Recycling farce.

[Lord Geordie]

I have to say, our bin lads are great! Yes we have had a spate on non collections recently, on the day! We just leave the bin out and they pop out a few days later to empty them!

 

My bin lids are never open! It takes me 6 weeks to fill my general waste bin! And until it's full I don't put it out, unless it's got meat or fish in!

 

My recycle is filled about every 3-4 weeks!

 

My white goods (fridge, freezer, TV) etc all go in the car, and are dropped off at the local amenity site! I have a tiny Suzuki wagon R and get loads in there for a trip to the tip!

 

I get my bin emptied on average once every month! So do I qualify for a rebate

 

Our lads drive up the street one lad either side drags the bins in twos onto the lift!

 

Then they drop the bins back "almost" where they got them from!

 

My mum n dad are on bin assist! The lads pop in to collect their bins to empty and put them back! Mum n dad tip them each Christmas time too!

 

When it comes to sensitive papers, or such data! I prefer to use the brazier and burn them! Whilst doing that I burn any other paper, card and wood at the same time to keep the bin clear!

 

I often give the scrap man a shout too if I have stuff like old car parts, batteries, wheels, starters etc! They appreciate the scrap, I appreciate the free collection!

 

There are lots of ways to keep your refuse levels down!

 

But then I am a hoarder too only today scrapping a box from chris's 3D printer I found a piece of inch thick foam about 2'x2' and in true Womble tradition it's now sat under the stairs

 

I repurpose a lot too! Glass jars are used to make candles for the caravan, plastic jars for nuts, bolts etc! Even the clothing bags I keep getting shoved through my door are used for bin bags etc!

 

I make lamps out of beer bottles, I have a friend who takes my wine bottles for home brewing,

 

When I cook, what's left over goes in the freezer! Nothing food wise (Other than moldy bread) tends to be wasted! Even then the bread goes to the birds!

 

I seem to do fine with it all. Certainly have nothing but good things to say about our bin lads!

[mel b3]

I 'm now retired but had a commercial property paying £ 10,000 in rates but that didn't include a refuse pick up which was in addition. I'm not looking for an argument but I think your defending the indefensible . My father was a bin lorry driver for most of his life so I have some idea of the day to day problems.

the reason that waste collection isnt included is due to trade regulations , its against regulations for a local authority to have an unfair advantage over private waste collection companies , if waste collection was included in your rates , you would effectively be held to ransom by the local authority , these are eu regulations and also have road traffic implications including drivers hours etc.

 

I no longer use our recycling bin - the amount of times it has not been emptied is unreal - our whole street is the same.

The guy must spend most of his shift attaching an orange tag, writing the problem and reason for non collection and then taking a picture.

 

The latest reason 'Label not removed from coke bottle, recyclable mixed'

 

it now all goes in the same bin, to be taken to the depot and sorted there (i did call and check and the general waste is sifted for recyclable items)

I have noticed hardly any blue top bins out anymore.

 

I have seen my binmen look in the bin, as we had been away there was 1 bag in it, he put the lid down and walked off to the next, he did it with a few more.

Call to the council at 8am (bin men were round at 7.30) the reply was the lorry was probably full, i did asked what road we were on the day.... collection road 1 sir....... so your binmen came out of the depot to get halfway down the first road and had a full truck? i think it was more of a case of CBA - anyhow the supervisor came out at 8.30, bin lorry arrived back just before 9 and re did the ones they missed.

 

 

We did have a ditty in the paper recently

Fireman on his way to work noticed his bin had not been collected as it was 'too heavy' - orange label attached. Bin men next door ''sorry mate too heavy''

 

Phone camera on and shouts over why was bin not emptied - ''as per the label mate too heavy'' guy call his daughter down stairs complete with school bag, can you fetch that bin in for me, girl drags it up the drive and pushes it into the corner all neat and tidy. How old are you.......... 9!!

So a 9 year old girl complete with school bag managed to move a bin (that judging by the video) a 19 stone bloke couldnt

 

As soon as it hit the local council website a team was dispatched, the bin emptied and the operator given remedial manual handling

if you carry out the instructions that the guy has written on the label , you should have no problem , if a coke bottle isnt recyclable with the label on , its not the guys fault .

their could have been dozens of reasons why a collection vehicle would stop collecting at a certain point , none of them would be known to anyone other than the driver and his crew , they will have been coming back anyway but if it makes you feel better to think that you orchestrated the return , then good for you buddy.

 

My gripe with bin men are lorries constantly parked in the middle of the road holding up all the traffic and leaving flaps open when driving around so all the rubbish can blow out.

Refuse collection is a business so how is their business allowed to operate on the side of the road preventing all others to go about their business?

Secondly, if i allow scraps of paper etc to blow off my lorry I would be done for dangerous load, so should they.

they arent parked in the middle of the road , theyre working in the most efficient and accessible place to collect your bin , most trucks take around seven seconds per tipping cycle so its not like they hold you up for very long .

 

my experience is that folks are quite happy to wait for you while you empty their bin , as soon as theirs is done and you move to next door youre just a vile monster and youre doing everything in your power to ruin their life lol.

 

they have to operate at the side of the road lol , and until teleportation devices have been invented , it will carry on being at the side of the road lol , the alternative is that we all take our own waste to the council tip(dont laugh , it might well happen with the way that things are going).

 

bin drivers are subject to exactly the same road traffic rules as you , a scrap of paper here and there cant be helped , but it should be nothing more than that , the old fashioned waste paper collection vehicles were terrible for spilling waste , modern vehicles have stopped most of this though

 

What really gets my goat about the my local Council recycling scheme is that it is a complete sham to pretend they have hit their targets.

 

All the green waste collected by a separate wagon and also collected in a designated skip in the recycling tip all goes into the landfill

 

The timber, cardboard and glass etc earns them nothing.

youre completely and utterly wrong.

 

cardboard , paper , glass , and certain plastics , have a very good resale value , it wont cover the full collection costs but it goes a long way towards it.

green waste is very much a luxury service , the cost is massive , and in real terms it achieves nothing whatsoever(green waste recycles itself , your average 8yr old knows this) , it does however add to recycling figures , and its the only service that most of the general public really appreciate , it does also help to make rougher areas look more presentable , its also a massive vote winner for Councillors etc , most of them would rather close a school than get rid of green waste collections.

 

not much green waste will find its way into landfill from local authority collections , the stuff that does find its way their is mainly stuff that has been contaminated by the residents whos bin it is , it will also be recorded and paid for as landfill and will not count towards recycling targets , every last kilo of waste is accounted for these days.

[mel b3]

Someone should tell some of these lazy ****s that sometimes, just sometimes you have to go above and beyond when you're at work. I have to and I'm sure all of you do too.

 

I had a recycle collection (every 2 weeks) refused a good while ago because at the top was a carrier bag full of recyclables, it was refused because it should have been loose, seriously? I appreciate everyone has to operate under rules and some of them do make sense with regards to vehicles being damaged but as far as I'm concerned this was just plain lazy. If it had been me I'd have used the smallest shred of common sense and torn it open.

 

All that happened was everything recyclable went in the weekly collection bin for the next 2 weeks. Some of these people are just lazy idiots

dont put your waste into bags and youll have no problems , all sites deal with waste differently , your local site obviously isnt set up for bagged waste , the cost of having your waste sorted separately can run into thousands of pounds each year , your waste collector will have around seven seconds to collect your bin , he doesnt have time to sort things that you should have sorted yourself.

if he wastes time on your bin , it may well mean that someone else at the end of the round doesnt get a collection.

I have no problem in placing my bin in a position that is acceptable for collection. I only have to wheel it twice a week, once up to the road (full or part thereof) and once back (empty). As stated above the guys are very good and polite.

top man , this is the way that it should be , we all have our part to play.

 

This year we had to pay on top of everything else a separate payment of around £25 for the bin men to continue to collect our brown garden waste bin...

 

Apart from that our guys are generally pretty good.

its a kicker but we all have to pay it.

 

 

This is completely true, if only more people realised!

 

The recycling scheme is a complete sham, as you say, which councils have to go through to meet EU imposed quotas. The trouble is there is nothing they can do with most of the waste that goes into the recycling bins. What they do manage t0 recyle costs more and incurs huge costs. Most just goes the same way as the rest of the waste.

 

As long as it passes through a recycling centre it is classed as having be recycled even if it hasn't. Hopefully with Brexit they will be able to stop the deception.

paper , cardboard , glass , some plastics , sell for good money , this offsets collection cost but doesnt fully cover them.

 

just because it passes through a recycle centre , doesnt make it recycled , or recorded as recycled , if it goes to landfill it doesnt count towards recycling figures , any deception with these figures can get you a prison sentence.

[mel b3]

£25? ours is £78 and it is collected with the ordinary bins and goes in the back of the same truck. This has been the subject of much discussion on the local Streetlife website.

take a closer look next time , it may just look like the same truck , if it is being mixed then someone could be in a very deep pile of smelly brown stuff.

 

We live in a larger than average house and, therefore, pay larger then average Council Tax. We used to have 3 garden waste bags collected every two weeks, this has been reduced to one. I can more than fill one bag with grass cuttings every week in midsummer, let alone every fortnight. So, I'm paying more CT then small houses but only having the same amount of waste removed, that doesn't sound like a good deal to me! I have to go to the tip with garden waste so would rather take an extra bag every fortnight and have the green waste collection cost removed from my Council Tax. is that an option? No, of course it isn't. How's this helping the environment, we now have my car as well as a lorry chucking out diesel fumes on their way to the tip.

 

Bottles! We have to take ours to the bottle bank (usually overflowing) and sort by colour. The pub down the road has theirs collected and all colours go into the same bin/lorry. I happen to know that commercial glass handling/recycling plants cans sort even small pieces of glass by colour automatically.

 

Why, oh why, do no two councils have the same regulations regarding waste & recycling?

 

And now they've decided to close tips on Thursdays, reduce hours the rest of the week and charge for accepting domestic certain rubbish. And they'll genuinely wonder why fly tipping increases dramatically, you couldn't make it up!

my local authority sells extra green waste bins for a one of payment of £30.00 per bin iirc , it might be worth asking about.

 

a few years ago , mixed glass couldnt be automatically sorted , but , some places can now do this , it may well be that the glass is being taken to different sites to be recycled , some sites also only take one colour of glass.

 

Dont have a recycling bin never been left one and to be honest if I wanted to sort rubbish I would get a job at a plant!!

All mine goes in the one bin and what burns gets burnt!!

Years ago the bin men collected your bin from the back garden walked it to the cart emptied and returned it and all with a smile and good manners.

Now you have to have the right sort of rubbish in the bin, lid shut, wheel it to the roadside, make sure its not too heavy, have it facing the right way *** how long before they drive down your street ringing a bell so you take it to the cart and empty it yourself!!!

 

Rant over

if funding carries on the way it has for the last few years , you may well be taking your own waste to the tip sooner than you think.

 

After around 5 years of having our brown garden bin emptied once a fortnight as part of the existing collection system (but only during the gardening season). A £25 p.a. charge was introduced, councils being forced to economise again I suppose. So now I put my garden rubbish into plastic bags and take them to the cemetery next door where they have lots of wheely yard type skips for old flowers, wreaths etc. Tip the bags into the skips job done, and I'm not the only one doing this.

 

Some of you may think this is not on but I object to having to pay for something that was previously covered by the council tax and it is no additional cost to the council Next we'll have to pay to borrow library books, CPSO's, street lighting will be turned off after midnight (oh isn't it already being done somewhere).

its a nice perk of living next door to the cemetery , just dont get caught because the fines are massive for fly tipping.

 

youre waste collection(and many other) costs were partly paid for by funding from central government , thats now a thing of the past and youre expected to pay for the services that you use.

[mel b3]

 

Our Council introduced a £39:00 cost for the garden waste that now goes in to the landfill bin!

thats ok at the moment dave , but , local authorities will soon be charging by the kilo , check out the small circle with screw holes underneath the lip on your bin , thats to fit the chip so that the bin can be weighed and the bill sent to your property.

 

The bin men left me a extra one today,sure i only put one out.Well that my waterbutt sorted.

dave , stop moaning and give your next door neighbour his bin back lol.

 

i once had a guy threaten to shoot me because i returned his bin to the opposite side of his drive lol.

 

Just this year had a Brown bin delivered,Cost £47.00 per year.

Beats the hell out of all the trips to the Tip..

Have seen them tip the kitchen waste into the main bin,(The Small one)..

Yeh right..

Many years ago where I was living they wouldn't take a small bag of rubbish at the side of the bin,?,

So,, I went out and threw it in myself,,He came down and said ,,You cannot do that,,?,

To which I replied it wasn't HIS TRUCK,it belonged to the council, who it was bought with money from the rates,, told me to remove it,!!. Needless to say I told him to remove it as it was by now crushed with the rest of all the rubbish,,He really ********* me off that day..

im all for customer participation , i wish that more residents would help out lol.

[bostonmick]

 

 

youre waste collection(and many other) costs were partly paid for by funding from central government , thats now a thing of the past and youre expected to pay for the services that you use.

 

so where does central government get its funds from if not us in the first place.recycling in this country is a farce.

[mel b3]

Just this am they`ve refused to empty my 87yo, dementia suffering, mother`s because it had polystyrene placed in it by an unknown 3rd party after it was put out !

Very helpful !!!!!

These buffoons see everything from their elevated ivory towers and couldn`t give a monkey`s about the problems they cause for people .

you dont say what type of bin it is mate , if its green waste then it cant be recycled if it contains polystyrene.

you really should get in touch with your local authority and ask for an assisted collection for your mom , her bin could then be collected from the back door and no contamination can be put into her bin.

if by buffoon you mean the binman , its not his fault , the fault lays squarely with the buffoon that contaminated the bin.

 

Because it was quite big, I drove the pick-up to Bristol in order to transfer this large wardrobe to the City recycling centre. You can't bring that in here I was told. I explained it was my personal car and the wardrobe was from a resident's house. It made no difference. OK, rules is rules. So drove to the Portishead version to where my step-son had moved and was met with open arms - "need a hand, mate?" While son and I were off loading it, the chap came back with the type of pass for him as detailed above. Yep, rules is rules, but why the hell can't we all have the same ones?

im not sure on this one , ill guess that the site that wouldnt accept it was privately run , they take nothing unless it can generate profit , just the same as any business really.

 

I've recently had to put my bins in the back garden to prevent fly tipping in my bins and often just mixed rubbish that I then had to sort out before it would be collected by the LA.

 

fly tipping into bins is becoming a real problem in many areas , people that do this are lazy scum bags that pass their problem onto others .

Look at the cost of cleaning up after fly tipping, a ridiculous amount that I could not imagine.

Then look at the cost of common sense these days,

 

Oh ! How silly of me common sense is just priceless these days.

Bins open by a knats winky, "Ooo sorry Mr, can't take that"

if the lid should be closed then close it , its your bin , take responsibility for it , its not hard to do.

 

in the very near future , fly tipping will cost us nothing , fly tipping squads around the country are being laid off due to cuts in funding , what you will have to do is just live with the mess or clean it up yourself , that may sound harsh but its the reality of whats coming , most people are just too blinkered to see it , the only way forward is recycle , recycle, recycle , if you cant be bothered to do it yourself , then expect to have to pay someone else from a private company to do it for you , those are the simple facts.

[loriusgarrulus]

What about a garden incinerator and burn everthing combustable. Compost everthing you can. Only leaves none combustable recycling then.

[mel b3]

 

so where does central government get its funds from if not us in the first place.recycling in this country is a farce.

yes mick youre right , the money comes from the tax payers , but , it doesnt get given to local authorities in the same way any longer.

 

you dont have to recycle , but your alternatives are limited , you can either take your waste to the tip yourself (youll be paying for this before much longer) , or you can dig a hole in your garden and bury it , your garden hole will soon fill up in much the same way as landfill sites .

most folks dont realise just how big this problem is , were relatively new to recycling in the uk , and many of us are too lazy or stubborn to do it(we still think that the binmen should take everything) , other countries are decades ahead of us with recycled waste.

[hawkeye]

Well about 18 months ago i came home and my bin was on my drive as usual but on its side and a hinge broken..

Rang the council next day to tell them the bin men had broken a hinge on my wheelie bin was told no problem sir

we will have it replaced as soon as possible..

Thought thats not bad service then she said it would cosy me £25 so told her your employee broke it so i am not paying anything

it is still next to the garage with the hinge broken. Just waiting for the day they break the other side off.. Then i will take it down to the council offices and leave it for them to sort out..

But one thing is certain the amount i pay council tax i am not going to foot the bill for a new bin..

[mel b3]

What about a garden incinerator and burn everthing combustable. Compost everthing you can. Only leaves none combustable recycling then.

thats a top idea , im not sure how it would effect the ozone layer though , during the winter , pretty much all waste at my house gets converted into heat energy via my log burner , any nails from the bottom of my log burner go to the scrap man , any ashes go to my mates dads allotment.

[BrowningB525]

Please don't give metal to scrap men.

 

We complain enough about people with houses on wheels. Giving scrap men metal is in effect giving them money.

[fern01]

Mel b3 - How can you be so certain what happens to the green waste in my town when you don't know where I live?

 

Do you know what income my Council, or any other Council receive per tonne from the sale of all these carefully recycled materials, cardboard, timber, glass plastic bottles etc?

[bruno22rf]

In all honesty I think it's the easiest problem in the world to solve. Treat your Binmen well i.e. offer them a cold drink in the heat and tip well at Christmas and you should find that putting your dead Grandmother's corpse in the recycling barely raises an eyebrow.

[mel b3]

Well about 18 months ago i came home and my bin was on my drive as usual but on its side and a hinge broken..

Rang the council next day to tell them the bin men had broken a hinge on my wheelie bin was told no problem sir

we will have it replaced as soon as possible..

Thought thats not bad service then she said it would cosy me £25 so told her your employee broke it so i am not paying anything

it is still next to the garage with the hinge broken. Just waiting for the day they break the other side off.. Then i will take it down to the council offices and leave it for them to sort out..

But one thing is certain the amount i pay council tax i am not going to foot the bill for a new bin..

hiya mike.

 

a human isnt physically able to break one of those lids , its the lifting gear that does the damage (its also one of the reasons why lids have to be closed).

we have had massive problems with bins being damaged and having to be replaced , in fact i would say that 90% of the bins i empty are damaged , local authorities thought that plastic bins would last forever , the reality is that most of them are scrap after about ten years.

[Vince Green]

The gardeners who do our flats used to bung the bin men to take loads of garden waste which was transferred from the back of their transit into the dustcart and money changed hands. Then the new gardeners took over and they didn't bung the dustmen so they blacked our brown bins (even though we pay £78 to have them emptied) because they said it was trade waste from the gardeners.

So we had a little word with the local councillor about the bunging and surprise surprise, problem solved.

 

The bin men will take anything if you bung them.

[mel b3]

Please don't give metal to scrap men.

 

We complain enough about people with houses on wheels. Giving scrap men metal is in effect giving them money.

the scrap man is a personal friend lol , he lives in a real house and pays taxes and a mortgage with the money that he earns.

[Vince Green]

What about a garden incinerator and burn everthing combustable. Compost everthing you can. Only leaves none combustable recycling then.

We can't burn anything, its in the council bylaws. People still do though. I would have thought it was a good solution

[mel b3]

The gardeners who do our flats used to bung the bin men to take loads of garden waste which was transferred from the back of their transit into the dustcart and money changed hands. Then the new gardeners took over and they didn't bung the dustmen so they blacked our brown bins (even though we pay £78 to have them emptied) because they said it was trade waste from the gardeners.

So we had a little word with the local councillor about the bunging and surprise surprise, problem solved.

 

The bin men will take anything if you bung them.

the binmen should have been sacked and taken to court and your gardeners should be in court for bribing an officer of the crown and obtaining goods or services by deception.

 

ill help anyone when im at work but i wont take a bung , does nobody have any morals and integrity these days ?.

[bruno22rf]

NOPE And as for bribing an officer of the crown have you seen the amount of stuff most Binmen take home and sell on Ebay?

[iano]

£150 a month to get my bin emptied every two weeks the usless Ahhhhhhh!

 

??! We pay the equiv of £250 a year over here. Is that the normal rate?

[Vince Green]

Mel b3 - How can you be so certain what happens to the green waste in my town when you don't know where I live?

 

Do you know what income my Council, or any other Council receive per tonne from the sale of all these carefully recycled materials, cardboard, timber, glass plastic bottles etc?

In my town the glass is driven to Bedford (50miles?) where the council gets charged £70 a load to have it pulverised to go into building blocks. Plastic, they are currently "looking for a buyer" since the company who bought it went bust about 18 months ago. Paper and cardboard they can't recycle or incinerate because the coloured inks contain heavy metals.

 

Recycling works if you have an end game. If they want to recycle they have to get in at the beginning of the process rather than try to make sense of tons of unnecessary packaging.

[mel b3]

Has anyone looked under the rim of their bin and seen a black 'disc' in one corner?

(Think it is threaded and screws in)

I was told these were trackers is that right?

these are for chips to be fitted , its so that your bin can be matched to your property , eventually , each bin will be weighed as its emptied , you will be charged by the kilo and the bill will be sent to you at your address , youll be free to put as much green waste and recycling into your bin as you wish as youll be paying for it , recycling your own waste correctly and closing the lid of your bin might then seem to be a better option , we can all kick and scream and threaten the binmen lol , but , this is still going to happen , get with it or be prepared to spend your hard earned cash on the alternatives.

[BrowningB525]

the scrap man is a personal friend lol , he lives in a real house and pays taxes and a mortgage with the money that he earns.

He'd be the exception to the rule. The ones I've seen in Cheshire abs west yorkshire have all been ******.

[Vince Green]

the binmen should have been sacked and taken to court and your gardeners should be in court for bribing an officer of the crown and obtaining goods or services by deception.

 

ill help anyone when im at work but i wont take a bung , does nobody have any morals and integrity these days ?.

The bin men are all agency staff, hardly officers of the crown, we haven't had council bin men for years. The company that collects the rubbish is a contractor too. It was all outsourced.

 

Bungs are how you get things taken away. They will take anything for a 'consideration' and its cheaper than taking the time to go to the dump yourself.

 

When we were clearing my aunt's house they took what would have been a skipload for £20 and they sorted through it and put lots of things in the cab

Edited August 12, 2016 by Vince Green