So the bin strike came to an end and refuse collections resumed. Well, sort of. They aren’t collecting my recycling and it’s pissing me off. I wondered if I was putting something out that was supposed to be in a different bin, but a perusal of the South Gloucestershire instructions doesn’t show up anything, nor have I done anything different to what I was doing before the lazy good for nothing fuckers went on strike. It might help if they left a note explaining what is wrong, but with the casual arrogance and contempt for the paying customer that only the public sector can muster, they just leave it untouched.
Why the flying fuck should I chase after them? I pay them enough for their joke of a service. On a good day, they leave half the rubbish flying down the road in their wake. On a bad one, as happened yesterday, they can’t even be bothered to pick it up at all or even tell me why not. So the plastics, tins and card is supposed to wait another week.
Well, no, they can stick their recycling up their collective arses where it belongs. Recycling is a combination of a waste of time and a scam at best. There’s not much I can do about the tins, but I have a chimenea in the garden and it got used yesterday. The paper and plastics have now been incinerated. I will carry on doing either this or putting it in the general waste from now on. As far as I am concerned, any contract that existed between me and the council is now null and void. I’m not jumping through their hoops and sorting stuff out for them anymore. I pay them to do a job. They have chosen not to do it and chosen not to communicate any problems to me. Fuck ’em.
It has always amused me that people sort their rubbish into different piles and think this is “recycling”.
I understand some people even wash it first!
I don’t believe any of it, but if you want the scumbags to take it, you have to play the game. At least, that’s what I’ve bene doing. Well, no more.
I make a point of washing out anything that’s going in the recycling bin for one reason alone – I don’t want it to stink!
The bin’s outside. I wouldn’t worry about it
We’ve got a lot of urban foxes! If anyone’s going to strew the contents over my drive, I want to give the binmen a chance to do it!
We don’t have these problems here in the north east, then again we are not southern softies and the rubbish would end up at cunt twat mayor’s front garden.
You may have a point.
I simply hire a skip. My local skip company allows you to keep it till it’s full. It sits at the end of the drive, gets full of whatever I want to chuck away, unsorted, no hassle, and every six months it gets picked up. And they recycle and sell what they can (metal etc).
Costs me a hundred and ten quid. And to be honest it’s worth it to avoid all the palaver. Maybe I just have a good skip company?
Unfortunately, I don’t have anywhere suitable, otherwise that would be the ideal solution.
No complaints in East Yorkshire either. We have a recycle bin, a waste bin and a green waste bin and we never have any problem with them being emptied. The green waste is composted and the council give away free bags of compost several times a year.
The chaps round here aren’t too bad, but then it’s outsourced by the council so they have the incentives of a private company to do a half decent job. They’ve been early a few times – before the 7am deadline for getting your bins out and then marked it down as not presented – not when I have CCTV showing you going past at 06:54 it’s not sunshine, come back and try again!
They are also very slap dash with where they leave the emptied bins, strewn across the middle of driveways or blocking pavements which has resulted in another couple of complaints over the years – again the promise of CCTV footage soon shuts up the numpties at the council and steps are taken…
“They are also very slap dash with where they leave the emptied bins, strewn across the middle of driveways or blocking pavements”
That’s our “Refuse Collection Operatives” (Veolia) down to a tee…
“Recycling is a combination of a waste of time and a scam at best.”
Isn’t the idea of recycling responsible for plastic ending up in the sea? It gets sent to some developing country to be recycled and they recycle it by tipping it into the nearest river. Because burning it to generate electricity or burying it in landfill is bad for the environment.
I heard they grind it up small for recycling purposes … then when it does get dumped in the river or whatever, it’s these “microplastics” the greenies moan about.
I once had my 2 green garden wheelie bins left unemptied. Puzzled as to why, I lifted the lid on them. In one of them some late night passing pissed bastard had left a half full can of beer on top of the grass clippings. So, Mr Recycler could have thought, ‘passing pisshead, not the resident, put beer on floor, empty bin’. But he didn’t, he chose to leave BOTH bins unemptied. When I phoned the council, the bitch I spoke to loftily told me their recyclers are instructed not to provide a service if there is evidence of ‘contamination’. I suppose she expected me to examine the bins each morning on collection day just to check if some gobshite had put something in the bin overnight? I’m not sure what world these people exist in….
The cosy world of ‘Not our responsibility!’ public sector, of course….
And that’s what’s really getting my wound up. The sheer incompetent arrogance. They simply refuse to pick up any of it because of one supposed ‘transgression.’
It is well known that when you are forced to use a service that service is crap and doesn’t actually work effectively.
NHS, Police, Councils. They are all the same and until we have alternative options we will get ripped off.
The bin men will make a note of why they refused any of the bins. You are expected to phone the council and they will then tell you what your transgression was.
The only transgression is theirs. They have failed to provide the service that I am forced to pay them for. I am not – absolutely not – going to call them like some penitent, begging their forgiveness and try to find out what Kafkaesque rule I’ve apparently broken. There is no contract between us now. I am done with recycling.
Just thought that I would mention that Mr. Longrider is Samizdata Quote of the Day today, he might be too modes to mention it himself.
https://www.samizdata.net/2023/08/samizdata-quote-of-the-day-lost-of-trust/
All these buggers need taking down a peg or two.
In Somerset we have big black bin, recycling bag for tins, plastic and foil, a box for glass, a waste food bin and a paper/card box. There’s also an optional extra garden waste bin.
Generally speaking the system works well, but on the days when it doesn’t (often becase of the wrong sort of plastic!) whatever they don’t take goes into the black bin for next time. Do I care?
That’s what I’ve done. That and burn the rest and put the ashes in the black bin. They will bloody well take it.