Fortnightly bin collections
Seriously, why do people get so het up about their bins only getting collected every other week?

There are three of us in our house (well, two and a half, my daughter will be one on the day this QOTW closes) and I only need to put our wheelie bin out once every 3-4 weeks. Hpw much shit are you buying and throwing away that necessitates your bin being eptied every week? It's not like I'm some beardy-weirdy, yoghurt-weaving recycle-psycho, we just don't seem to generate that much waste.

And what makes it worse is asome fat, ugly prick in government is going to spend a quarter of a billion pounds on "eradicating" ortnightly bin collections, like they're some horrible disease or criminal gang or, y'know, actual problem.
(ScousersPet, Mon 5 Mar 2012, 9:27, 34 replies)

There are four of us in our house and we often have friends or guests over
recycling and composting aside, we generate around one kitchen bin's worth of rubbish a week and our dustbin could easily go 3-4 weeks without being emptied
( emvee cruor deo cruoris, Mon 5 Mar 2012, 9:41, closed)

Our binn would never go three weeks with out being emtied.
Not due a loud shouty man doing it early in the morning, but due to the bloody foxes round here and they fact that they have somehow worked out how to open the bloody lids and thrash the fuck out of whatever is inside.
(FartThroughAWalkieTalkie wished you were dead in ditch on, Mon 5 Mar 2012, 12:13, closed)

We've
got four adults and 5 kids in our house.
Our front garden looks like a fucking landfill site after two weeks, especially after the foxes et al. have ripped the bags open to get at the leftovers...and that's with all the bags of recycled bottles, plastics and paper as well.
Over Christmas they weren't collected for 5 weeks - the view from anyone's window in our street was not a pretty one. It seriously looked like a war zone.
(dchurch bah, Mon 5 Mar 2012, 12:26, closed)

Fucking typically...
...I got home from work yesterday to find that they had simply decided not to collect our bins again...so in a fortnight's time, we'll have a month's worth of shite outside our house from 4 adults and 5 kids for them to collect.

I need to get an incinerator I think.
(dchurch bah, Tue 6 Mar 2012, 14:03, closed)

Yup,

But the problem is, as so often, that great big group that the world would be better off without: 'Other People'. I lived in a complex of flats, where we had fortnightly collection and each week the bin areas were filled and overflowing with black sacks piled up against the walls. It was disgusting. Fortnightly bin collections are a step in the right direction, but only if fines for excess rubbish or improper recycling are enforced with zero tolerance, otherwise it's just a shitty cost cutting measure that serves no one.
( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Mon 5 Mar 2012, 9:50, closed)

I have no idea how you manage that
Ours is done weekly, and we need it. I put our bins out last night, which is a recycling box for paper, full. A recycling box for plastic and metal, also full (they're about half a wheelie bin each).

Then 2 dustbins full of general crap like nappies etc.

We're also supposed to recyle food waste, but we have a waste disposal in the sink so it all goes down there.

2 adults, 2 kids.
(username failed moderation, Mon 5 Mar 2012, 9:58, closed)

I live in a house with 11 others
Our bins fill quickly, despite the fact we seperate our recycling out. We need a weekly bin collection, else we're just leaving bags out, as the council now refuses to provide us with another bin.
( Agnostic Antichrist Baltimora, Mon 5 Mar 2012, 10:12, closed)

11 others?
I bet you just say that to commit postal vote fraud, don't you?
( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Mon 5 Mar 2012, 10:14, closed)

Nope, a 12 bedroom house share.

( Agnostic Antichrist Baltimora, Mon 5 Mar 2012, 10:39, closed)

Holy shit
12 strangers living together. Must be tense sometimes.
(username failed moderation, Mon 5 Mar 2012, 11:24, closed)

3 of us knew each other previously, we work together
And most are only on short term leases, due to placements at local company.

And honestly, it's fantastic. It means you get variation in people. A number of us get on so well that we will cook for one another, it's great.
( Agnostic Antichrist Baltimora, Mon 5 Mar 2012, 11:28, closed)

Especially when the bins are full. Deciding who has to keep their pizza box under their bed until the next collection is a bitch.

( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Mon 5 Mar 2012, 11:29, closed)

The recycling bins are never a problem
We have 4 of them
( Agnostic Antichrist Baltimora, Mon 5 Mar 2012, 12:13, closed)

Can't you get a second wheelie bin
I mean seriously?
(Che Grimsdale Best before:, Mon 5 Mar 2012, 11:51, closed)

We have 2, but even then it fills ridiculously quickly.
The council refuse to provide us with another, saying that 2 should be enough
( Agnostic Antichrist Baltimora, Mon 5 Mar 2012, 12:13, closed)

I like the fact that your answer is 'We have enough recycling space for out pizza boxes'
rather than 'We don't eat that much pizza'.
( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Mon 5 Mar 2012, 13:16, closed)

It's not pizza boxes though, it's general food boxes
We don't tend to get many takeaways
( Agnostic Antichrist Baltimora, Mon 5 Mar 2012, 14:37, closed)

The problem
is not the fact that people fill their bins up too much, it's the fact rotting food is sitting in the bins for two weeks...Not a problem in winter but in Summer walking along our terrace road, you would of thought you were in downtown Bangkok.
(bROKEN aRROW PUA HVI Master, Mon 5 Mar 2012, 10:56, closed)

*have

( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Mon 5 Mar 2012, 10:57, closed)

I got told off by my binmen for wrapping up meat scraps and chicken bones etc in newspaper to try and cut down on the smell a bit last summer (when the food waste was only collected once a fortnight) - apparently I should have put the newspaper into the newspaper box provided, they said they'd "take it this time, but try and remember for next collection day.

We had our collections changed recently though, so hopefully it won't be so bad this summer - weekly for the recyclables (including food waste), and fortnightly for the rest of it. And I've had written confirmation from my local authority that I can wrap food waste in newspaper, so I can wave that at the binmen if it happens again.
(Freakmandu, Mon 5 Mar 2012, 11:23, closed)

How the fuck did they see this?
Don't you put them in black bags? And then put the black bags in the wheelie bin???
(Che Grimsdale Best before:, Mon 5 Mar 2012, 11:52, closed)

They have cameras that look down into the skip as your wheelie bin gets emptied.
Big Brother or what eh?
(Misery McUglywife an attention seeking sociopathic fuckstain., Mon 5 Mar 2012, 12:03, closed)

He opened the bin and looked into it, checking for stuff that shouldn't be in there. They do it a lot round here, don't they do it where you are?

We're not allowed to put black bags in our recycling bin. We have many and various hunks of plastic in our garden for chucking stuff away.

We have a brown bin for:

"ALL raw and cooked food scraps / peelings (including bones)
Tea bags and coffee grounds
Envelopes (not with plastic windows)
Shredded paper
Toilet & kitchen roll centres
Egg cartons
Cardboard food packaging (including cereal packets)
Brown cardboard
Grass cuttings
Woody prunings (max diameter 3" / 80mm)
Real Christmas trees
Straw / hay (including the bedding of small animals eg hamsters)"

We also have a separate caddy to go in the kitchen for food waste.


Then we have separate boxes:

"1 box for newspapers, magazines, junk mail, white directories and Yellow Pages
1 box for glass bottles and jars
1 box for food & drinks cans, aerosols, cartons (e.g tetra paks) and all plastics (please rinse any item which has come into contact with raw meat). Please note cling film or expanded foam-like plastics are not accepted."


And a separate green bin for regular household waste.

www.threerivers.gov.uk/Default.aspx/Web/RubbishWasteRecycling

Its all there... I see that they've added now that we're allowed to wrap food waste in newspaper to go into the brown bin, so I guess I won't have to wave my piece of paper at the bin man now.
(Freakmandu, Mon 5 Mar 2012, 13:20, closed)

Fair dos
Sounds like you're fucked.
(Che Grimsdale Best before:, Mon 5 Mar 2012, 14:47, closed)

Living
in a 2 bedroom flat with one other girl, both of us eat healthily, yes, we do only need the bin emptying once a fortnight. However in a previous houseshare when I lived with 3 girls who lived on pre-packaged crap, they were forever filling up the bin with the 5 boxes that their frozen burger inevitably had to be wrapped in so we desperately needed the weekly collection. Or rather, they desperately needed to change their eating habits. (Funnily enough, if 3 fat girls live with one normal sized girl and keep commenting on how she cooks healthy food for herself and they'd love to be her size but then keep eating rubbish, you'd think the penny would drop, no?)
(Petite chien is going to do science to it, Mon 5 Mar 2012, 11:11, closed)

We generate crap loads of rubbish. Those ‘perfectly ripe’ fruit from Waitrose come in there own bomb proof packaging. An it’s a double whammy, cos if you don’t eat them in a day or so they’re past their best and end up in the compost bin anyway
( Ring Of Fire A petty, drooling belming butthurt retard., Mon 5 Mar 2012, 11:14, closed)

But again, we can only blame ourselves for buying the bloody things.
No one forces us to pay 50p more for 4 nice, perfectly ready to eat apples in a box than we would if we just picked up the loose ones. You can't buy things with the pointless packaging and then complain when the nice man from the council doesn't come and take it away from you.

(I realise you, personally, are not complaining).
( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Mon 5 Mar 2012, 11:25, closed)

We get weekly "household rubbish".
But fortnightly recycling. Problem is that the recycling bin is usually full by wk. 1.5. whereas I rarely get the normal bin more than half full.
I should probably drink less.
Or complain to the council.
(Misery McUglywife an attention seeking sociopathic fuckstain., Mon 5 Mar 2012, 11:17, closed)

my issue with fortnightly collection is this
i used to get my bins picked up weekly now i get them picked up fortnightly ...
not a problem. Just refund my council tax bill for the weeks i no longer recieve a service for.

People say but they recycle now - Which is also good
BUT this makes recycle companies a lot of money.

I know this because my friend works at a plastic recycling plant.

So if the council are providing less of a service and saving money
and also they are no doubt recieving kick backs from recycling plants rtrying to win recycle contracts
why are costs going up for joe public ?
(Cov Boy, Mon 5 Mar 2012, 11:23, closed)

Yes, because that's exactly how council tax works.
There's an exact monetary amount that goes to each specific service you receive an dit's allocated againts your name so at the end of each year they can tell precisely what each individual has and hasn't used. At their Christmas party they thank each individual who has generated the surplus that pays for their beer.
( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Mon 5 Mar 2012, 11:28, closed)

Well I clicked this
Don't forget folks, you can squash stuff down in your bin to save space, otherwise your wheelie bin is full of bags of 90% air.
(Che Grimsdale Best before:, Mon 5 Mar 2012, 11:55, closed)

OK, just to repeat what I buried in an earlier post
a very clean solution to stinky food recycling is to get a waste disposal unit. Assuming you have a suitable sink that is.

They cost less than £100, you can throw just about anything in it, except bones and large bits of raw meat. Oh, and spoons, but I probably don;t need to say that.

Easy to fit, they shouldn't require any extra plumbing/drainpipes.
(username failed moderation, Mon 5 Mar 2012, 12:42, closed)

I cooked a spoon once, with my turkey at Christmas.
(Freakmandu, Mon 5 Mar 2012, 16:03, closed)

And scene.

( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Mon 5 Mar 2012, 17:11, closed)