the council are leaving my area on black sack collections. All Victorian terraced housing, we haven't access to take a wheeled bin out, nor particularly room to store a pair of bins!

I'm not happy about having to find room to store 2 weeks worth of refuse in my (small) garden. It's going to be an eyesore, and somehow I need to try and keep it safe from pests and vermin as it'll have to be carried back through the house to be put out for collection. Council are refusing to admit there may be a problem with this method, their argument is as they are providing slop buckets, (small container for the kitchen and larger for outside, something else we need to find space for...). then removal of the food element of the refuse will prevent problems with pests. I am not so convinced.

Council by their own admission dont know how the scheme is going to work until its running. (Just over 4 weeks to go and they've still not decided what arrangements they're making for commercial refuse collections.... )

Has anyone else experience of fortnightly collections without the benefit of a wheeled bin to contain the refuse? I'd value anyone's experiences, personally I dont think it's going to work.

 

[Alarm]

Dont fookin work with bins either.

 

[joinerjohn]

Our local council have had fortnightly collections (every week) for some years now.
"Every week?" I hear you say. Yep one week they collect ordinary household waste destined for landfill, then the following week they collect the (supposed) recycleable stuff. Earlier this year, because of the severe weather in winter, all collections stopped for a few weeks. Guess how they caught up? By collecting all waste and sending it all to landfill. They did this for a month just to catch up (although technically they had only missed 2 weeks of collections)

 

[Mickymoody]

Losing our weekly collections as of 1st August, not a problem in itself, but the council are leaving my area on black sack collections. All Victorian terraced housing, we haven't access to take a wheeled bin out, nor particularly room to store a pair of bins!

I'm not happy about having to find room to store 2 weeks worth of refuse in my (small) garden. It's going to be an eyesore, and somehow I need to try and keep it safe from pests and vermin as it'll have to be carried back through the house to be put out for collection. Council are refusing to admit there may be a problem with this method, their argument is as they are providing slop buckets, (small container for the kitchen and larger for outside, something else we need to find space for...). then removal of the food element of the refuse will prevent problems with pests. I am not so convinced.

Council by their own admission dont know how the scheme is going to work until its running. (Just over 4 weeks to go and they've still not decided what arrangements they're making for commercial refuse collections.... )

Has anyone else experience of fortnightly collections without the benefit of a wheeled bin to contain the refuse? I'd value anyone's experiences, personally I dont think it's going to work.

Then put the sacks in a storage area ie A BIN. Only an idiot would put sacks of stuff out. Traditional Bins are available to buy. They are called BINS, as they are there to dispose rubbish in, until disposed of.

 

[noseall]

Unfortunately we have evolved into a hugely wasteful, lazy, selfish, ignorant bunch of slobs, so much so that anyone visiting us from outer space would probably rather vomit and move on.

Our cash strapped councils have been begging us for years to be more conscious of waste management but have been met with a shrug and a deaf ear. Having your waste collected every two weeks may seem like a luxury in years to come.

Deal with your black bin bags and find a solution now, 'cause things ain't gonna get any better. Use your initiative and imagination.

Oh, and stop whinging.

 

[thatbloke]

Recycle everything you can.
Fortnightly collections , join the rest of the UK.

I see your point about storage, big bin in the back yard.

 

[Nige F]

. I am not so convinced.

making for commercial refuse collections.... )

? I'd value anyone's experiences, personally I dont think it's going to work.

Then put the sacks in a BIN. . They are called BINS, as they are there to dispose rubbish in, until disposed of.

Bin waiting for a post like this . I put out a Bin , Laden with garbage - CIA blew it up

 

[Mw Roofline]

We've got one of these mothers in our kitchen.

Absolute godsend, tea bags, old dinner, fruit, sandwiches. I've even shoved a pork chop bone in there and its eaten it. Our bins are dry and smell great. Well worth the money and its loads of fun too. I may go and do one of the nippers nappies (not tried it yet)

 

[imamartian]

We've got one of these mothers in our kitchen.

Absolute godsend, tea bags, old dinner, fruit, sandwiches. I've even shoved a pork chop bone in there and its eaten it. Our bins are dry and smell great. Well worth the money and its loads of fun too. I may go and do one of the nippers nappies (not tried it yet)

not even thought about one of those... what's the law around using them.... can you put anything down the drain as long as it's chopped up?

 

[thatbloke]

We've got one of these mothers in our kitchen.

Absolute godsend, tea bags, old dinner, fruit, sandwiches. I've even shoved a pork chop bone in there and its eaten it. Our bins are dry and smell great. Well worth the money and its loads of fun too. I may go and do one of the nippers nappies (not tried it yet)

not even thought about one of those... what's the law around using them.... can you put anything down the drain as long as it's chopped up?

Not very environmentally friendly , all that water has to be recycled.

 

[Paul_C]

We've been on fortnightly collections in this part of Norfolk for a number of years now, but with the "wheelie" bins: Green one week for recyclables, black the next for everything else. Except garden waste which they don't allow in either, and for which the council wants an extra fee to provide yet another bin (brown), which is collected on a completely different round. Most of us with small quantities, if any, to dispose of just wrap it up in a bag and throw it into the middle of the black bin, of course.

A neighbor's son who lives a few miles away works on the trucks for one of the collection companies now contracted by the local authorities. It's for the adjacent district council rather than this one, but as, apparently, they all go over to Norwich for dumping I expect it's the same for the crews operating in this area. He says that typically about 50% of the time they arrive at the dumping point for recyclable waste they're turned away because there's insufficient capacity, and instead just have to drive to the landfill site to dump it instead.

So with all the fuss the council makes about the green bins and what can and cannot be placed in them, about half of the green-bin content just goes into the same landfill as all the black-bin collections anyway.

 

[conny]

MW, donot try a disposable nappy or sanitary towel!
You may get away with one or two but they chop them into fine stringy fibres which eventually jam the blades. Cleaning a macerator is not a pleasant job believe me! Lost count of the number of industrial waste pumps I have serviced/repaired and found the problem to be a build up of these items. The fibrous material also has a tendency to wrap its self around the pump shaft and reduces the effectiveness of the mechanical seals till this starts to leak, not an easy job for a DIY'er. Also, if you have a service contract you may find in the small print that you are not covered for these and similar items.

 

[ladylola]

To be quite honest I really can't understand the fuss that has been kicked up over bin collections. We have three bins , a blue one for recyclables , a brown one for garden and food waste and a black one for general landfill. These are collected every other week , black one week and the other two the following week and so on.
Now our blue bin is always full and a lot of our garden waste goes onto the compost heap but the black bin only gets put out once a month at best , we almost struggle to find anything to put in it- it hasn't been collsected for a month now and what's in there would fit in a sack.
So what amazes me are people who manage to fill a bin in less than a week

 

[Paul_C]

I think there are several different aspects which are causing the fuss, some not applicable to everybody.

First, keeping two or even three bins might not be too much of a problem for those of us with plenty of garden space, but it becomes much more problematical for somebody living in, say, a terraced town house which has no front yard, and perhaps only a tiny back yard with already limited space. Some councils have reached the point of expecting people to keep no less than four different containers of varying shapes and sizes for different types of waste.

Second, while I too find that my black bin is rarely more than half full by collection day, there are the odd times I have a good clear out of some junk and need to fill it right up. I'm sure that other people find the same. In the "old days," which really isn't all that many years ago, if there was a little too much to fit in, there was absolutely no problem with leaving the extra in a box or a sack with the bin and it would be collected. Now that's not to easy in many areas, as the dictators at the local authority have imposed all sorts of rules on the collection crews, and they'll refuse to take anything which is not inside the "official" bin (my neighbor's son I mentioned above said that while his crew always tries to be "helpful," even they have to be careful now because they have council officials going out to keep watch on what they're doing sometimes). Where I live we're fortunate in that we all tend to know our neighbors and be on friendly terms, so whenever one of us has extra one fortnight, we just share it between the bins as necessary, but that's not always possible.

Next, there's the issue of separating the refuse in the first place. Either one needs to keep separate bins and waste baskets throughout the house for each type of waste, or come time to take out the garbage it's necessary to go through it all and sort it into the respective outside bins. How many people want, or in some cases have the space, to keep three or four different bins in their kitchens, as would be necessary according to the way that some councils want that kitchen waste separated? One for food scraps, another for plastic bottles and boxes, another for everything else.

Then there's the issue of the precise rules about what's recyclable and what's not imposed by many local authorities: This type of plastic bottle is supposed to go in the green bin, while another almost-identical one is not. Those rules often change frequently. Even in my area, which is clearly far from being one of the worst in this respect, we get leaflets announcing changes to what can be put in the green bin on a not irregular basis. Suddenly a type of cardboard which was to be put in the green bin now has to go in the black bin instead, or, as happened here a few years ago, they stopped including textiles in the recyclables collection.

This is all before we get to the issue of local councils behaving like Nazi stormtroopers when it comes to things like somebody daring to put out a bin a few hours early (by their definition) for collection. Look at those councils where they try to insist that a bin must be put out for collection, say, no earlier than 6 a.m. on the day of collection, but that collection can take place any time from 7 a.m. onward. How do they think somebody who works night shifts and doesn't get home until 8 a.m. can do that? Or somebody who works a late shift and needs to go to bed around 3 a.m., so can't possibly comply unless he wants to interrupt his sleep after three hours just to wheel a bin outside? Then there are the other cases in which the authority refuses to allow crews to go a quarter-mile along a private road to collect refuse, and expects the residents to wheel all the bins down to the main road and back each time.

I think it's a combination of any and all of the above issues which is what all the fuss is about, coupled with the fact that for the "privilege" of having this reduced service with all sorts of petty rules imposed, we're now paying extortionate amounts of council tax.

 

[Hugh Jaleak]

I have no objection to the principle, what has annoyed me is the Council's 'one size fits all' approach. My main concern is space. We aren't getting wheeled bins for the reason of space restrictions and access to the rear, but we are still expected to store our refuse/recycling somewhere. I already have a dustbin, I can easily buy another, but where to put them... I have no front yard, and a small rear garden. Suppose I could get rid of the patio chairs (more to landfill) and sit on the bins.

I do recycle whatever I can, this now leaves the prospect of 5-6 large sacks of recyclate also needing a home, along with 2 sacks of refuse and a slop bucket. I'm no gardener but we try to keep what we have nice, small lawn, beds with flowers and a few hanging baskets. Like to sit outside and relax, rather not be looking at a pile of sacks awaiting collection....

What I am asking is has anyone else experience of fortnightly collection but without using wheeled bins, and have you experienced any problems?