Garden waste wheelie bin woes

Is your council exporting them?

 

Don't think so. It is to do with soil contamination. If there is soil in the load, apparently they have to bin the whole lot. I asked specifically if this applied to compost, ie root balls from pot plants where soil hasn't been incorporated, and they said to either dry the root ball out in the sun and then brush off the compost (easier said than done with a tight root ball) or wash it off.

So I do. But I might be wasting my time (and metered water) if other people are not doing the same.

 

That's just crazy.

 

Nonsense. It's all local soil. I can understand that they wouldn't want a binful of subsoil. If it's attached to roots, the plants are highly unlikely to have been growing in contaminated soil. Sounds like you've got a bunch of jobsworths

 

We’ve never had a problem with our green bin not being emptied. We shred most of our prunings, so the bin can get pretty heavy, and we also use a piece of wood to prod the contents down, as there are often spaces round the sides. No complaints re the weight, but we park the bins by the road, so it’s only a few feet to the back of the lorry. The guys always check that the bins are empty before returning them to the path. Our council has a number to ring for uncollected bins, so I’d ring that if I had a problem.

 

We had a similar problem with the green waste bin being deemed to heavy to be emptied. I contacted the council as (a) they had missed the previous collection when it was only half full and (b) I, a 70+ year old had wheeled it the length of our back garden plus the depth of the house and the length of our front drive. A combined distance of about 200 feet. They weren't interested. I ended up bagging a lot of the content and putting in the non-recyclable waste and it was taken the following week.
The suggesting to half empty the green waste bin seems to overlook the fact that you would need somewhere to put it and to assume than nothing new would be created in the next 2 weeks.

 

I have the opposite problem - we keep a green wheely bin by the road so our neighbours can put things in it.
The scheme here is that you pay for a sticker on the bin so that it gets emptied.
Ours has no sticker, instead it has written on it: "Please don't empty this bin"

.. and still they empty it!

 

Some people actually fill the bottom of the bin with rubble or soil then put green stuff on top.
I just wonder if that is what they think when they say the bin is too heavy.
Also there must be a safe weight limit on the tail lift that turns it upside down.

 

Quite possibly!

 

They've only recently started charging here [about 3 years ago?] for garden waste removal. It's collected every week and all year round, and that's been the case for a long time. It went up this year to around £50.
I didn't bother last year as I compost most stuff, and any branches are used in my dead hedge, but I paid this year as I'm removing a hedge completely, so it's worthwhile.
The irony is that many people round here don't really garden that much [the wumman next door is a classic example] so I could probably have her bin as well and we could split the cost, even if it was just for this year, giving me more scope to get the hedge done with, and she'd pay less for the small amount she'd use it for.

 

£50 for weekly collections sounds like a bargain, @fairygirl! Ours is over £70 for fortnightly ... and that's before factoring in my root-washing water use, not to mention my time!

 

Yes - I expect it is good value compared to other areas, but we have quite high charges for our water because it's included in the council tax as a set fee, so if you're canny with it, as I am, you're paying far more than you could be, compared to those who like watering their lawns even when it's raining. Don't get me started on that!
I was going to say on that shower, but....

We also have quite high council tax anyway, so it's swings and roundabouts.

 

Ours is an annual cost of about £70 for fortnightly collection, although they don't collect in December.
We do have to pay £41 for the wheelie bin.

We were fortunate in that the previous house owner had not only bought a bin, but had also paid for the annual service. So we had from the end of November until the end of March, at no cost to us.

So we made good use of that!!

 

Yes, our council tax is high. Just outside the Top 10 of highest bills. Around 60% goes on social care, there being a lot of octogenarians+ here.