Last month, our local council, in its wisdom, decided it would go in for recycling.
In a big way.
So now, in addition to our black wheelie bin:
(except we have two black wheelie bins because of the amount of rubbish we generate).......we now have...the kerbside caddy, for food waste:
This is not the Father of This Lot, by the way. This is a man from a council website. Not ours. Do you see the small green caddy with which he's transferring the aforementioned food waste? That's the one you now have to keep in the kitchen to hold all your peelings, leftovers, eggshells, tea bags and bones.
I can fill one of these per day, so the kerbside caddy is of little use to me. I have had to commandeer my mothers, who flatly refuses to recycle, so in addition to our two black wheelie bins we now have two kerbside caddies.
Moving on, allow me to show you the green bin for garden waste:
I have to say we don't use this much, as there is little time for gardening. This mainly contains dead bunches of flowers which the Father of This Lot buys each time he finds himself in the doghouse. (So, at least one bunch per week, then).
Next up comes the brown bin, which is for plastics and aluminium. Due to the amount of canned drinks consumed around here, I actually have to sit on the lid of this one on Wednesday nights for collection on Thursday mornings.
Oh....I almost forgot.....the paper and card bin.
Are you still with me? Good.This would all be really easy if every bin was collected every week.
No such luck.
The food bin is collected every week. The others are collected in some complicated rota which the council, very kindly, spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on printing, so that everyone would know which day was for which bin.
Par for the course, we have lost ours. So, at seven thirty on a Thursday morning, I can be found outside looking up and down the road to see what colour bin everyone else has put out. It would appear that I am not the only one who has lost their colour co-ordinated rota because I seem to put out at least one wrong bin per week.
As you can imagine, bins are the talk of the town.
Everyone I meet has a bin story.
Personally, I can't see it lasting. It's far too complicated.
In the words of one old lady at the church coffee morning:
'It's worse than bloody Sudoku!'
24 comments:
We have to put out black bin bags, not the actual bin. Garden waste goes in the brown bin. The green bin is for recycling, but you can't put plastics in it. Or cardboard. That goes in the brown bin along with the garden waste.
Some thieving toerag nicked my green bin.
I'm not happy with the bin situation either.
x
We have those. It caused a near riot. We have black bins for "none recyclable stuff". Green bins for "garden waste and cardboard". But then it gets complicated. Garden waste does NOT include soil apparently. You are to remove the soil from your weeds. In our house, garden waste includes bits of fence that blew down and crisp packets. But apparently that is not included either. Cardboard must be not wet (in with all those grass cuttings that is fun!)
Then there is the green boxes, for all cans, glass (not broken glass) and plastic bottles (no lids).
Then blue bags for paper (not wet, not glossy and not phone directories.)
Still with me?
If that isn't complicated enough -
you can have as many green bins and boxes as you wish. But one black bin. Collected fortnightly. If there are five or more in your house, you can have two bins. But you cannot put cat litter or rabbit hutch sawdust shavings and hay in the green bins. They must go in black bags and then in the black bins. And you cannot "overfill" your black bin - the lid MUST close or you will be fined. £50. At least.
So with 6 cats, a rabbit and a guinea pig could I have another bin please?
Council answer: No.
[I acquired one]
[ssssshhhhhhh]
Oh and the black bins are not black.
They are grey.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but they are here to stay.
I hate them.
we have bins...green w black lid for trash, blue for all recyclables, and light green w green lid for lawn cuttings, grass, whatever. we had to increase the size of the trash bin and got rid of the lawn/leaf bin considering we don't have much of a yard. they pick up the waste once a week and the recyclables are every other trash pick up day.
in vegas we had one trash bin, plus 3 recyclable bins (red, white, blue each designated for paper, aluminum, glass). they picked up trash twice a week and i think recyclables once a week. wish they'd do that here because sometimes we have nowhere to put extra bags of trash we accumulate during the wk. pretty sad. lol
At least you don't have cameras hidden on the inside to make sure you put the right stuff in the right bins. Tee hee.
that is just INSANE!!! great idea to TRY and recycle everything, but at what cost!?!
We have a bottle bin, too!
that's brilliant! lucky you! we used to have that but now i've moved to a less organised council. by the time you've been doing it for a while though, surely the 'normal' bins should reduce from two to one? ours certainly did.
Recycling is SO important .. here in NYC we've been doing it forever ...
3 'bins' in the teesy tiny kitchen .. one for food waste, one for small paper without food schmutz on it, one for tin, plastic bottle/containers, and glass. AND the newspapers and adverts - not shiny/glossy papers! - go into a pile to be bundled/tied and left outside on Friday nite for Sat. morning pick up .. rest of trash gets picked up 2 times a week ... unless its snowing or there's a state/city holiday
I know, you were dying to learn all that
:-Daryl
I'm with you on this one. In our bit of Manchester, we've just changed our 'box of shame' for two more wheelie bins. I now have four!!
and yes, I can be seen studying the neighbours' drives for which one needs to be put out this week.
and we still can't recycle yogurt pots! Mad!
Try going somewhere a lot posher than, say, Failsworth. (Really, a LOT posher: posher even than Cheshire; posher even than the bits of Cheshire that stayed properly posh when WAGs made previously posh bits merely expensive.)
Then look at what people put out for recycling.
My best is a brand new briefcase that the recipient of the present didn't really like.
We've been doing that for a while now, except they haven't given us a bin for cardboard so it blows around the street on a windy day.
There is always someone who sneeks out at dusk to put out there bin. They make such a noise you can always tell who's 'late'!
I thought ours was complicated until I read your lots!!
We have blue bags for paper
Red bags for clothing/shoes
Clear bags for plastic and tins
Glass in carrier bags
Card and cardboard bundled together
Garden waste in bags that we have to pay for.
Now ours seems fairly simple compared to all yours!! And we haven't been threatened with fines... YET. The councils don't actually make it very easy for you, do they?
I thought we were the only ones who checked the neighbors' cans to see what week it was! And we only have 2 cans!! I'm sure I don't know how you do it!
Okay, I am already sorry for what I am about to say, but it seems you are overly...bin-laden!
(Snort! Guffaw!)
;-)
K
We had a similar system when I lived in Norway. At one point I had 11 small bins under my kitchen counter. It was the bane of my life and a hot topic of conversation in our town for years!
WE have a green bin for household waste, a brown bin for garden refuse, a blue bin for plastic, glass and tin and a big blue bag for paper and cardboard. Paper bag and brown and blue bin collected one week, green bin collected the other week. I'm confused!
Hope you have enough curbside over in your neighborhood, doesn't leave much sidewalk space does it? I am sure though, in the long run, it is good.
xoxox
Kimmie
mama to 6
one homemade and 5 adopted
Anyone notice how the non UK collections are TWICE A WEEK for trash not ONCE A FORTNIGHT as it is here? That's four rimes more often. Less chance of flies, rats, disease... Less need for more bins.
I hope the UK councils are listening and taking note...
And Jackie - re comment at my Skywatch - smart@rse. lol
That is just plain insane. Recycling doesn't save anything anyway. It's just a big fat lie!
Oh, wow, I would be way too confused!
bin there, done that! (sorry!)
Hope you haven't bin letting it get you down.
At least your bins seem sensibly colour-coded. Our green bin is for (non green) landfill waste and the (bright) blue one for recycling. Very confusing.
We have only one bin for recycling, but you can't put glass or fiber (paper) in it. Just cans and certain plastics that have the little recyclable emblem on them. When I throw my cans in there, I wonder if I am rendering the entire truckload unuseable, since the cans have paper labels.
Of course we also have a bin for just plain garbage--it's also green but much larger. It's picked up on Tuesdays. The little bin is picked up every other Thursday. Or is it Wednesday? And is this week the every other? Or did that happen last week? I'm not the only one confused, and so I can't tell by observing what my neighbors do.
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