Refuse collection

I read a review on refuse collection a few weeks ago and I commented that I seem to be lucky with my council. Well today, I got a leaflet about some changes.

I am getting a new blue box for plastic bottles and cans to go alongside my green box which is for glass and paper.

I can start to put cardboard and food waste in my brown bin which was previosuly just for garden waste.

My black bin is for everything else but because of all these new rules it will be collected fortnightly instead of weekly.

I know it is not very cool to be ungreen but I really have better things to do and most of this stuff is not recycled anyway. How are they going to recyle the contents of a bin containing mixed up garden waste, cardboard and food waste for example.



I am happy to be enlightened, but until then I shall maintain that this is a waste of time.

We can't even recycle glass here. We have to travel to a bottle bank to do it!

Though a fortnight ago, our black bin wasn't emptied for reasons as yet unknown. It's probably because it was a good 3 feet from the pavement in our driveway.

We can't recycle anything, not even paper, they stopped the paper collection 4 years ago.

Our council take everything left out in the back alleyway, sofas, tables, fridges, you name it......

If our council did bring in bins and things for recyclying and fortnightly collections I would be happy to go along with that, aside from the fact that there's little space in our yard as it is what with the 2 normal wheelie bins (we have a spare since our usual one gets stolen regularly for a few weeks).

Of course there was the epiosde where the council confiscated all of our wheelie bins...that was fun.

We have three bins - the blue bin for paper, plastic bottles and tin cans (collected monthly), the brown bin for garden waste (collected fortnightly) and the green bin for everything else (collected weekly). We have to take glass bottles to a bottle bank but there are loads conveniently located so it is not a hassle.

There is a recycling depot where domestic users can drop off just about anything ele they want rid off (rubble, batteries, white goods, glass, furniture) and you can also take your tetrapaks there for recycling. In fact just about the only thing we don't seem to recycle in Glasgow is cardboard - so I give mine to my MIL as they do recycle it in Ayrshire, where she is.

My sister lives in Perthshire and their brown bin is for garden waste and food waste - it is composted in a huge indoor facility. As cardboard can be composted too, I imagine that is what will happen with your food, garden waste and cardboard, Cat19!

Your council is probably trying to reduce its landfill tax bill.....

We have two bins on a fortnightly collection - recycling (glass, plastic (only PET 1 & 2), paper, card, tins) and general waste. I always manage to go away on the weeks the general waste is meant to be collected too which is a hassle! Garden waste (not food) is collected in bags fortnightly too.

We have a super-up-to-date recycling facility which can separate mixed waste with a reclaimation rate of around 85%. Your new bin with garden waste mix is likely just to be composted - you'd be amazed what they can break down now.

I'm happy to split my rubbish and it gets to be habit quite quickly but I sincerely wish we had weekly general waste collections in the summer at least.

The landfill tax is crippling local authorities at the moment and the capping of council tax is not helping. Where I live has been designated a Beacon Authority for waste management and still we complain....

We have a brown bin for garden waste (Which we also compost in the garden anyway, or take it to the allotment and compost it there is there is too much)

We have a sink disposal unit for cooked waste food e.g. from plates. (Insinkerator)

We have a black bin for general waste and a blue bin for the other recyclables e.g. plastics and paper, but not glass.

We have a bottle bank in the village for glass. Although I dont drink much wine as a rule, we have a similar plastic box we bought for the job and we take it down every so often, when it is full - son once a week then

We only half fill our black bin every fortnight..

one of us takes the stuff that should not go in normal bins e.g. batteries to work every so often and they get taken to the council facilities


Interesting they have said put papers and cardboard in the brown bin. I don't think ours says that but of course there is no reason why not, we put it in the composter already. Food waste I assume is raw food waste i.e. fruit and veg or eggshells etc, as cooked foodwaste is not good for composting in small scale, although not sure how it manages in the big scale composters. Seems wrong to me though for cooked and processed stuff.

Our council is second best in the country for recycling, behind North Kesteven, which is not far away from here either, in addition we won Environmental Village of the Year


At work, we only just got full recycling facilities on property this year (was partial), and in four months we saved 60 tonnes going to landfill compared to last year. That's one business with 150 employees in one town, and that is scary.


Mind you we have to practice what we preach. I am on the Corporate Social Responsibility Steering Committee for my UK wide employer and t'other half is qualified in all things Environmental and is the Environmental Manager in a big UK company too. So we were routinely recycling stuff years before we even got any bins from the council.


The problem is the inconsistency with dealing with waste across the UK, and shortfalls in facilities in some areas. We had kerbside glass collecting in Scotland at one house, but not at another 10 miles away. Still it has to get fixed eventually.

We have two bins, one blue (recycling) the other black, and alternate collections, blue one week, black the next. They will fine you if you put the wrong bin out and also if you put both out or the lid is not completely closed. So if I go on holiday I have to arrange with a neighbour to get my bin out, you can also be fined for leaving your bin out overnight, you are not allowed to put it out before 7am !!

I have often forgotten to put it out as I go to work at 6am and cannot rely on the other half, so I break the rules now and put it out at 6am...so far so good, I assume they are not going to be around checking up on us at that time in the morning !

I don't even know what day or week they come for the brown bin or the green box, I can just leave them out the front all the time, although then it will be a pain to walk down there every time we have rubbish especially in winter. I feel that will be man's work.

That 7am rule is ridiculous, loads of people go to work before then.

And welcome Averilla!

Did you know the fines for over-filling your bins and leaving the lid ajar are more than statutory ones for shop lifters

Yes, the fines are ludicrously high. Also, my neighbour had a warning letter the other day after they refused to take her bin(apparently they give you one warning then fine you) for leaving a bin out that was too heavy...they said that due to health and safety if it is too heavy to lift with one finger then they will not take it (health and safety)...well I am under 5ft and not particularly strong but could pull it with 2 fingers easily to the end of the path !! That's health and safety gone completely mad as far as I am concerned.

darkspidey wrote:

Did you know the fines for over-filling your bins and leaving the lid ajar are more than statutory ones for shop lifters

There would be an argument to say that is appropriate.

helencb wrote:

darkspidey wrote:

Did you know the fines for over-filling your bins and leaving the lid ajar are more than statutory ones for shop lifters

There would be an argument to say that is appropriate.

You are kidding right? ... although I have a strange feeling you are not.

Shop-lifting is a crime, god forbid we make criminals of people leaving bin lids ajar.

Fact. In out hometown the recycling centre costs £2 million pounds more to run a year than the money it gets from selling the tins and stuff. Some of that £2 million is 'recovered' through bin and fly tipping fines. The people who dont pay the fines, are of course, the ones who litter the most, the 'lid not quite down' another example of stealth middle-class taxation for the peope who do play by the rules. Its certainly nothing to do with health & safety and heavy bins girls.

And these 'facts' come from where?

I don't believe recycling is cost effective either, I have picked up snippets over the years to suggest this but have not made a note of my sources.

But I don't think that cost effectiveness is the main or only driver behind recycling either.

Me. Jeez, you are a bit abrupt!

darkspidey wrote:

Fact. In out hometown the recycling centre costs £2 million pounds more to run a year than the money it gets from selling the tins and stuff. Some of that £2 million is 'recovered' through bin and fly tipping fines. The people who dont pay the fines, are of course, the ones who litter the most, the 'lid not quite down' another example of stealth middle-class taxation for the peope who do play by the rules. Its certainly nothing to do with health & safety and heavy bins girls.

I just want to know where these stats come from - can you provide a link? They just sound a wee bit off the cuff? Where does that £2m figure come from?

Many, many so-called stats become accepted fact over time when repeated, even when they are made up. For example - you WON'T, in all likelihood, swallow seven spiders (or whatever the number is meant to be) in your lifetime - but people and internet lists love to trot that out.

I'm just saying, figures need backing up - my academia coming out, I guess.


I am in theory for recycling, but find the amount of separation we are expected to do onerous. My mother has kerbside recycling; but she just has to separate non-recyclable from recyclable - she doesn't have to sort plastic from aluminium from paper and so forth. If you make it too difficult, people won't do it. We have food recycling, FFS!

Err, its an irreverent message board love. Not the Hutton Enquiry.

no cost effectiveness is not the only reason behind recycling. Just as energy from renewables is going to be more expensive in the short term v long term.

And there have been many stories by the media of where it fails..(recycling that is....) We have all seen em.

but yes, while I don't condone shoplifting, of course not, nor do I condone silly policies by junior local government workers, (like the story about pulling it with one finger that Averilla mentioned) I do happen to think overfilling your bin is a 'crime'...! Not in the legal sense of the word, obviously. It is not hard to keep one's fortnightly waste in a bin with space for the lid to close, for many families, particularly as families are smaller than they once were. I could go four weeks easily, most of the time. So I think it is a badly executed policy, (if it is to be believed...and not something the media dreamed up on a slow news day) but I think there is a simple message in its intention - make less waste...!!!!

I agree with recycling 1000%! But I do feel its not profitable under the current schemes and so set up to be another tax, rather than an eco triumph. We are also building a new incinerator in our town to burn off what we cant sell on the market, prices rather low right now. The E.Us landfill quotas are rather high and causing the problem and seem unreasonable.

Thanks for the intelligent response Helen.

It is not intended to be profitable...

Have a look at your council's expenditure sheet for council tax. Lots of things are not "profitable". THey are not meant to be profitable...housing is not profitable, policing is not profitable, planning is not profitable, the very act of local government is not profitable.


recycling is not a tax on the individual per se. There is a landfill tax payable to corporations and including councils...and obviously that has to be reduced. THe incentive is NOT to put waste to landfill....


Using your logic, my council has incurred a £2.9m net expenditure on waste and recycling. However, my council is one of the best in the country. It was no 2, last time I checked, in fact. Had it not done what it does, it could have had even higher costs....it achieves more than double what some councils achieve in recycling, more than double the current government targets, and it also does that with 84% of residents being satisfied or very satisfied with waste collection. (see Rushcliffe Borough Council for figures)

Incidentally that is one fifth of what it spent on housing benefit (recouped) , the same as it spent on housing (not recouped) and less than it spent on corporate management in general.

If the people who do recycle are penalised and those who abuse it arent then can it work? My understanding is that instead of the UK recycling succesfully to meet those quotas they burn it off or ship it to India or China, defeating the point some. With double the amount of garbage trucks on our streets picking up the various stuff you do wonder if it is carbon neutral in any way. Its like the electric car, elctric aint petrol but you use carbon fuels to make the electricity...

oh no, not the old Indian, China, or electric car argument......!!!! You missed Russia and its coal.........!!

Question: how much CO2 is emitted in running an average modern electric car versus a petrol car that does say 35 mpg....

And how is that impacted by the use of renewable fuels that produce less carbon? And how much renewable fuels are consumed in the UK, at the present time, and what is the trend for renewable fuels versus fossil fuels? What happens in France - it's largely Nuclear...

How much waste is shipped to India and China....? And indeed what are the average carbon emissions per average Indian compared to say the average European, or god forbid the average American (resident!!)

Are there double the amount of garbage trucks? I thought they still came once a week, but picked up a different bin? Or do you live in one of these councils that perform mediocrely?


I am away all weekend, I look forward to a good debate

We have different wagons so they can advetise different companies on the side.

sounds like you have a council with a modicum of initiative at least.