OT wheelie bin pollution rant

On Fri, 07 Jul 2006 22:59:56 +0100, Joe had this to say:

Inside the lid of one of my wheelie bins there's a "sound" sort of logo and a mention of "99dB".

I suppose that should be dBA...

Hardly new! Pookisnackenburger (which spawned 'Stomp') were using metal bins in the 1980s, and they had roots in Brighton.. Merely derivative!

In message , Dave writes

Wow, if only.

Round here, the bin men won't collect anything that looks anything other than a perfect black bag of rubbish. "Cor, that one is leaning over guv'nor, looks like it could be heavy". I jest, they don't actually say anything, they just leave it.

For example, a quarter bag of charcoal out of the bbq, "well that's commercial/industrial". They just leave it, causing me a trip to the tip (12 mile round trip for one bloody quarter bag of soggy charcoal).

During recycling collections "all cardboard/paper" must be packed flat. So if you have a cardboard box which seems suitable for containing all the other cardboard you put in it, expect to keep the box.

BTW this is the same council that is currently considering whether to go to bi-monthly collections (yes, that's once a fortnight) or as an alternative to charge the householder per bag collected.

Oh, and yes, our council tax has gone up about 1432% this year (I may exaggerate a little but it did go up quite a lot).

Oh, and yes, this is one of the few councils who won't accept domestic asbestos at their own tip. Round here you have to pay 440+vat per ton (oh yes, plus a f***ing huge admin fee to the council) to get rid of your old garage/shed/potting shed whatever.

Bitter, me - no way. I'm actually f***ing fuming.

Oh the joy to have rubbish just collected - with or without the noise.

(Incidentally, SWMBO and I manage to almost fill one black bag a week, we're not exactly polluters). Someone

Strange you should mention that. The school's bins mention something like 98 dB on them. These are the ones that are used for paper re-cycling though.

Dave

So stand for election to the council on a reduced tax policy :-)

Mary

You're throwing out charcoal?

I'd have taken it off your hands!

Ours doesn't.

Our recycling bin is collected monthly, it works.

Ours won't accept it either, it has to be taken to a special asbestos point in another (local) city. There's only a charge if they have to do the transport. I think that's fair.

Mary

The message from somebody contains these words:

Ours are obviously a lot friendlier. Our recycling box got nicked some months ago[1] and since then I've put it all out in a cardboard box. Everything sorted into bags, all cardboard exepct the box CKD and they're quite happy to take it. Bloke said he actually prefers it as he doesn't have to walk back with the empty box.

The message from "tim \(back at home\)" contains these words:

There's a family very similar to use down the road who generate between two and three times as much waste as we do in a week. It appears mostly to be food packaging.

I have to say if you're creating that much rubbish *after* recycling I think you should get some help.

That shows enterprise! But if you know who took it why not take it back?

:-)

I don't understand the 'recycling box' part of your post, Guy. Don't you have a wheelie bin for recyclable stuff?

We have a brown (landfill) bin and a green (metal, plastic, paper/cardboard) one.

Glass can't be put in either, we put bottles and broken glasses (too many these days!) in a crate and Spouse fills his panniers and top box to take to the bottle bank when he goes to the post office or bank.

Garden waste is composted or shredded, table scraps (on the rare occasions there are any) are recycled as eggs.

We have no boxes for anything

Mary

On Fri, 07 Jul 2006 11:34:43 GMT, a particular chimpanzee named Dave randomly hit the keyboard and produced:

Be grateful (on so many levels) that you don't live in Manchester. We're up to four wheelie bins now; Conventional, green waste, paper and glass. Conventional, paper and glass coincide once a fortnight, so the sound of three bins out is preceded by the sound of a fortnights worth of jam jars and beer bottles cascading into the bin.

On Sat, 8 Jul 2006 13:04:41 +0100, Mary Fisher wrote (in article ):

So why did you let them build the M62?

t' Pennines were a natural barrier and you only had Hull to worry about. Now you're hemmed in on both sides.

The message from "Mary Fisher" contains these words:

Because I only round who'd nicked it some time after the event, by which time not only had all the boxes departed but so had the family responsible.

I could get a new box by ringing the council, but since we sort into stacking bins under the meter cupboard and the council's recycling boxen don't fit in the hole it'd be a silly thing to do.

We have a grey bin for non-recyclable stuff and a red box for recycling. There's also a green bin for garden waste but I've only used it once and that was last autumn when the leaves were drifing across the public path so deeply that pushchairs couldn't pass. There were too many for my compost heap. One of these days I might ask 'em to take it away.

Everything goes in the red box - glass, paper, card, tins, foil, clothes. Too small, of course, but at least they don't get upset and refuse to take overspill as long as it's neat and sorted.

What they don't yet take is plastic - milk bottles and pop bottles etc. pile up till I happen to be going past the dump. Recycling chap reckons the investment in equipment to collect it all from the doorstep wouldn't be worth it - from which I deduce that a) Scrap plastic has a low value and b) it's lightweight, so doesn't contribute much to their recycling targets which are set by weight.

Right ... so he did you a favour :-)

...

We can't put glass anywhere and not foil either, they have no means of sorting it.

That's a shame. I pick up pop bottles in the street and put them in our bin, we don't use them. Same with cans.

I reckon that different companies have different methods and even targets. Our recyclable stuff is sorted (used to be by hand, might still be) at a cetnral point, foil is too small to pick up in thick gloves. We don't have much but it irks to put it in landfill.

Clothes aren't allowed in our green bin any more, the local tip has a special place for them - so has Waitrose's car park come to think of it. Not that we ever have any to discard, we wear them until they fall off, after many repairs. There are also bins for shoes, pc parts, ink cartridges, paint tins, oh, all kinds of things. It's a fascinating subject, rubbish!

Mary

When it was built it was a fantastic road, still is the most beautiful in the country IMO. It's only spoiled by the traffic. We either use it during the night or only for the last bit from the A1 home.

But there's nowt wrong with Lancastrians, they're no southerners.

Hardly! Hull doesn't worry us, we just keep away. Most of them can't read a map - I've heard - so we rarely see any. Two Jags is safe in London, they deserve him. Larkin's not around any more. No problems!

Mary

The message from "Mary Fisher" contains these words:

Interesting. The recycle one must be hand sorted - so why do they allow glass?

Mary

"Mary Fisher" typed

Probably because it's heavy and recycling targets are % weight recycled. Brent also takes glass. Our rules are similar, but we can put food waste into our compost bins.