Easiets/cheapest way to get rid of garden waste?

[Tim Streater]

Then phone the council waste collection dept and seek guidance. Also talk to the relevant councillor.

[Tim Streater]

What Canterbury is going to have is:

1) Small grey bin (indoors) for *any* food waste, decant into larger (outdoor) lockable bin for food waste, collected weekly. 2) Large purple-lidded bin for cardboard, paper, bottles, tins, *any* plastic except films (so no clingfilm), aerosol cans, collected fortnightly 3) Green bin for garden waste, collected fortnightly 4) Black bin - landfill - for all else, collected fortnightly.

At our annual Parish Meeting, our city councillor had arranged for a girlie from the Council to come and explain it all. It seems they'll be quite flexible about it all, people in terraced houses will have other arrangements but if you have the space I'm quite happy with the new set up.

[SteveW]

We are supposed to have these caddies to avoid us having to go out to the green bin too often. We however limit the binning of food to things like chicken carcasses and have a waste disposal for disposing of the normal food debris, so the caddy is unnecessary.

SteveW

[Andy Champ]

We have a green one, which is for the landfill stuff. Someone years ago thought wheely bins would look better green than black.

Then recycling was invented...

Andy

[SteveW]

Be careful, there has been at least one (possibly more) fatality from someone stamping down the rubbish in a wheelie bin, overbalancing and hitting their head.

Maplin used to sell a compacting tool that let you do it from standing in front of the bin.

SteveW

[D.M.Chapman]

Apparantly Shepway was a trial area for this model, and loads of places are now adopting it.

Ah, this is different to us. We have a purple lidded bin but we can't put paper or card in it. That has to go in a black box.

Ours is a green bin with a brown lid for this :-)

A green bin with a green lid for us :)

Yep, we've had this setup for 2 years now, and similar but slightly more limited for several years before that.

It seems to work well. Some people moan about it, but it certainly increases the level of recycling!

Ours is described

Darren

[Tim Streater]

But the black box fits inside the purple bin, and the lorry is clever enough to do the right thing when it empties it. The CCC girlie said that if you have lots of cardboard (e.g., just bought a bathroom suite and it all came in boxes) then just put all the extra card next to the purple bin at next collection.

[Frank Erskine]

We have three wheeliebins. The original (green in colour) is for general landfill-type stuff and is emptied weekly. A brown-coloured one is for garden waste (and is only issued to those who have gardens!) Excess garden waste can be put into the green one. The brown one is emptied fortnightly, except in winter when presumably the relevant staff are deployed in snow-clearing and gritting or somesuch duties. The newest one (dark blue in colour) has an internal "tray" for paper. Its main compartment is for cardboard, "tin" cans, bottles, jars and, fairly recently, foil and plastic chilled/frozen food trays and juice cartons. This one is also emptied fortnightly, between the garden-waste collections. This is the one to beware of, since they usually collect before 8.00am, when I'm normally still in bed... I tend to leave that bin at the side of the house overnight (in case it gets blown over) and my early bird next-door neighbour kindly pushes it to the edge of the grass verge for the binmen.

There's still no provision for recycling of batteries/cells despite the slogan stickered to the blue bin "Your blue bin - fits all your recycling in". It doesn't even scan!

[meow2222]

If there's an out the way corner, bung all green material there, but not branches. It'll have rotted away by next year. Or wire some pallets together to make a simple composter if you want to formalise it.

Wood can be offered on freecycle for the fire Flowerpots can be freecycled in one lot too.

NT

[F Murtz]

44 gallon drum and burn it

[Brian Gaff]

Well here I have to pay an extra 55 pound a year to get the stuff taken to the tip, I only get a discount if I suddenly age a few years, the fact that I'm blind and hence cannot drive it to the tip where its free to leave it seems to be a bit unfair to me, but then we are all in it together, just some more than others. I guess a bonfire is out of the question?

Brian

[Owain]

If mine ever gets email, I'm turning Amish.

Owain

[PeterC]

I compress mine, but can do so by simply putting one foot in it - I'm just tall enough to manage, so the other foot is on the ground. I wouldn't be happy about the load on the axle with a nearly full bin and then my 90kg jumping on it.

[dennis]

Our council has a black bin for landfill, a blue one for mixed recycling, optional green bin for garden waste and an optional brown bin for waste food.

You can't put meat and stuff in the garden waste as the composting process doesn't get hot enough to ensure its safe. The food goes into a digester that does get hot enough.

The recyclables goes to an automatic sorting plant where its separated into saleable stuff and more landfill.

The council has to pay about £150 a load for landfill but gets paid about £40 a load for recyclables *if* they aren't too contaminated. I think people that don't recycle should pay more.

[dennis]

8<

That's a bit silly as there is government cash available to maintain weekly collections.

[Mark]

Yep. Ours went from free garden waste collection to charging for it. Now we need another huge wheely bin. All in all we have 6 bins/boxes for all the rubbish!

And they were suprised their recycling rates went down.

[Mark]

Sounds like your council is a lot more reasonable than ours. Only refuse contained completely within the bins are collected. If any are overfilled or contain the wrong type of refuse they will be left.

The biggest problem though is the fortnightly collections. The bins just aren't big enough.

[Owain]

Same here, multiplied by 5 flats in the building.

Owain

[Martin Brown]

Sounds like a nightmare. If my local tip did this they would be cars queuing down the high street to get into it!

Don't use accelerants beyond some paper to start it. That way leads to trouble. Move the stuff to be burned into the sunniest spot and leave it until tinder dry. Today should be an ideal day if you have already done that. Don't burn too much at once either a 6' heap is about as big as you can handle in a modest sized garden.

One of those bins with holes in it on bricks might reasure her that it will stay in control. Oh and try not to do it with neighbours washing on the line that is also not good!

Start with the thinnest stuff and then once it is going add thicker material in roughly the order of dryness. Once there is a decent bed of charcoal mad hot it will burn anything provided you don't add too much at once. Oh and have a spade and a couple of buckets of water to hand you really don't want to burn down the fence!

[John Rumm]

There is something fundamentally wrong with any organisation that requires access to that kind of information to let you throw something away!