Garden waste collection ... you couldn't make it up

[BTB 500]

Earlier this year our council announced that they needed to cut costs, and ran a consultation about introducing a charge for fortnightly garden waste collection. 62% of respondents didn't think the proposed amount was fair, and only 35% said they would pay for the service if a charge was introduced. So they went ahead anyway, increasing the amount by 8% (perhaps to pay for the consultation process ...).

But wait - food waste goes in the garden waste bin. And legally they're not allowed to charge for the collection of food waste. So that now has to go in the general waste bin instead, until they can set up a new weekly food waste collection service (presumably with a new bin for every house). Free of charge.

That bit of cost-cutting went well then.

 

[poormansporsche]

Well we had our brown bin repossessed by actual go pro, stab vest wearing bailiffs (long story), wonder how much that cost the Council ?

 

[ChrisHGTV]

Sadly it’s not surprising! Tbh I don’t know why there isn’t a national standard for waste collection, surely there would be savings available from economies of scale and rationalisation. We’ve paid for our garden waste for years, £58/bin/year and we use 3. It’s annoying because we only need 3 in the summer and autumn but you’re committed for a year.

 

[Jobsworth]

My pal Jim made me pee myself the other day. We’ve paid for green (brown) bin garden waste collection here for years, but it’s recently gone up quite a bit. Jim (big lad) climbed into his bin and jumped it down to get a bit more in. Collection came and left it with a stickered note on the top. “Bin overweight, not emptied”. He was absolutely apopleptic. I laughed. A lot.

 

[BTB 500]

Well we had our brown bin repossessed by actual go pro, stab vest wearing bailiffs (long story), wonder how much that cost the Council ?

Wow you'd think they would just have left it. We had black boxes up here for recycling (3 in our case) and they didn't want those back when they moved to purple topped bins instead.

 

[BTB 500]

Sadly it’s not surprising! Tbh I don’t know why there isn’t a national standard for waste collection, surely there would be savings available from economies of scale and rationalisation. We’ve paid for our garden waste for years, £58/bin/year and we use 3. It’s annoying because we only need 3 in the summer and autumn but you’re committed for a year.

Yup we paid for garden waste collection down south. £56 a bin here now- we have two that I fill with grass cuttings alone for much of the year. There's only so much compost you can use.

Interestingly the council are introducing many of the other things we had down south e.g. having to pre-book appointments at the dump (sorry, recycling centre), cutting back opening hours, and having to show ID to get in. Our nearest one here is 20 miles away though so we don't use it much. Not really an option to take garden waste there, for example.

 

[BTB 500]

My pal Jim made me pee myself the other day. We’ve paid for green (brown) bin garden waste collection here for years, but it’s recently gone up quite a bit. Jim (big lad) climbed into his bin and jumped it down to get a bit more in. Collection came and left it with a stickered note on the top. “Bin overweight, not emptied”. He was absolutely apopleptic. I laughed. A lot.

OMG! Ours are pretty heavy when brimmed with grass cuttings (compressed down) but I've never had that issue. I used to jump up and down inside the bins down south when we had 5 people living in the house as they often struggled to cope.

 

[HappytalkAgain]

My pal Jim made me pee myself the other day. We’ve paid for green (brown) bin garden waste collection here for years, but it’s recently gone up quite a bit. Jim (big lad) climbed into his bin and jumped it down to get a bit more in. Collection came and left it with a stickered note on the top. “Bin overweight, not emptied”. He was absolutely apopleptic. I laughed. A lot.

My mate did that and went a*se over t!t toppling the bin over in the process. I have to CCTV footage on my phone. It’s hilarious (no injury thankfully so it’s ok to laugh). Made funnier by the fact he’d had a drink or 2.

Shame I don’t know how to post it.

 

[BTB 500]

My mate did that and went a*se over t!t toppling the bin over in the process.

We had a single-storey bit round the front and side of our old house and I used to hang on to the gutter while jumping up & down in the bins. Safety first, and all that

 

[Darrell]

London Borough of Barnet brought in a charge for the once a month garden waste a couple of years ago.
I refused so they took it away so we’ve now only got 2 bins which makes our front drive look tidier.

Dumbo the rabbit gets some of the pruned bushes and the rest gets bagged up and dumped in a skip at work.

 

[HappytalkAgain]

London Borough of Barnet brought in a charge for the once a month garden waste a couple of years ago.
I refused so they took it away so we’ve now only got 2 bins which makes our front drive look tidier.

Dumbo the rabbit gets some of the pruned bushes and the rest gets bagged up and dumped in a skip at work.

Which of the 2 bins do you use for all your scrap lead then?

 

[Darrell]

Which of the 2 bins do you use for all your scrap lead then?

Heavy duty rubbish bags and a wheelbarrow.

 

[BTB 500]

we’ve now only got 2 bins which makes our front drive look tidier.

We have 4, plus 2 big blue bag things for paper recycling!

 

[HappytalkAgain]

Heavy duty rubbish bags and a wheelbarrow.

Give us a shout. I’ll come take them away FOC.

 

[Ted]

Couple of chickens.
Throw the grass cuttings in, the chickens will scratch around, eat a bit, and find it all a bit interesting. Add a few side shoots from the tomato plants and any leafy greens past their sell by date.
A week later no grass cuttings, happy chickens and a dozen eggs.

 

[Darrell]

We have 4, plus 2 big blue bag things for paper recycling!

I’ve seen that in other boroughs but not here. Yet.

 

[Darrell]

We have 4, plus 2 big blue bag things for paper recycling!

Just 2 for us.
A blue one for recycling and another one (green or brown) for everything else but they must be bagged up.

 

[del320]

Ah! Memories, memories:

When I left school I was a council scaffie (bin-man) for several months. Filthy job but £12 p/w was an enormous wage. Other bonuses included free breakfast at the abattoir – never put off by the screams of animals and sliding about on blood, skin, and trotters.

Woe betides you if you failed to salvage any sort of metal - from aluminium teapots through to cast, copper, and lead piping. All such was thrown onto a cage on the cab roof of the Commer “Knocker”, transferred to a shed and the proceeds divvied out each week – another £2-£3…

Round the tenement streets, never a week passed without at least one filthy great roll of linoleum. It needed two of us to lift the vet’s bin at the back of Haymarket and watch as an Alsatian, a couple of cats, and sundry other mammals slithered into the jaws of the draw. No concerns about heavy bins in those days.

If not actually emptying bins, you hung on outside at the back, wolf-whistling the birds. On Friday, payday, your little brown envelope was passed to you by two dark-suited gents through the rear window of a black limousine, then it was straight off to Mather’s Wine and Spirits to clear the throat.

Nowadays, the refuse collection team our way often includes a very presentable girlie. “It wasn’t like this in my day” I leered…

 

[Chrishazle]

Ashford BC introduced a Brown Bin garden waste fortnightly collection service about 5-6 years back for £32.50/year, which was great as the tip is 8 miles away and we're not that young these days. Having a large oak tree in our back garden, come late autumn/early winter we were inundated with leaves despite the large metal thing we call Thumper compressing the leaves and making the bin heavy, so having a spare 120L bin we'd fill that and put it out, and they'd empty it. Over the ensuing years the cost increased to £35, £40 and now £60pa, and even though there are a couple of collections Xmas/New Year time they do not do, and a couple of collections in summer where we do not put our bin out as there's little in it (small garden), I had to bitch at ABC Environmental Services about emptying of the winter spare bin (twice, in late november/december) - although they did capitulate!!
Funny one was a couple of years ago - friend in next village also has oak tree problems and filled his brown bin with acorns - not emptied, label saying "too heavy"!! Have you looked at the bin and seen the load rating of the bin?? Ours is about 120Kg - if it was that heavy I could not move it!!

 

[Bobby Dazzler]

Well we had our brown bin repossessed by actual go pro, stab vest wearing bailiffs (long story), wonder how much that cost the Council ?

When we moved into our house it had an extra large recycling bin - as the previous family were entitled to do so based upon the size of the family - which had to be renewed periodically.

When the renewal came through by post I called to let the know that we’d moved in and that there are only four of us, and would be happy to have it replaced or retained to avoid the cost replacing it.

The next morning at 0700, two men with a transit pick up full of bins bought us a brand new standard size recycling bin and took away our filthy extra large recycling bin. I bet they scrapped it too.

It’s not as if we would misuse the extra large bin and recycle more recyclable materials, so the cost of the bin, delivering, taking away, scrapping and processing was unnecessary.