Bob Chapman
Established Member
What about the role of the bin men in this? Wouldn't the simplest and most sensible course have been to take the cup out rather than refuse the whole bin?
The cheek on some people!
- Thread starter bp122
- Start date
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Give some creep a little bit of power, especially over someone he envies, and he turns into a jobsworth on the spot....
bp122
Expert at Jibber-Jabber
Amazing how badly misinformed people are!It IS just a cup in a bin - and you're missing the main point: just when did the tail start wagging the dog in the UK Rubbish Wars?
You pay the council for this "service" but you're expected to follow whatever diktats they choose to impose on you, presumably to fit in with what results in the largest income stream for them and the least inconvenience for the recycling companies. The talk of sanctions, and even fines, is ludicrous and it's amazing to see just what nonsense the Great British Public will put up with if it's introduced slowly and surreptitiously enough - "boiling frogs" anyone?
I was in England for a month recently, clearing my house ready for auction: having been paying council tax for years for literally nothing, I still had to make numerous trips to the nearest, but still rather distant and deliberately badly-signposted, tip since there was only one "general waste" bin collection in that time and the strictures on exactly what was, and wasn't, "acceptable" in the multi-hued recycling bins were pretty unfathomable even to my neighbours.
How much energy and potable water is wasted cleaning jars and bottles so that the recycling companies can maximise their profits? Where I now live jars and bottles are reused many times and only recycled when no longer useable, although it's becoming harder as producers pinch pennies with single-use screw caps on jars and beer bottles, thinner glass and some, such as Hellman's, using label glue that doesn't come off in the wash but leaves a sticky residue on the glass.
It's bad enough being bullied by the mediocre and self-serving politicians we have these days without being victimised by "refuse operatives" in black trenchcoats and dark glasses......
Council tax, is NOT for people to come and clear someone's house of rubbish they have accumulated for 30 years!
Council tax is for other services like Fire, Police, adult social care and normal bin waste, plus a few other services.
Blame them for not doing enough all you want, but would you call your mate with a pick up truck and a few cans of water when something is on fire? No, you call the fire service.
I understand the tendency to blame everyone, especially the people in charge for all the problems we have.
Yes, politicians are selfish, but I ask this, when was the last time any of us genuinely thought we'll do a better job at that and actually done anything?
No, because it is easier to complain rather than do something that makes a difference.
I am the last person to join the politics to do anything, but I get it. It's not easy. Countries don't have any money, people don't follow guidelines, so rules are imposed. They don't r follow the rules, so fines are imposed. If you do something good for someone, someone else gets pineappled off.
Yes, companies try to save cost, that's what a business is. But they are still the people best equipped to do what needs to be done.
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bp122
Expert at Jibber-Jabber
The bin men are just following the instructions there. My neighbor in my previous house never bothered to sort her bin out. She threw everything into recycling. When the bin men refused the bin, she lost her lid and complained to me and I showed her our bin and offered to help get hers in order. She agreed and was grateful.
After that, I noticed that the bin men took our bin normally, but checked hers for about 2 to 3 months before taking it.
Reason why they refuse it is that unlike steel recycling, not everything else can be picked of my a magnet. So it causes a lot of extra work to sort out the cardboard from the plastics from aluminium from glass.
Put it this way, if I were in a restaurant and there is a piece of glass in my food, I'd stop eating it. I wouldn't chance the fact that it may be the only piece.
Same way, if there is something non recycling and potentially dangerous in the pile, they wouldn't risk their crushing / sorting equipment, which do cost a lot.
The recycle men wouldn't take my neighbour's garden waste bin. She wheeled it from two feet inside her boundary to two feet outside it at just after 9.00am as the lorry approached, and they wouldn't take it as it wasn't there two hours earlier. Apparently they have to be out at 7.00am to be on their list - how anyone knows whether they are there then or not, who knows.
johna.clements
Established Member
If you have to get so many roads done by the end of your shift, would you sort peoples rubbish for them and maybe not get to some streets or do you empty all the correctly filled bins and get to the end of your round.
shed9
establiSHED member
A lot to unpack there...
bp122
Expert at Jibber-Jabber
That does sound a bit severe. Especially if it was that close.
Our bin men are very understanding. I put out the bins on Sunday night, as many others on our street. But there have been very few occasions where I have forgotten, but these guys have made the effort to wheel it out and empty it when it wasn't really their job to do that, unless someone is on their list for extra assistance (elderly / disabled residents)
You're right, it IS amazing how badly informed some people are - I wonder if they're the same people who don't bother to read/listen to what other people have to say but simply trot out their "answer" to a question which wasn't asked..
Of course Council Tax doesn't buy anyone a free service to clear a house, regardless of whether it's full of rubbish or decent items which are of value and, more importantly, of use to people who need them. Luckily, Freecycle exists to ensure that such things don't simply end up in some landfill in a far distant country, although apparently the Fire Brigade, Police and Social Services also become mysteriously involved, and ludicrous comments about mates with pick-up trucks appear, when high horses are let out to graze....
It's of course silly to blame the Council for the ridiculous rules and regulations regarding refuse bins, after all it's not as though we pay the beggars handsomely to empty them for us, is it? The councils are the ones who discovered what the rest of us already knew, namely that they weren't capable of organising waste collection so what did they do: get their act into gear to provide the services their paymasters needed - or farm them out to private companies and allow those companies to tie them into contracts that might save a few bob but don't actually provide the services that the taxpayers need and in the way that best suits those taxpayers?
Luckily, I no longer live in the UK but instead in the poorest country in the EU; somehow local councils here, REALLY cash-strapped, manage to provide the services that modern-day Brits can only dream of: our bins don't get emptied once a fortnight/month but three times a week; the Rubbish Stasi don't check to see if any "contraband" is in there, they just empty them; if you've got too much, you leave it beside the bin.....and it miraculously also gets taken; in addition, there are large municipal bins every few hundred metres where you can leave furniture etc as well as household waste and off it duly goes three times a week. You can leave old appliances etc beside your bins and the local totters will happily pick it up as they pass, with nary a LA snooper knocking on your door. We have cops, we have firemen, we even have ambulances which come when you need them rather than a couple of days later. The equivalent of council tax in our village is a princely £30 a year....and that even includes subsidised firewood for the old folks every winter. Yeah, we know it's bad for the environment but the oldies still find it a more palatable option than freezing to death....
It's all well and good to harp on about "doing something yourself" rather than complaining about the people you're paying to do it for you, who've volunteered - and indeed insisted - that they are competent to do it but what would your employer, assuming that you have one, think about you taking your salary every month and then telling him that it was up to him to do your job for you if he wanted it done?
bp122
Expert at Jibber-Jabber
You are indeed comparing apples and oranges. The council tax cost in the village you live in may as well be £30 a year. If it is indeed the poorest country in the EU, the minimum wage is also not what it is in the UK. Minimum wage is high in the UK than there, so everything you think that has any input from a salaried person (product or service) is more expensive, remarkably so.
For example, India's Mars mission cost a fraction of what NASA's cost, that doesn't mean they are the same.
Coming to the frequency of collection, this is a genuine question and not an argument or a dig, do you think the quantity of waste is more or collection capacity per instance is less? If they are both the same as the UK, do you think there is an issue with the efficiency?
shed9
establiSHED member
God, so when I come visit from Canada, and some loser cuts me off or Zilch-Wedlock me off. All I have to do is follow him home, wait til he puts his rubish out for collection. Then throw a cup in the bin and report him anonymously? That’s it!
sawtooth-9
Established Member
I thought body parts should go in the re-cycle bin ?The bin has been arrested......
I’ve read a lot of disturbing things with recycle that I don’t know if true or not. Here in Canada we have recycle bins at dump and everything, but the dump guys says when the days over most of those bins just get dumped in landfill. To expensive to send recycle stuff to cities to process as we live in a rural area. So we stand at dump sorting all our cardboard and plastic. Thinking we are doing good, just to have it thrown out when we leave! They get away with it as they take a peak in and say oh wrong type of plastic or tape on cardboard so they garbage the whole dumpster.
Hpps
Established Member
In their defense, if they were not from round your way then they may have thought it was the correct bin without looking in it. Our recycling bin is brown and garden waste green. At least it was in a bin and they at least tried to keep your village tidy.
I too live in a village and the thing I dislike the most about it is the way other villagans moan, puppy and complain at every opportunity about the most pathetic of things like this.
Get over it, move on
This is the bottom line of so many issues the enviroment faces, if only it was just one cup but the big issues are nothing more than the sum of a load of smaller issues. We would not have the sewage issues if it was just one tuurd but it is a few turds from one household multiplied by many households multiplied by many towns and so on so the system cannot cope and raw sewage goes into the waterways.
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whatknot
Established Member
On a slightly different but on a similar subject of wrong bin, we like many others do not have the luxury of a place to store recycle bins or black bags we have to keep them inside as we are direct onto the footpath in a village
Black bags are contained in a seagull proof sack which we have to pay for, black bags once a week and recycling once a fortnight
I returned home the other week to find the bin men had been, leaving my anti seagull bag attached to wall outside, I went to bring it in to find some moron of a dog owner had dumped their dog poo in a bag in my anti seagull bag, what kind of an silly person does that? its bad enough they allow their dogs to pee up my front door (or worse) several times I have come to bring in the bag to find a stream of dog pee leading away from it, so they stand there and let their dogs pee up it, do they have any brains at all
There is a bin less than 100 feet away just to make matters worse
Black bags are contained in a seagull proof sack which we have to pay for, black bags once a week and recycling once a fortnight
I returned home the other week to find the bin men had been, leaving my anti seagull bag attached to wall outside, I went to bring it in to find some moron of a dog owner had dumped their dog poo in a bag in my anti seagull bag, what kind of an silly person does that? its bad enough they allow their dogs to pee up my front door (or worse) several times I have come to bring in the bag to find a stream of dog pee leading away from it, so they stand there and let their dogs pee up it, do they have any brains at all
There is a bin less than 100 feet away just to make matters worse
Lazy, no respect , and possibly of limited intelligence, you would think as a dog owner they are aware of where the bins are but just can’t be bothered to walk that 100 yards , absolutely no excuse for that 
