Open bins
Lots of debate just now about the bin men having to tow the council line by not emptying bins if the lid is not 100% shut. Strikes me that this is just another case of some self-rightchous jobsworth imposing a stupid ruling.
I was in Bradford on Friday and the residential roads were due their "green" waste collection. People there are provided with green canvas bags of about a qubic meter. No lids, just open at the top with a couple of handles and many of the bags were well full with sticks and branches sticking out.
Do you know if the council make a mistake and they miss a bin etc, then they'll send a open wagon round with 2 guys to physically lift a bin in!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That's fair enough but it's the fact that some jobsworth has decreed that if the bin lid is open by more than half an inch then the bin men must not attempt to empty it. This is said to be down to health and safety but you have to ask which is thegreater risk; a partially open bin or a festering bin of rubbish during a heatwave?
Bill
John Regular Poster
Posts: 168
(5/8/06 5:47 pm) Reply
Re: Open bins
They didn't empty the bin belonging to a friend of mine because the bin lid was not fully closed. The trouble was the lid was warped and it wouldn't close even when the bin was empty. They have now had to replace his bin.
This stupid ruling is jst going to encourage fly tipping which will cost more to clean up. Perhaps that's the idea so it give them an excuse to increase the council tax.
If they don't empty your bin I think you should be able to claim a reduction in the council tax as technically they haven't provided a service which you pay for.
I bet the guys who used to empty the old metal bins (often full of ashes) by carrying them from the back of your house on their backs and tipping them into a wagon think the ones who simply wheel your bin from your gate to the truck are a load of wimps.
John Regular Poster
Posts: 175
(9/11/06 2:59 pm) Reply
Re: Open bins
I think I may have found a solution to the problem of not being able to put all one's rubbish in a bin because it would prevent the lid closing. Simply buy an incinerator and also a waste disposal unit to fit under your kitchen sink. I know these items are not environmentally friendly but if that's what the council are encouraging us to do then just blame them if they complain.
Depite what I've said in the past about not wanting my garden turned into a mini recycling center I've got to admit that the green bin, if nothing else, has reduced the number of trips down to the tip with boot loads of garden rubish. We dont have much use for the blue bin because we dont take daily papers and it only gets put out every few months. All that said we still manage to fill the grey one each week.
Your waste disposal idea may not be as bad as you think because dosn't the waste just get minced up and end up going down the sewer. I don't know what happens to it at the sewage farm but dosn't it end up being compost or big Macks
Bill
John Regular Poster
Posts: 176
(10/11/06 10:05 am) Reply
Re: Open bins
Hi Bill,
I don't know what they do with the sewage either but I'm fairly sure that they don't turn it into large 'raincoats'
Seriously though, if significantly more people were persuaded to fit waste disposal units in order to reduce the rubbish that goes in the grey bins then you'd probably find that the existing sewage pipes and water treatment plants couldn't cope with the extra volume of solid material and they'd decide to charge us more to upgrade the system and also tax waste disposal units. One wonders what the quality of the fertiliser they might produce from it is like too.
Re: Open bins
Raincoats! Well spotted John. That brought a smile to my face this morning.
Seriously though, unused food (the messy stuff) being included in the waste is one of the reasons that a single bin for all waste can't be considered. If all the household waste were clean, it would be relatively simple to sort all the remaining stuff and recycle pretty much everything in the bin. That way we wouldn’t have to have a bin for glass, one for metal and so on as were being told. Ok you'd have to rinse out the baked bean can but we used to rinse out our milk bottles in the past without thinking it was a big effort.
Food for thought (or the disposal unit)
Bill
John Regular Poster
Posts: 177
(10/11/06 1:40 pm) Reply
Re: Open bins
Bill,
The next thing will be yet another coloured bin for food waste!
I still think that the ones who are required to do community service or recieve ASBO's should be made to work at a recycling centre to sort out the rubbish from the grey bins to extract and separate the stuff that can be recycled.
Open bins
Edited by: 
This is said to be down to health and safety but you have to ask which is thegreater risk; a partially open bin or a festering bin of rubbish during a heatwave?
Well spotted John. That brought a smile to my face this morning.
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