Topic: Councils changing rubbish pickup

[windygale]

Hi everyone , i was told today that our council rubbish collection was to be changed,
1/every two weeks instead of weekly
2/ we have to split up your rubbish into -plastic-papers tins-glass and others,
 mind you it wont worry me, as i place all my papers-cardboards-and vegs -teabags on my compost heap anyway,
What are your councils doing in your areas
later
windy

[Mimi]

That sounds very like the German system Windy.. Our council is very slow with their recycling plans.. They have only just started giving the locals recycle box's.  These are collected fortnightly and can be used for paper/glass etc.  I tried to find out if they have a 'compost centre' where I could collect or even purchase compost.  A lot of councils actually compost all the green waste that is collected and then sell it back to gardeners.  Does ours..........no chance.  I have a feeling that it is all just dumped into a land fill like everything else.  I have tried and tried to find out but hit a brick wall each time.

[summergirl]

Ours collects rubbish weekly, and paper,cardboard,plastics etc fortnightly.
They sort it manually and so we can't put glass in - that still needs to be taken to a recycling depot.  Tried to engage with a company who collects glass from pubs to have a pick up collection from home - we could join forces with the neighbours, but the company wasn't amenable.

[salad muncher]

Mimi, you may have hit a brick wall as I did trying the same as you and trying to buy what I thought would be cheap compost, our council compost it but sell it at there own garden centre apperntly not got there yet but will find out more. Maybe other councils do this and some one could enlighten us?

[Plottie]

Hi Windy
Our rubish is collected fortnightly as is our recyclable stuff (alternate weeks). We have special boxes for our recyclables.........for paper, glass, aluminium cans, steel cans, plastic bottles and a large brown wheelie bin for compostable waste.  We can request as many of the boxes as we need.  It didn't take us long to get into the habit of separating everything out but it is a bit of a drag having to lug all the separate boxes out to the front on collection day.
Although I'm all in favour of these schemes my main bug bear is the fact that the 'ordinary' bin only gets emptied once a fortnight. For many people this is not a problem but i find that, despite recycling all I can my ordinary bin gets too full to last us 2 weeks.  This is undoubtably due to the fact that there are 5 of us in the house.  Larger bins are available but will only be issued after undergoing an inspection of the waste gathered and I don't like the thought of some little oik rooting through my bin and lecturing me on the contents  :o
Mimi - our council also composts the green waste and sells it back to us.  Can't bring myself to do this either - I think that as we've provided it to them, they should gift it back to us!! ;D
Rant over - feel better now
Plottie

[windygale]

Hi everybody, thanks for the replys, its about time the councils are taking up the crys to sort out the mess of mankind, try to sort out the amount of rubbish going into land fill site and reuse more,
 if your near wiltshire here's a site that might you with compost ,
http://www.hills-group.co.uk/compostingFrameset.html,
but most of my green waste goes into my compostbin anyway so the council wont have that , all we need now is for someone to bulid alot of very big airfilter to clean up the air and we will be ok (as if) still we can dream,
later,
windy.

[Mrs Ava]

Ours went to fornightly about 18months ago, but didn't last long.  Our local councillor was inundated with photographs of peoples maggot infested bins from spring right through into the autumn.  Not too bad for us becuase even with the 4 of us, we don't seem to accumulate toooo much rubbish, altho that varies week on week.  Conservative won the vote because they promised if they got in they would give us our weekly collection back, and you know, he kept his promise!  ;D

[Kerry]

we have only just changed to wheelie bins, before we had 1 plastic bin plus a metal one for our ashes.
the wheelie bin does hold more, but now it only gets collected every fortnight, not weekly. on the alternate fortnight the brown wheelie bin is taken, which is for 'garden waste' only. this the council compost and sell back to us as 'county compost'. i haven't bought any as i use my own compost, putting woody prunings and hedge cliipings in the council bin. we have a fortnightly recycling collection, but my real bugbear is that they don't take plastic, but do take paper, glass, cans and clothes. there's so much that comes in plastic now, from drinks to food packing that it does quite add up.

the fortnightly collection will not be popular this summer, i predict photos of maggots, as EJ said, as this happened in the next door council district.
my other annoyance is the fire ashes- as the bin is plastic these have to be cooled and emptied in later. they originally wanted them in seperate bag, and then that in the bin, but no chance!

our council seemed quite behind in its environmental thinking, but i believe there's new directives from the government that X percent of waste has to be recycled, so they had to work fast to meet the targets.

[Garden Manager]

We have once a week rubbish collection and a once a fortnight recyling collection for paper, card, glass bottles and tins (no plastics though  >:(). We have to put these in a large plastic box and a bag (for paper and card) the night before they are due.

That said I try to shred some paper to put on the compost heap. ;D

I say they areusualy regular - our council are still trying to catch up from the christmas break ::)

[ACE]

The I.W Council make and sell compost and it is absolute rubbish (excuse the pun) you could not grow weeds in it.

[Andy H]

What cardboard and paper can you NOT put on compo heap?
Obviously the shiny stuff but what about normal A$ sheets that arrive as junk mail?

All the newspapers OK??? ie:coloured print?

[NattyEm]

Richard are you with WDDC? Weymouth&Portland are still on christmass catch-up too!

We can put glass,paper,plastic and tins in for recycling once a fortnight, rubbish is collected weekly.

I think I'm right in saying you can get free compost from our local tip, haven't investigated it properly yet.

[annie]

Kerbside recycling is welcomed but not at the expense of losing a weekly general waste collection. Join our national campaign (free to join) if you have concerns:

http://www.weeklywaste.com

[Roy Bham UK]

Annie, I’ve had a look at the site and come away confused (that’s pretty normal for me) the question is questionable and not very understandable, having looked at the vote result it appears peeps want fortnightly collections.
Are the voters getting confused with the question and hitting the wrong button I wonder, or is just me?

Should there be government legislation to prevent local authorities from introducing alternate week schemes?
                   votes     percent

 1. Yes          141   40.52%
 2. No           207   59.48%

[annie]

Roy - it was always risky to include this question on the website.  Visitors can also be those in local authorities who are pushing for fortnightly collections and so they clock up the "no" vote.  They would obviously not wish for government legislation to prevent such schemes but to safeguard the public it is surely necessary.

25% of all councils (between 80 and 100) are now collecting general waste only once a fortnight.  At least 11 councils have reverted to weekly collections following huge outcries by the general public.  Our Campaign has supporters from 8  counties and we expect more as the warmer weather arrives and the problems really start.  Imagine lifting the lid of your wheelie bin and finding it infested with maggots!