Green bin, to pay or not to pay?

We used to get a sticker for the bin, but they did away with that this year and claimed the binmen had a list of properties to collect from. Last Tuesday wasn't a green bin collection day but one was dumped on our drive. I contacted the council and was asked if there was a house number on the sticker! If there had been I would have returned it, and it was the council which stopped providing the stickers! The council said they would get it removed. It's still sat on the pavement between my house and my neighbour.

 

That's a better system.

 

I just had a look at the council's website, and we can now pay for additional green bins if we want them. Now that the system's in place, I wonder how long it'll be before they start charging for the first one. I wouldn't pay (mine's rarely anywhere near full except for the first collection in the spring) but if there was a system where we could book and pay for occasional one-off collections, that would be worth considering.

 

At present we have 2 Wheelie Bins - 1 for General Rubbish and 1 for Green Waste ( the latter paid for separately ) plus a box for carboard/paper, another box for glass and food/milk cartons and a Bag for the likes of recyclable plastic and tin cans. The General Rubbish bin is collected every 3 weeks and the 2 boxes and bag are collected on a weekly basis.
I heard recently that the local council are considering changing all the boxes and bag for another 2 Wheelie bins - God only knows where all these bins are to be kept on the property let alone how much road space they will take up on collection days.
I'm not convinced that the 7.5 % increase in the Council tax will be used wisely !!

 

Eek - I'm in Somerset too and have the same system. So would they be planning to collect the new wheelie bins less frequently? Food waste is currently collected weekly with the recycling, I wonder what they are planning for that? Not such a problem for me because I compost it, but I don't fancy all my neighbours not getting their weekly collection ...

 

Here you get a coloured plastic tag to fasten to the Handel, it was stickers until a couple of years ago. If you haven’t the right colour then they don’t get collected.

I’m not sure if they collect unwanted bins here, we were going to ask, but then decided to use ours for collecting and composting all our leaves down. Also gives us the flexibility to rejoin the scheme in the future if we change our minds re the collection. We have a hider hole where their pretty much out of sight so we don’t mind still having them around

 

Here everyone has two bins, one for general waste and one for recycling (which has a separate pod which sits inside for paper). Then it’s a third (or however many paid for) for garden waste. General waste is collected every week and the other two alternate so every fortnight. I seem to remember some discussion re a food waste collection but not sure if that will be happening. We have very little if any food waste, what we do have (peelings etc) is all composted

 

That's an interesting idea, I've got an unwanted black bin. I asked for a new one as the lid had cracked, and the old one was never collected.

 

Considering how long Rubbish collections have been in force in this country, you would have hoped some Joined UpThinking would be in place by now. We appear to be unable to even co ordinate the bin colours let alone anything else.
@Escarpment I don't use the food waste bins - raw stuff is composted and anything else goes on the wood stove. I've honestly no idea what their collection plans are here but Somerset Councils seem to have lost the plot some time ago

 

My neighbour was putting out her bin for over a year after she stopped paying, yes they say the bin men have a list of who has paid, in practice its impossible for them to keep checking and much faster and easier to just empty any bins that are left out on the right day.

I've got 4 bins on my allotment given to me by various people who have given up on the service and the council has never bothered to take the bins back.

 

A list instead of a sticker may sound like a great idea to the council, but it clearly doesn't work! The binmen don't want to have to constantly check lists in case somebody has joined the scheme in the past 2 weeks.

 

How much more likely are they to check a sticker? Especially when each bin is covered with several years' worth all stuck on in different places.

 

These days they could probably have the addresses and route on a phone or programmed into a satnav on the vehicle, like delivery drivers (sometimes) do. Could also show who has assisted collections. Mind you, that doesn't always work in some areas. No system other than "empty every bin that's out and not overflowing/overweight/got the wrong things in it" is foolproof.

 

The way its collected here is a driver and a couple of blokes emptying the bins in the truck, I doubt they would want to check each bin that is out there, a big coloured sticker on the front of the bin would be easy to see, different colour for each year, as the other thing that is happening here is everyone has to renew in July.

 

It's all change here in Birmingham.

Firstly they're on strike (I think it's month 3 now) so we don't expect a collection of anything anyway.

But from April we are meant to be having general, paper, glass/tins and food bins. Plus green waste if purchased. Eventually it will all be fortnightly.

We did have yearly stickers for the green bin, but that changed to tags on the handle. Now it's going back to stickers - but as they are on strike they haven't sent us anything as they aren't collecting the stuff.

So we will have some new bins with no-one to collect them. And they are still taking our money.