Recycle bins

Joined : 29 Jul 2008 Posts : 6

Does anyone hate the blue and red bins as much as me?

I have to carrry mine through the house to leave them at the front. If they are wet I dont put them out or I end up with a stream of water from the back door to the front.

I dont have room to keep them in the house or in a shed/garage so they have to sit in the garden.

If it is windy collection day you have to go hunting your bucket at the end of the street. Fine if you are in when they are emptied but if you have to work you have no idea were they will be by time you get home. Again if it is windy you end up with the contents of the paper bin all over the street as the dustbin men take of all the lids and pile them in one bit to wait for the truck.

I have no problem with recycling but I feel the council have gone about this in the wrong way. I hate the fact my bin is not emptied weekly. On a hot day it smells. Ok not a lot of hot days recently but you can have food waste in it for two weeks. I once put some fish the day after it was emptied not thinking and had to live with the smell for almost two weeks yuk. Its a bit much when you have to think if it is ok to put rubbish in the dustbin.

I was hearing on the radio yesterday Edinburgh council are going to introduce a on the spot fine for over filling your wheelie bin. Wonder if Midlothian is going to do something simlair. I know a lot of people on my street will be in trouble if they do.

My back garden is paved and my front garden is gravelled so I dont have any garden waste but i have a big brown wheelie bin taking up space I dont have. I am sure if you do garden this comes in very handy but when ever I see them being put out they are over full to. Either they are not big enough or they need empting more than fortnightly in the summer

Ok my rant over Smile

Joined : 20 Jun 2008 Posts : 13 Localisation : Penicuik

From "The Telegraph"
Guidance issued by the Government has told councils to impose fixed penalties of "no less than £75" and up to £110, potentially a more severe penalty than the £80 fine that police often hand out to those guilty of drunk and disorderly conduct and shoplifters.
The Flycapture Enforcement guidance says penalties for "waste receptacle" offences must range between £75 and £110 and suggests a standard fixed penalty of £100.
Earlier this year Gareth Corkhill, a bus driver from Whitehaven, was given a criminal conviction after being taken to court when he refused to hand over a £110-on-the-spot fine by council inspectors, who found the lid of his wheelie bin open by four inches.
At the time, Mr Corkhill remarked: "It's only an £80 fine for fly-tipping. I would have been better off doing that."
Mr Corkhill was ordered to pay £210, the equivalent of a week's wages, after he declined to pay the on-the-spot fine.
He was originally asked for the fine when he was confronted by inspectors, from Copeland Borough Council in Cumbria, wearing stab-proof vests and armed with photographic evidence of his crime.

Joined : 20 Jun 2008 Posts : 13 Localisation : Penicuik

From "Daily Mail"
A frail pensioner has been told she must drag her wheelie bin more than half a mile down a steep hill for it to be emptied.
A young mother has been ordered to pay nearly £400 for leaving her wheelie bin in the wrong place. Holly Dutton, 26, failed to pay a £100 fixed penalty notice issued when she left the bin in an alley behind her house in Horwich, near Bolton
A mother of four who broke council rules by putting out extra bags of rubbish next to her wheelie bin has been fined £600
As the dustmen were striking on collection day, it was no surprise that by the next week Stephen Walton's wheelie bin was full to bursting. However, the father of four was taken aback when council staff returned to work - and wouldn't collect his rubbish because the bin was too full.
Binmen have put two fingers up to common sense by issuing an astonishing warning to council-tax payers.
'If we can't pull your wheelie bin using just two fingers it is too heavy - and won't be emptied.'
Bins that need three or more fingers, they claim, constitute a health and safety risk as they could fall from the lorry while being emptied.

Joined : 20 Jun 2008 Posts : 13 Localisation : Penicuik

Yet more from "Daily Mail"
A nearly-blind war veteran of 96 was snubbed by binmen who refused to empty his recycling wheelie bin because he had dropped two glass jars into it by mistake.
A council refused to collect a pensioner's garden waste bin because he had dumped cabbage stalks in it. Barry Freezer, 73, cut the ends off vegetables he had grown in his own garden before placing them in the brown wheelie bin
Once her heavy wheelie-bin had been manhandled to the end of her driveway, pensioner Patricia Pilkington thought she had done her bit. But she was astonished when petty-minded binman ignored it - on the basis that it was a foot short of the pavement where it was meant to be left

Joined : 20 Jun 2008 Posts : 13 Localisation : Penicuik

All these incidents above are a small sample of what a web search reveals regarding this wheelie bin lunacy.
What I would like to know is how it is possible to prove that the householder was responsible for the contents of the bin, or even its position on the kerb? Surely it would be a simple matter for a prankster or perhaps even a malicious troublemaker to meddle with the bin. Perhaps someone with an already full bin might be tempted to sneak their rubbish into someone elses'.
If you make sure there is nothing to identify you in the bin, then how can it be proved who is responsible for this reprehensible crime.

From "Private Eye" - Number Crunching,
£110 Maximum fine recommended by government for those who overfill their wheelie bins
£75 On-the-spot fixed penalty for littering (making it more economical to chuck excess rubbish in the street instead)

And so it goes on - seems I really have a bee in my bonnet about this, eh?

Joined : 17 Mar 2008 Posts : 51

Many examples of just how crazy Britain has become, Ironlung. It now seems that you could expect to receive a lesser punishment for attacking the bin-police than you would for having an overfull or wrongly placed bin!
A good example of the madness is the fact that the story of the guy from Whitehaven appeared on the front page of the New York Times and some other US papers recently as they could not believe how crazy we were.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/27/world/europe/27garbage.html

Of course only a cynical person would think that the excessive fines were another way of raising money to pay the inflated salaries of council officials Very Happy

Joined : 22 Aug 2007 Posts : 10

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article4381155.ece

Or we could live in the Yorkshire Dales and have to humpf our rubbish to the next village for collection!

Joined : 22 Aug 2007 Posts : 28

The lid on my grey wheelie bin was partly broken by the bin lorry before last Christmas, and despite reporting it at the time, nothing happened. When it was finally broken off altogether (in June) I reported it again and asked if I could get a new bin, only to be told this was unlikely as there was "a national shortage of wheelie bins"! I threatened to kick up merry hell (I mean, what was I supposed to do in the meantime - my bin was stinking with no lid on and filling up with water if it rained) and lo and behold, a new bin appeared.
Meanwhile, my mother-in-law's bin disappeared altogether and when she challenged one of the bin men (who were collecting bins further down her street at the time) he told her it had been "eaten by the bin lorry"!
As they say, you couldn't make it up...

Admin Joined : 28 Apr 2007 Posts : 260

A while ago when I was watching the bin men doing their thing I saw the lorry eat one of my neighbours bins. They nonchalantly carried on as if nothing had happened. It was certainly a sight to behold Smile

_________________
Andy

Fear knocks at the door, knowledge answers and finds nothing.

Joined : 22 Aug 2007 Posts : 28

Interesting....at least my mother-in-law wasn't telling porkies then! (Or the binman, for that matter) Laughing

Joined : 17 Mar 2008 Posts : 51

The bin lorries obviously have a taste for them now! Same thing happened to my next door neighbour. The binmen did not seem at all concerned and he had to ring up for a replacement himself.