OT wheelie bin pollution rant

Is it just me that find wheelie bins noise-polluters? Hard rubber wheels. and lids that crash down (usually because people either slam them closed or leave them go from a height). We have two collections a weeks and the circus begins with

Noise session 1 People (like me) put the bin out the night before (I DO wheel it slowly so is quiet, and I DO put the lid down so it doesn't SLAM)

Noise session 2 People put the bin out on the morning of collection

Noise session 3 Lorry comes to collect and empty (unavoidable) and ok those guys down't have time to replace the bins quietly but it 2 wheel seesion + 2 lid session / bin

Noise session 4 This takes anything for zero to 8 hours depending upon when people take their bins in.

And all the above twice a week.

Dance of the Bins This is as good as the Suger Plum Fairy.

Some folk now have THREE bins. Kitchen waste Garden waste Recyclable waste

The bat next door has allocated a very specific place for each bin and she impliments a scheme that maximizes the number of bin-moves each collection day. Others use various schemes such as FIFO's, Stacks, Queues and of course the famous Random method.

I wish they'd make quiet bins

Rant over.

ps I support recycling - I just wish noise pollution had a higher priority.

Reply to
Dave
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Best regards,

Jon C.

Reply to
jg.campbell.ng

I just wish that my council would put the bloody thing back where I put it and not wherever they happen to be able to throw it to. So not in the middle of the drive or the middle of the footpath. I know that they have to get finished ASAP to go and do their second job or put their feet up but can they show a little more consideration to the householders.

Kevin

Reply to
Kev

Just come and live in Hart district in Hampshire and you'll be OK as the council can't be bothered collecting the bins more often than not.

Reply to
Tony Hogarty

On 7 Jul 2006 04:53:23 -0700, "Kev" had this to say:

I've just had the binmen round a few minutes ago and they put the bin back almost in its correct place on the drive!

It must be getting near Christmas... :-(

Reply to
Frank Erskine

So it's not the bins per se you object to - it's the users?

I agree that people should be more responsible about noise production.

Some people drive quietly or listen to tv quietly, others don'tl You can't blame the cars or sets for the noise.

Mary

Reply to
Mary Fisher

Your COUNCIL does the job?

How posh :-)

In fact our collection is done by a contractor on behalf of the council. I'd love to see councillors doing it.

Mary

Reply to
Mary Fisher

Were you around when we had metal dustbins with metal lids and nobody but rubbish in bags?

The noise was unbelievable (the lids rarely fitted properly after being bashed around). The binners would lift the bins onto their backs and simply tip the rubbish, ash and other light stuff flying all over the street, and the stinking, often open, vehicle bouncing over the cobbles to the next house.

Wheelie bins aren't perfect (nor, as I've said, is people's usage of them) but the whole system is an enormous improvement on what happened even thirty years ago here.

Mary

Reply to
Mary Fisher

The message from Dave contains these words:

Can't say I notice it here. We only get a collection weekly, alternating waste and recycling, but the only times I notice the noise I'm usually glad of it 'cos it reminds me to go put the bin out.

Reply to
Guy King

The message from "Kev" contains these words:

Have you spoken to them about it? I had a meeting a couple of weeks ago with the waste collection bod for our area and this was one of the subjects other people had asked me to raise. He asked for a list of places where it was a concern and apparently since then it's been better. They're quite nice if you ask them nicely - or at least they are here in Telford.

Reply to
Guy King

Metal bins! Cobbles! You were lucky. We had to get up just after 't bin men 'ad gone, scrape rubbish together w't tongue all week on earth and spit it into back o' t'orse &cart. Young people today...cont on p 94

Reply to
Bob Mannix

When I was a child there were still some middens - three sided brick shelters where the coal ash (there wasn't much other rubbish) was dumped. The metal dustbins were a godsend to householders.

Mary

Reply to
Mary Fisher

What I also find annoying is that they are always in such a hurry but if you overfill the bin and the lid sticks up by an inch they get a horrible sticky sign and stick it to the top of the bin. If you haven't left the bin at exactly the correct spot at the boundary of the property they enter it in a log to justify why they didn't empty it so they have time when they want to. As for asking them, the bods who collect the recycle boxes used to leave them blocking the drive and one morning I came out just as they had left them. I asked them not to obstruct the drive but the response was to f*ck off and then the guy threatened to head butt me.

Kevin

Reply to
Kev

Yes. I remember the newer plastic ones too. I don't remember anything *but* rubbish being put in bags!

Did I advocate going backwards to metal bins? It seems to me some material science could reduce the bin-din. I don't really think it makes much sense to say that because things were bad before they can't be made a little better now.

Aye lad. I wemember see'in ya ot there doo'n it.

Neither was I. Some of us *are* well over 50 and also have memories that work.

My gran *really* did live in a hovel and due to ill health and losing her husband who died at 34 wasn't able to cope. My mum was brought up there and I as a child remember the squalor of it all. Outside loo, cockroaches and plenty more

- that place had it all. So I don't need any lectures on what things "used to be like".

Reply to
Dave

"Dave" wrote

SNIP...........

Don't get me on wheelie bins. As many will point out, they must be positioned with pin-point accuracy and oriented to the nth degree to stand a chance of avoiding the George Orwell sticker treatment. As for any degree of overloading - forget it. As a family of four we generate about 5-6 bin bags of rubbish per week - and yes that is with recycling everything possible. Previously these would all have been removed. So us and families like us make individual trips to the tip creating noise pollution, environmental pollution and using far more resources of course, to take the rubbish that won't fit in the one-size-suits-noone wheelie bin. The council gets the same money for removing about 40% less waste. The bin-men (refuse relocation engineers) get ideas above their station because they are given a degree of control over what should and should not be removed/acceptable practice.

Progress.............Pah

Phil

Reply to
TheScullster

NONONO!!! I was saying that things are better now. Perhaps we're more sensitive ... :-)

I didn't. See above.

Perhaps you could make a million by designing a desirable noiseless bin ...

No but there was a mocking air to Bob's reply.

Um - I apologise if you think I was lecturing, I wasn't. Yours was the self-admitted rant.

My grandparents didn't live in hovels although they wouldn't be allowed now. Mum's mother died in 1937 so I didn't know her, my parents inherited the rental of the back to back scullery house so I was brought up there. Dad's parents always seemed very old to me, they died when they were 83. I didn't see squalor in their house although they lived partly underground in a 'cellar kitchen', it was a fascinating place. In fact my grandma's house was cleaner than ours is now, there were no cockroaches or anything nasty. Before you say it, we don't have them either :-) There was a pig in Grandad's garden in the war but they're not undesirable :-).

Both grandparents had outside lavatories, as did I until I was eleven, there's nothing squalid about that. Spouse and I had an outside lav, four houses down the street, for the first four years of our married life - in a one up and down house with a cold tap. We had metal dustbins in the lavatory yard, my grandparents had middens.

I really do think that the *design* of wheelie bins isn't a problem, it's the way people use them which causes the noise. You're careful about it, so am I, but many people seem to ignore noise nowadays. Perhaps they always did ...

Mary

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Reply to
Mary Fisher

They don't here, we've never had a sticker. I suspect that you're exaggerating the 'pin-point' accuracy of positioning, doing it well would be good here.

Here the only test of overloading is whether the men can wheel the bins easily. If they're too heavy (e.g. filled with building rubble) it could damage the lifting gear, we were told. I can believe it.

Heavens, there were seven of us and we never generated that amount ... Now we hardly fill two carrier bags a week - but there are only two of us.

Um - what's their station?

Quite right too. Ours care about what they do, they're conscientious, clean and courteous. I do wish they'd leave the bins where they weren't obstructing the footpath but nobody complains, it seems. I move them, others walk round them.

Mary

Reply to
Mary Fisher

We have very good bin-men. We leave our bins just inside our drive being on a dog-walking route. We have a supply of sack bags which are filled and just get lifted out and our bins don't go near the cart. Sometimes the bins are even wheeled back up the drive. And when I have forgotten they will even come looking for it. We have had the same men coming for years and a sort of rapport has built up starting with me forgetting to put the rubbish bags out and stopping them on their way back (live in a cul-de-sac) plus I always say or wave a thank you if I see them. A bit of acknowledgement goes a long way!

Reply to
Pinot Grigio

The message from "Kev" contains these words:

Now you see, round here that'd have caused a phone call to Carl at Waste Services and he'd have had a major word with 'em.

Reply to
Guy King

The message from "TheScullster" contains these words:

Good grief, where does it all come from?

We're a family of four and generally half fill a mid-sized wheelybin in a fortnight. We missed a collection over Easter 'cos we were away for the night and even after four weeks it wasn't full once it'd been helped down a bit.

Reply to
Guy King

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