I put the bins out Tuesday night. After the bin men had been on Wednesday, I went out to bring them in. The green recycling bins where there, but the grey one had gone. Looking about, I noticed that all the grey bins had gone missing. Later that day, shiny new grey bins were left in their place. However, they were smaller than the ones that had gone.
From Monday 15 January 2018 we will start to replace the old 240 litre black bins with new 140 litre bins. The change to the bins is taking place as part of our waste strategy to improve recycling and reduce black bin waste.
How will the bin exchange work?
- We are changing the black bins for every house in South Gloucestershire. We are following normal collection routes and will cover two collection routes each day. The whole process to will take around 12 weeks to complete.
- Your black bin will be emptied as normal by our collection crews. A team will follow the collection vehicle, remove the wheels from the old bins and stack the bins, ready to be removed later in the day.
- Another team will deliver the new 140 litre bins by following the same routes from a different start point, so you may have your new bin delivered before your old bin has been emptied and removed.
- Each new bin will have an information pack under the lid about the bin and will include a leaflet about recycling from home.
- Once the bins have been changed for a route, teams will revisit the area to check for problems and collecting any old bins that were missed during the main exchange.
Right. So they have reduced collection from once a week to every other week and now they have reduced the size of the bin. When there were two of us, we managed to fill the bin in a two-week period, so how a family with several children would have managed is something of a mystery. Now, however, the bin is smaller. Bear in mind here, that we have used the recycling bins for stuff that can be recycled. Anything that goes into the black bin is not recyclable – so we simply have less space for the same amount.
Most household waste can be recycled from home, so make use of your weekly recycling collections – check what can be recycled.
Yes, we were already doing this. And as for green waste – grass clippings and so on – they want to charge us extra, so fuck ’em. I already pay more than enough in Council Tax and they spend it on crap I don’t want and don’t need instead of sticking to the basics, like waste disposal. Consequently, I’ve been putting grass cuttings in the black bin and will continue to do so as I don’t have enough of a garden for a compost heap.
This is blatant manipulation by people who are supposed to serve me, not bully me. What’s more, they don’t learn. When they brought out the extra charge for green waste, they discovered, to their surprise, green waste going into landfill. Well, duh! Now we can expect more black bags being put out or fly tipping.
If you are recycling everything you can every week and are still struggling with your black bin waste, visit our ‘Special circumstances’ page to find out how we can help you.
Another £32 per annum, so an extra tax to do what they should be doing anyway for the money we already pay them.
This is blatant manipulation by people who are supposed to serve me, not bully me.
Of course it is: this – and the myriad of other pettifogging irritations heaped upon us by “public servants” (Ha!) are very similar to the seemingly pointless petty tasks handed to new recruits into the armed forces. Their purpose is to condition a response of unthinking, unquestioning, immediate obedience.
It’s not working.
And they wonder why flytipping is increasing….
If your black bin is full and you have some time to wait before it is emptied, take your next (full) black bin bag to your council offices and leave it in the foyer, with a note explaining why you are doing it.
It worked where I live, through the actions of several local residents when the black bins were downsized. We were then informed we could either have our original black bin returned, or a (free) additional smaller black bin.
As I now live on my own, I was never affected by this, but quite a few neighbours with children were. Apparently, winding up the council is classed as a local sport.
Good for them. More power to their elbow. However, like you, as I’m on my own, it will probably be adequate.
They should televise it. More entertaining than a bunch of ponces chasing a ball about.
Remind them (and the local politicians) of this blatant waste of money next time they moan about cuts
“Anything that goes into the black bin is not recyclable”…apart from the grass clippings, that you can’t be bothered to recycle ?
Indeed. And that is down to the council. They had a choice. They made it. Tough shit. You did read the bit about not having space for a compost heap?
They made a choice to penalise you for laziness, which they have done. You must have a magical lawn, one that produces grass clippings but doesn’t have space for a 1foot square composter…go figure! The council are simply imposing an externality tax for people who can’t work out how to do stuff properly. As with all societies, if you can be bothered to do something yourself, there’ll be some who’ll do it for you and charge you 🙂 you pays your money, you take your choice.
No, it is not laziness. They decided to charge an extra tax for green waste, despite pissing money up the wall on stuff I don’t want, don’t need and disapprove of. I pay more than enough already. I am not paying more.
And, yes, it’s a small garden and I do not have space for a compost heap. So if the council will not provide me with the service, despite taking money from me, I’ll protest and disobey them. Fuck all to do with laziness.
There are people without gardens who pay tax for green waste collection…so you’re wasting the money that they are paying…you’re as bad as the council, ‘pissing money up the wall’ for services that others don’t need yet pay for…
No, they don’t. Waste collection, regardless of the type of waste is a basic function of the council and we all pay for it. South Gloucester Council did a consultation a few years back in an attempt to justify a hike in council tax. They didn’t like the response and this green waste tax was their way of punishing taxpayers for giving them the wrong answer. It was petty spite. There were plenty of unnecessary “services” in their list that could and should have been cut, but they went for a political solution. Fine. Two can play that game.
And I am paying a small fortune for council services I don’t use and never will use. So your argument there is dead in the water, frankly. I am not wasting anyone’s money at all, particularly that I am a low use resident.
There are other people who are paying for council services that you use, but they don’t. Can you name the ‘unnecessary’ services that they should have cut? Schools roads and libraries? Or are they just the services that you don’t use and therefore see no need of, regardless of them being useful to others?
As for suggesting that an inanimate body of people such as the council could feel an emotive action such as spite, leads me to believe that you’re more than a little paranoid 🙁
Did they publish the results of the consultation? If so, can you link to them?
As for “Waste collection, regardless of the type of waste is a basic function of the council and we all pay for it.” No, no it isn’t. They’re not expected to collect commercial waste, hazardous waste, or anything else they don’t see fit to. So ‘regardless of type of waste’ is ‘dead in the water’ as you put it. You can’t build a house extension and expect them to take away your top soil, in the same manner that they shouldn’t need to collect your green waste, produced from your garden, in which garden you can also compost it. Tarmac the lot if you don’t like it.
I am heartily sick of the’John Waltons’ of this world. Truly, heartily sick. The cost of the service provided is approximately £100;per year. I know because I work in a council. My council tax, of which I use precisely zero services (I paid for my kids education, I pay for the care for my disabled relatives and I use no local services at all) is £1400pa. Do not seek to lecture me or others. We had a service, that through eco-mentalism (and to confirm with EU regulations) we no longer receive. I do not want to play your recycling games because I do not believe in man-made global warming. Or rather, I believe there are much bigger issues at hand. So I believe the councils, and the ‘John Waltons’ of this world, with their hectoring and finger-pointing are seeking only to virtue signal their way to more power and more control.
My solution was I hire a skip. I sit it on my drive away from the house. I fill it, over 12 months with all the crap I want to. After a year I have it taken away. It costs me £120 – and I can do what the hell I like with it (except dump poisons etc).
Never play the game of these power mad people. It only encourages them.
And ‘John Walton’, go read a blog with which you might have a single view in common. And no- why should Longrider do your research for you. Point you to a link for goodness sake!! Grow up and go away.
I joined this blog just to say this. And Longrider, as a lurker for many years, keep blogging. And I am so sorry for your recent losses.
Also note that John Walton’s arguments are riddled with logical fallacies and when his argument is countered, he shifts the goalposts.
I would add, that I have no problem with people like John Walton commenting as it challenges my argument and forces me to test it for robustness. He has merely confirmed that my argument is sound. Once people resort to twisting peoples words and building strawmen, they’ve lost the argument.
Councils are made up of people and people can be spiteful. Noting that is hardly paranoid.
And they’ll not have cut your council tax for a reduced service…
The resources wasted on producing all of these plastic bins must be absolutely staggering!
I remember driving (quickly) through Chalvey years ago on bin day – there must have been five bins per house – hundreds of them in the street awaiting collection…
How green it all must be.
This thread got unreadable, so responding here:
Yes, yes, yes it is. Garden waste is domestic waste as it comes from domestic properties and those householders pay council tax. It is a fundamental basic service. Comparison with hazardous or commercial waste is a non sequitur. I really have no idea if they published the consultation online. If you feel inclined to trawl through their website be my guest. It was several years ago when several councils across the country tried the same thing. No, I won’t be tarmacing anything. I will continue to force the council to do the job I pay through the nose for and put it in the black bin.
As far as unnecessary services are concerned, like most local authorities, the council seems to think wasting my money on public health campaigns and lecturing us on healthy eating and at one time anti-smoking nonsense is okay (IIRC they ceased their funding of smokefree southwest, for which I applaud them although councils have no business wasting council taxpayers’ money on such parasites in the first place). This stuff is not something the state – national or local – should be involved in and while they waste my money on such things, I’ll object to them cutting basic services.
Oh and as far as this composting nonsense is concerned, any composter will be filled up and overflowing long before the cutting season is ended as the compost takes longer to form than the grass does to grow. I have tried it in the past. Waste of time for small domestic properties. Far better done on an industrial scale by the council who get the raw material for free and can then sell it on.
So you say that the council didn’t get the response they wanted, so did it out of spite. Yet you have no idea what that response was from the public, just basing it on your world view…hmmm.
The response was that the council tax payers did not want an increase in council tax, which was the question asked – do you want to pay more? Bugger all to do with my world view. They asked this question several years running and got exactly the same response on each occasion – a big fat hairy “no”.
If you bothered to read what I said, as opposed to what you would have liked me to have said, I did not state that I was unaware of the response, merely that I did not know if they published it online. Not everything is online and it not being online is not the same as not knowing. And I know because they told us along with our council tax bills during those years. Nice attempt at a strawman, but no cigar.
They had to cut their cloth to suit their restricted fiances and so they should. They could have cut down on spending money on waste such as change for life or the obesity bullshit, but chose instead to punish us by cutting essential services. So, yes, politically motivated spite.
So the question is what are they doing with the thousands of second hand larger bins? You might ask them if they are being reused or discarded – in which case at what cost?
Indeed. Completely unnecessary waste of our money.
That has to be one of the most self-evidently dumbest statements of all time.
It was pretty good wasn’t it? ?
We only get two bins, a regular one and a recycling bin. The former is collected weekly, the latter fortnightly. I’m happy to toss beer and wine bottles, soft drink cans and cardboard in the recycling bin. Food tins and jars, and milk cartons go in the regular bin because we’re not prepared to rinse them. Firstly, as we are charged for water on a per unit basis, secondly, because we put a value on our time and thirdly, since the recycling bin is typically full after two weeks, we are often forced to put recyclable waste in the regular bin anyway.
Each of our bins is collected fortnightly. I rinse all cartons etc to stop my bin from smelling.
Re how a family of 5 manages: you can “request” a larger (340?) litre bin. Request, being a euphemism for ask nicely, with £50, for the council to “consider” the application. They don’t widely publicise this.
When we lived in Spain, we had communal bins which were emptied every single day. Including Sundays and holidays. (Yes, most of their local councils are broke, but that’s not through provision of basic services).
Mention of consultation needs clarification: councils only hold consultations when they’ve decided what’s going to happen.
Just start dumping it in the river. Even better if it’s a river that passes near the Council Head Office. That’s the only thing that will make an impression on them.
And although that creates an environmental hazard, I suspect people would not have to do it for more than a few weeks to teach the Waste Disposal Nazis at Gloucestershire Council who is supposed to be accountable to who.
I once ran a business based on the same site as I was living (a farm). For the business we used the same company that did the council waste collections. The rep confirmed that both sets of waste went to the same processing site, and when asked why 1 bin would suffice for the business recycling yet we had 3 for the council (paper; card & plastic; metal tins) his reply was “Because that is how the council want it done. We sort it all by hand anyway on the same line.” Says it all really.
Yes, it does. Wasteful and inefficient. Sums the public sector up perfectly.
Another arsehole local council forgetting who they are supposed to be serving. In Wiltshire these pricks can’t even repair a road. They walk away from providing public services like toilets. They charge the earth to park in local towns and wonder why no one comes anymore. Public sector bollicks !
Reading all this makes me think that our local council isn’t too bad. We have a small blue bin for re-cycling, a medium sized green one for general waste, and a great big brown one for garden waste. The green and blue bins are emptied on alternate weeks and the brown bin is done fortnightly too but on a different day. Our household has between two and three people in it, it varies, and the collections are only just adequate for us but there are several local waste tips which you can use if you do have too much and the staff there are very helpful and in no way jobsworthy. I live in a rural area and we have a Conservative council, I’m not sure if that is significant or not.
Unlike Mr. Walton I agree with your stance on the grass clippings. It is the council’s job to deal with them. You have paid for this service once but they would like you to pay twice before they provide it. Interestingly, I apply the same logic to the M6 toll road. In that case you have paid for the road four times but they demand that you pay a fifth time before they let you use it. I understand that it is worth the toll because it is quick and convenient, but there is only a problem in the first place because the existing roads are inadequate. I also like the idea of dumping uncollected waste at the council offices.
Here in Dunedin, New Zealand we seem to have a system that works well.We buy plastic bags from the supermarkets that have the council name on them. You can put out as many bags as you wish, but as you have paid for them,you tend to be sparing in their use. Glass is collected one week and tins,cans, card ,plastic etc collected the alternate week.
Collections take place every week including Public Holidays with the exception of Christmas day.Anything large or bulky can be dealt with by hiring a skip or can be taken to a waste facility where you are charged ,depending on the quantity and is not that expensive.I am not saying it is perfect,but it is efficient with one man operated vehicles which have an hydraulic boom to lift and empty the bins. They even have a left hand drive standing position for the operatorto use as well as the customary steering controls. It is a big improvement on the systems I was used to in the UK.
I’m staying in Braestone Lodge from May 6th – is it any good…?