Garden waste wheelie bin woes

I see the price of mine has gone up again. £74 now. In 2021, when I first indulged, it was £56.

 

Definitely difficult for anyone in a terraced house with limited access, and then bins all over pavements etc in busier areas, when there isn't enough room.
We used to have that small food waste bin @pete, before the big bin came into operation for food waste, but it's ideal for anyone who doesn't have a garden, or doesn't have one with much plant life. The woman next door to me could easily do without her brown bin, or could have a small compost bin somewhere - she has a garage but doesn't drive, so that's unused and it could go in there.
We also have four bins- the all purpose grey one, the brown one for garden/food waste, and then a green bin for plastic, glass and tins and a blue one for card/paper. Your recycle bin must have all that [ our blue and green] together I assume?

I sometimes wonder if it's leading to more fly tipping too, when charges become very high @ViewAhead . I don't know about other areas, but we still have to book in for our local dump/tip and bring ID etc [which they never check anyway] and, much as I loathe and despise it, I can understand why people just think 'sod it' and dump it in farm gates and lanes.

 

Our amenity tip has got much more difficult to use and we have to book now too. I quite often see bags of dumped green waste around town.

 

It started here during the pandemic, but they've never changed back @ViewAhead.
No idea why, and if you're on your own, you need to print out the booking form if you don't have one of those phones.
It's a 10 minute slot too, so again, if on your own, you either need two slots, or you have to make sure you're speedy, which isn't great. I don't know what folk do if they don't have the internet either.

 

The booking of slots is so much better IMO, before booking came along there would be a queue of vehicles completely blocking the streets around where the tip is, I could easily take over 30 minutes to even reach the gate.

It's stopped all those crazy people going down there with one odd piece of rubbish I'm sure people just love getting in a queue, I never go there unless I have a car full.
Here you just give your reg no and a bloke at the gate checks it against his list, it works really well.

 

The irony is - that's what they actually do here too @pete -just check the number plate, so all the other malarkey, like proof that you live in the area, is a waste of time.
I know what you mean about the queues, but it'll always depend on the individual site. Ours has a good run in, as it's beyond the small town it's next to, so it's less problematic. It'll always be busier at weekends too, so if possible, it's better to go on a weekday, and much easier to pick a time if you're not working too. The other one we could go to, would be more difficult because it's in the middle of the town, so far busier.

We love queuing in the UK though, don't we?....

 

I don't have a smart phone so I am supposed to print out my booking number, but I don't have a printer either. I just write it down on a piece of paper. So far they have never asked for it. Our slots are 30 mins and you can have 5 per month. Ten minutes seems very tight, @fairygirl, especially if all the people in your slot arrive at once and are queuing to get checked in.

 

I don't drive, so any old furniture or larger item, gets the sledgehammer treatment, before being placed in general refuse, piece by piece, or burned in the metal dustbin left by the previous owner.

 

We have to take our Council Tax bill as proof we live in the Birmingham area and you can only book one 15 min slot at a time. So if you need to make say 7 trips, as we recently did, it just takes too much time re-booking. So we just paid £45 for them to come and pick up our stuff.

 

Landfill taxes have been on the increase due to legislation to reduce the amount of waste that goes to them. There are two rates, standard rate and a lower rate. The standard rate in 2000 was £10 per tonne with the lower rate at £2. The current rate for standard waste, I think is £103.70 and the lower rate is £3.25. From the 1st April 2025 it will increase, standard rate will be £126.15 and the lower rate £4.05. My understanding for long queues at our local waste depot is down to people not segregating the waste before hand.

 

Yes - proof of residence @cactus_girl , and the problem I had recenty was - the lawyers wanted proof of residence [long story] because I was buying a flat with my daughter, and they still haven't returned it, so technically I had nothing else. Fortunately, as I'm now a pensioner, I had all that paperwork.
If not, I don't know what I'd have done, because they have a list of what's acceptable, and I'd have been scrabbling around to get something because everything's online, and it has to be original documents. It wouldn't even have been needed because they never check any of it!
It's stupid - they have your car reg, so that's linked to the house anyway.
Some jobsworth has come up with that nonsense.

 

Surely a 10 minute slot is arrival time, I certainly wouldn't be rushing around to get out before my 10 minute slot expired.

You just put your post code in on the online form here, no printing out required.

 

Ah, maybe, @pete. Here you can arrive anytime in your half hr but you are supposed to be out by the end of it. My neighbour tested the system by pottling along 27 mins in ... and they didn't make a fuss. It might depend how busy they were though.

 

They were going to do the same in our area, which also has not materialised. It is basically down to the local authorities which route they go down regarding collections.

I know in Lincolnshire, the local councils have tapped into some of the government funding set aside for waste to energy. Another new anaerobic digestion plant has been approved with funding from the government. The plan is to collect food waste on a weekly bases, this will then go to this site to turn the food waste in to bio gas, with what is left over going back on farm land. They reckon 1 tonne of food waste can generate between 300-325 kWh of energy.

According to the company, this new plant will be capable of producing enough energy for 19,000 homes 6MW. Now if they are producing 300MW from 600,000 tonnes of food waste. How many homes could you power with the 9.5 million tonnes of food waste we generate annually.

BioteCH4 Lincolnshire AD plant gets seal of approval - letsrecycle.com

There is a pig farm near me and they have a small anaerobic digestion plant where they capture the gas from the decomposing manure. He approached me to see if I was interested in the composted manure as a peat substitute or to be used as a soil conditioner. When he told me how much he was wanting, I replied "good luck".

 

They have been doing that with food
waste here for a number of years.
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