Have you got a bug in your bin? And not the animal kind!

[Rian1988]

Does anyone live in one of the areas listed in this article? If so have you got a bug in your wheelie, if so how do you feel about it?

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/26082006/32...bish-bins.html

[LFC_SL]

I don't understand these areas with bugging of bins, weekly becomes fortnightly bin collections, strict sorting of litter (recycling) etc

Manchester council run a first class service, no nonsense.

[Ian J]

Originally Posted by sean5302

Given the harshness of all this, you can see why councils are now choosing to empty bins fortnightly or monthly.

The reason why the councils have moved to fortnightly removal of general waste is to force people to recycle otherwise if there is plenty of room in the bin the householders have tended to just fill it up and not bother to segregate the recyclable stuff.

I don't think that all councils are the same with what they will recycle but we are only supposed to put clear plastic bottles into the "plastic recycling bin" which is only a small proportion of the plastics that we get through. We can't even put the supermarket carrier bags into the recycling bin.

I believe that the supermarkets and fast food industry in general have a huge role to play and if more of the packaging was eco friendly we wouldn't have this huge need for recycling.

Some of the older forum members will probably remember the time when milk only came in glass bottles that were returned to the dairy and re-used and beer & pop bottles carried a refundable deposit to encourage their return for re-use.

[Astraeus]

The idea itself angered me but didn't incense me. What did, however, make me mad as hell was the council spokesperson justifying the bugging of bins by saying, "It's the only option we have to promote recycling.". No, it's not. How about making it so I don't have to drive almost eight miles to get to my local recycling site? Or how about making recyclable waste bin collections more than once a month? Oh, and when I overfill my recyclable waste bin, take it all instead of saying "sorry, the lid wasn't closed so we can't take it". I'm frankly becoming disgusted with the way my council works and, despite literally hundreds of letters of protest to newspapers, MPs and the government, the people of Sheffield seem to have a whispering voice and nothing more.

It seems the bugging of bins is another example of Sheffield city council policy number one. "We have two options. We either invest a bit of money in a popular resolution to the problem or else we charge the citizens a bit more for a lacklustre resolution...Ah, that solves it. Ten votes to none in favour of the second idea."

[Setenza]

Okay let's approach this wild and crazy panic story with a healthy sense of scepticism and logic.

You have a bug in your bin. It identifies your bin as it's emptied. Surely this data then needs to be corelated against your address and the number of occupants. How does the chip ascertain this info? Does one of the bin emptying technicians have a list of bugged bins? Often bins from several properties are wheeled away from their respective drives to be simultaneously emptied, so you cannot tell which originates from where.

As far as I can see all this chip can do is verify how often a bin is emptied? unless is has a myriad of functions based around non existant star trek type technology, it cannot tell what the contents are of your bin, whether it contain material that should be recycled, or specifically which property it comes from.

But according to the Daily Mail it has immigrants hacking the council computer network to determine when you're on holiday, so they can burgle you, whilst stealing your identity and making liquid bombs and spreading TB.

[Mep]

I can't see how this info helps them anyway......"A crucial element is the ability to identify specific bins and record when they are emptied," said a spokesman for Deister, a German company that is marketing the technology."

surely they are emptied whenever the bloody bin men come round!......which they presumably already know!!

As mentioned above the main issue is this ridiculous policy of not taking stuff away because the lid isn't tightly closed.........funny how they always have time to route through your rubbish for anything they can flog but can't spare the time to empty a slight ovefull bin.

[nsherin]

Points about councils not taking bins away if the lid isn't closed and being overly fussy about what people can recycle are very true. The local councils want everything their own way. Surely they should be working more with people - i.e. enlarging the list of recyclable materials and encouraging the fuller bins? I'd have thought the more items being recycled = fuller bin = better for their recycling levels?

[Knyght_byte]

Originally Posted by Ian J

The reason why the councils have moved to fortnightly removal of general waste is to force people to recycle otherwise if there is plenty of room in the bin the householders have tended to just fill it up and not bother to segregate the recyclable stuff.

I don't think that all councils are the same with what they will recycle but we are only supposed to put clear plastic bottles into the "plastic recycling bin" which is only a small proportion of the plastics that we get through. We can't even put the supermarket carrier bags into the recycling bin.

I believe that the supermarkets and fast food industry in general have a huge role to play and if more of the packaging was eco friendly we wouldn't have this huge need for recycling.

Some of the older forum members will probably remember the time when milk only came in glass bottles that were returned to the dairy and re-used and beer & pop bottles carried a refundable deposit to encourage their return for re-use.

I'm not even that old (29) and i remember taking back bottles of pop to get the refund...w00t!...heh

seriously tho, the onus should be put on the shops to reduce the amount of packaging used in food.....the obvious reason they dont is because it helps sell the product.....whether it be that it attracts the person visually, or because of how it protects the contents from spoiling......the fact is that the majority of household waste that will raise the cost of dumping crap isnt something we can recycle, most of the plastics cannot be recycled....pure and simple.......

you ever watched the council glass bottle lorry come round and empty the bottle bins in the wee hours?......you know the ones, the brown bottle bank, the green bottle bank, the clear bottle bank, dont mix the colours up!!.....the lorry that collects them dumps ALL 3 different types in to one big pile in its bed.......then dumps them all at the landfill.......they dont recycle those.....

how about the lorry that empties your green box, you know, the one you put papers, cardboard and bottles in.......when they get to the dump, they just empy the entire lorry, despite the blokes who pick up the box emptying all the contents in to individual sections....lol

some things can be recycled, other things cant.....despite what it says on the package......but even things that can most likely wont be...why? its cheaper to make it new!......

so unless the companies who make the stuff that doesnt degrage naturaly (within a year) are bought in to line, the tax payer will incur a cost that isnt necessary........unless of course you refuse to buy anything packaged.....get all your meat from the meat counter and keep the small plastic bag he puts it in, doesnt take up much room, wash it first of course.......likewise the bakery.......anything else just buy in paper packets.....preferably with little coloured ink on as possible......be amusing to see how the companies who make stuff respond......lol

[sbowler]

The government brought in catalytic converters to protect the atmosphere, surely they can change the law on food packageing the same way.

[geeport]

We were in Denmark on holiday last year and inside the supermarkets (even small ones) there was a port in the wall where you popped glass and plastic bottles, a scanner read them (perhaps they use something embossed on the items or maybe weight and reflectance - I didn't ask) and then gave you a number and you got money off your bill when you got to the checkout. Brilliant system .

[Ian J]

Originally Posted by Ciarán

how about making recyclable waste bin collections more than once a month?

Ours are collected weekly but I assume that your bins are full sized wheelie bins whereas ours are smaller.

[Toasty]

Our general waste bin is collected one week and our recyclables the next week. This was introduced with much fuss late last year, but I have to say it works. In fact I'd say the we have more recyclable stuff than general waste now that the recycle collection has been extended to include paper, cardboard, envelopes, magazines, glass / plastic bottles, tins, other plastics, etc.

I'm not convinced by the bin bugging deployment, but then I'm not entirely sure what they're trying to acheive by it. I suspect ultimatley it will be used to charge an additional fee somewhere down the line. They'll be adding scales to the bin lorries next and charging per kilo

[GrahamC]

Originally Posted by Toasty

Our general waste bin is collected one week and our recyclables the next week. This was introduced with much fuss late last year, but I have to say it works. In fact I'd say the we have more recyclable stuff than general waste now that the recycle collection has been extended to include paper, cardboard, envelopes, magazines, glass / plastic bottles, tins, other plastics, etc.

I'm not convinced by the bin bugging deployment, but then I'm not entirely sure what they're trying to acheive by it. I suspect ultimatley it will be used to charge an additional fee somewhere down the line. They'll be adding scales to the bin lorries next and charging per kilo

You may scoff at that last point but .......

[JohnG]

We now have 3 wheelie bins:-
A green one - this is for general non-recyclable rubbish - collected every 2 weeks
A blue one - this is for recycled stuff (but not glass) - collected every 2 weeks alternate to the green one
A brown one - this is for garden waste - collected ever 2 weeks on the same week as the blue one but a different day
I have to put all this lot into Outlook so I get reminders of which bin needs to be put out

I do agree with IanJ that the supermarkets really need to look at all the crap packaging they put on everything, is it really necessary to put individual sticky labels onto every apple I buy ?

[PoochJD]

Hi,

I can't really say anything more than has already been said. Walsall council, are as useless as many, when it comes to rubbish collections.

In my case, I live in a small tower block (three floors, each with four flats, with each flat having at least 2 people, some with more). In our case, our bin (one of those giant council-branded dump bin jobbies), is supposed to be emptied every Monday. More often than not, we get it emptied every 2 or 3 weeks, if the local bin collectors can be arsed to remember it.

Like others, I would love to recycle, but a) I don't own a car to get to the nearest recycling centre, and b) I'll be damned if I'm going to lug my recyclable materials via two bus journeys to do so!

Also, I'm not sure how or why Walsall Council have assumed that each household in my small tower block, is likely to only produce one grey bin liner full of rubbish per week, as - even if that were the case - the bin they've got for us, can't hold ten bin-liners worth, let alone 12 or more. So, almost every week, our bin is full of rubbish within a couple of days, because tenants weren't able to fit all their rubish into the bin, beforehand. Which results in everyone having to stockpile their rubbish, and filling the bin up every time it gets emptied, resulting in a complete bin overload every week!

Shops and councils have a lot to answer for! It seems in Britain of 2006, nothing is simple, and the people in charge seem to feel that every task has to be made as difficult as possible. Why is this?!

Oh, and I can remember milk in glass bottles (Pintas, as we called them then), and the recycling of bottled/canned drinks and getting 5 or 10p back each time. ... Them were the days!


Pooch