Be Excellent To Each Other

For the last 5 years my council has offered 2 choices for the collection of garden waste.

1. Buy a brown wheelie bin for a one off cost of £35 and it gets emptied every 2 week
2. Buy paper bags for 90p each that are sold at various places in the local area, these again are collected every 2 weeks

I’ve always used option one and have ended up with 2 bins. Now I get a letter with the council tax bill saying that from April 2013 they want £28 per bin per year to empty the wheelie bins. They have offered it free for this year if you register the bin serial numbers online.

Not hard to see why there doing it, Government stops them increasing council tax= Screw the householders for anything you can.

A few people in different areas at work tell me there councils have charged for garden waste for a few years

What I’m wondering is how will then police this? Every time the garden waste bin lorry collects I end up meeting it on the road to work. The bin men are all working like mad with what appears to be a single aim of getting the bins emptied and finishing their round. So I can’t see how they are going to want to piss around working out who has paid for a brown bin and who hasn’t. There are no bar codes on the bins, on mine the serial numbers are in different places and in different formats. The brown bins are also collected by the same lorry that does a blue paper and plastic wheele bin. The blue bin collection is covered by the council tax (at least for this year)

So I’m thinking about saying nothing and seeing what happens, Just wondered does anyone here have a council charging for garden waste and how does you council police it?

"garden waste"? Why not just compost it?

I do for some stuff, but my garden has a lot of mature stuff in it that the previous owner didn't do much with

As such the bulk of what goes into the brown bin is not good for compost (small branches etc)

It takes the piss having to charge seperatley for it. I bet there's lots of folk your way who wil just burn it away or chuck it in with the normal waste.

Luckily up here it's included in our council tax, for now.

I agree... Totally taking the piss! You pay council tax so why can't the rubbish collection be included in that?

I don't know what you should do but I wouldn't pay for it. I'd rather go down the local tip myself once every couple of weeks than pay for it.

What pisses me off is that the council is changing “pay or no collection” to “opt in or opt out”

They refuse to buy the bins back, but in the Q&A leaflet they included they offer to sell 2nd hand bins to people!

Plenty of woods around me so I would expect there will be a fair bit dumped next year

Well, as far as dumping goes, hedge clippings and mown grass and bits of wood are probably the best things you can dump. Unless you're planning to dump gold and money onto my front lawn.

Problem is round my way they make it a pain to use the tip, single road in, always a queue etc

What I will end up doing is not paying and then seeing if they take the bin or not

Its not like the garden waste is a problem the same way general is when its not collected

My local tip opens at 8am on a Sunday morning. There's never a queue at that time and it's straight in, straight out.

Charging for the bins? What the fuck?

Ours is the same. We got a free black (general waste) bin and blue (recycling) bin, with a free upgrade when the latter bins were upgraded. We also got a glass tray. However, garden waste is an optional extra: green sacks or a green bin, which you pay for, and a subscription service. We composted here, but our compost bins are overflowing because we don't use it enough, so we ended up paying.

In Hull it's 3 bins - black for general shite, collected weekly, then blue fortnightly for recycling and brown for Garden waste fortnightly. Included in Council tax, as per any sane council's service provision. Thing is, in summer months I have more than a brown bin per fortnight and in the winter more than a blue bin per fortnight, because we recycle as much as possible. Our home is also a working office so it all mounts up, especially the shredded paper and cardboard boxes.

I remember when they introduced a few years ago little black crates for recycling as a pilot scheme and the council sent inspectors down our road on collection day as they didn't believe how long the collectors were taking was due to the amount being put out for recycling.

In Cardiff we had to put it out loose in black bags for general then clear red or purple bags for recycling of different types, so people could read your letters walking along the street. It was a mess and you'd be lucky to find a single bag un-foxed after a couple of hours.

I get a lovely charge of 25 pounds a year for Garden Waste Collection as of last year. I'd use the normal bin this year if it wasn't full of nappies.

Jules still struggling with her bladder control, eh?

LOLZORZ

Basically they don’t have to do garden waste under whatever rules they work under. I’m guessing that in years gone by they have covered costs by the usual inflation busting annual council tax increases.

Now that the government is stopping them increasing the council tax, they have to find the money elsewhere, I doubt this bin charge will pay for garden waste removal, they will use if for something else.

I was going to call them up and say my wife had moved out and I wanted 25% discount, but the wife won’t let me

I also have to "too much compost" problem, and all I do is put the cut lawn on it. I don't do any gardening. My garden is quite good proof of that.

I think I might get A Guy.

You should have a gardening party, like a decorating party. Instead of ordering everyone pizzas you could get the bbq out.

My composter is similarly rammed full of grass clippings. I don't really see the point in scooping the compost out to feed to my weeds.

A big pile of just grass clippings won't compost, really, it'll go anaerobic on you and turn into slime.
You need to interleave it with plenty of cardboard / leaves / paper towel waste etc.

Or, don't collect the grass clippings in the first place.

If you don't collect the grass clippings, they sit on top of the grass that's there, blocking light and killing it.

I have mostly wood to remove in my garden or bits of wood. Perhaps the answer is to buy one of them old metal bin with a lid. Let it dry and then throw in a match from time to time.

Kinell.

Are there chemicals I can pour on it? Something like "petrol" and "fire" maybe?

I have the biggest garden waste bin and more frequent collections than anyone else here.

Mine is full of the hottest curry in the world.

Mine is full of your mum....

You have petrol at your home address?

NO REASON

There are several schemes in Cardiff; all variously mental.

My folks in Lakeside have a black bin (general waste) collected every other week, and a green bin (garden waste) collected the 'other' week. They also have a small brown thing (food waste), and green recycle bags (mixed recycles) collected every week.

Go half a mile towards town and then there are black binliners, trays and stuff.

It doesn't make much sense around here.

Gash
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