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[Floydoid]

I think my local council have seriously lost the plot:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/norfolk/7400791.stm

[dave.m]

Ruddy Jobsworths.

I am amazed at the routine for emptying recycle wheely bins. Someone must go along and lift the lid and rummage inside, then get a notepad out and write a note or stick a label on the bin if they spy something untoward at the top of the rubbish.

Firstly, how far down the contents of the bin do they search for misplaced rubbish?
If only the top few inches then the stupid excuse that 'wrong things can contaminate a full wagon load of recycleable stuff' is bullsh1t because if some wrong stuff is near the bottom of the wheely bin then they will not see it and it will be tipped in with everything else.

Secondly, why doesn't the prat with the labels just lift the offending item from the bin and put it where it should go, namely up (Edit: dave don't go down that road  ).

Not just getting at your binmen, Floydy, 'cos they are all the same now throughout the land. And the bollshy councillors are the same too!

dave 

[Floydoid]

More from our evening paper:

http://tinyurl.com/5bbkpx

[roseway]

Words fail me!

[mr_chris]

I'm gonna play devil's advocate here...

1. The guys collecting the rubbish have a job to do. They can't tell the difference between someone making a genuine mistake, or simply not being bothered to put stuff in the right bins/boxes. They have their orders on what to do - in this case leave the bin with a note on it.

2. If the man concerned wasn't 96 or a war veteran, this wouldn't have made the newspapers.

3. How are the collectors supposed to know he's old? The council can't tell them, that would be a breach of privacy, probably the DPA.

So I suggest that the workers are stuck between a rock and a hard place - can't do right for doing wrong. They certainly haven't got time to go knocking on the doors of everyone who puts a tin can in the garden waste bin, they'd never get finished!

Without seeing the contents of the warning, I can't say, but perhaps the note needed to be a bit more friendly, encouraging people to call the number if they needed help. I also think it's gone a bit silly, as logically to us, certain recyclables will go in the same box that you wouldn't dream of putting together e.g. plastic and tin cans together!

So whilst I do feel sorry for the war veteran, I think it's also important not to lose sight of the balanced viewpoint.

[Floydoid]

It's not so much a case of what the rules and regs are, but how you apply them (as with many things in life).  Surely for a first infringement a friendly word might have done the trick?

[dave.m]

Chris,
Even totally ignoring the "bleedin' hearts" press reporting regarding the age and war service of the offender, I still feel that the way each council goes about enforcing an EU directive and threatening the very people that they are supposed to SERVE, is out of order.

If the coucils throughout the country had all got their heads together and decided just ONE set of rules for seperating and collecting and processing waste, we might just get some form of sense into the procedure.

One lot collects bottles (glass & plastic), cans and paper all in one bin and then they sort it at the depot:
http://www.stedmundsbury.gov.uk/sebc/live/pdf/wasteman/slide%20show/recycling.htm
Another insists that the public sort things out themselves.
Ours collects glass, plastic and tincans in a box and the binmen have to sort it all out and put it into three seperate sections of the lorry.

Then you get councils that insist on houses of multiple occupation are given three wheely bins for each flat. Just take a look in Blackpool and some rows of terraced houses have about 15 bins in the front garden because they cannot get them in the back yard. It looks like Legoland gone daft.
As we live in a Park Home on a residential site there is simply no way to get the large bin wagons round the Park so we are on bin bags and a small lorry comes every week and the man takes everything we put out. There is a large newspaper recycling bin and a small one for aluminium cans which are emptied every fortnight (if the crew remember). What I don't understand is that the houses in the road at the bottom can put metal and aluminium cans in their box and they are all thrown into the same compartment on the big lorry, but smaller collection cannot recycle metal cans.

Until recycling is standardised (not in my lifetime, because councils are only playing at it as a token to the EU) there will always be the individual who's interpretation of rules is different and someone will always be made an example of.

As a Devil's Advocate you put up a stirling case for the jobsworths of local government but I am not convinced that the way recycling is done in this country is without flaws.

Must agree to disagree.
dave 

[mr_chris]

Dave, I wasn't trying to put up a stirling case for the jobsworths, and I agree about the farce of how recycling is(n't) organised properly! What I was trying to do was merely point out that there are two sides to stories, and I will stand by my view that this particular one is getting the 'aww' factor simply because of the age and prior achievement of the individual concerned.

So yes, I do totally sympathise with the gentleman, and I had missed the point that it was his first time of getting something in the bins wrong. Nevertheless, there's a lot of rubbish to collect, so they can't go knocking on the door of everyone who's ever put something in the wrong recycle bin... they'd be there all day.

[oldfogy]

Well my garden waste was collected today after three phone calls to the council and being on the footpath for the last SIX WEEKS because the bags had been tied up, not with string or anything, just using the actual bag.

They said they needed to see inside the bags, although the bags are that thin you can see straight through them, then they say they need to empty them quickly and being tied up stops that from happening.

Why tie them up?
To stop the rubbish blowing all over the road,

Were they tied up,
Well no not really, because the kids had kicked, poked and prodded them that much that they had all split open any-way.

Shall I bother to put out more garden waste.
Not bl***y likely, it can all go in the normal black bag in future.

Tomorrows phone call to the council is for them now to come and clean the road of all the rubbish left behind after the bin men left.

Recycling, they can stick it...............

[Floydoid]

I'd love to hear you when you get on the phone to them.

[kitz]

Ive accidentally - or rather the brat did - put something in the wrong bin before now..  all they did was empty the rest, but leave the offending milk carton behind (it was one of those cardboard type rather than plastic ones).

Green waste seems to be more strict though and Ive heard cases where they refuse to empty the whole bin. 
I suppose it depends on the person doing the emptying and what sort of day they're having

[guest]

I have to give credit where its due and say our current council (Blaby) is top-notch when it comes to refuse/recycling. They have flatly rejected any nonsense about collecting rubbish fortnightly rather than weekly - we don't need to as we're one of the few LAs approaching 50% recycling rates. Nor do we have nonsense about bins not being emptied because the lid is open a crack!

Is it rocket science or in someway complicated? No.

We get :

1) 70L black wheelie bin for rubbish - collected weekly;

2) 70L green wheelie bin for cardboard/paper - collected fortnightly;

3) 20L yellow box for cans/plastics - collected fortnightly;

4) 20L black box for glass - collected fortnightly.

If you want bigger boxes then you phone up and ask - they're free. A bigger rubbish bin will cost about £100/year unless more than four people live there, in which case its free. A 70L garden waste bin (collected fortnightly in summer for composting) will cost £32/year.

The difference is that Blaby have been actively pushing recycling for 15 years now. The next-door LA (Leicester City) is an unmitigated disaster where nobody recycles as the bins/bags are inadequate and frequently don't get collected. Leicester City is usually a Labour-held council so I suppose incompetence is a given with that lot.

[chrissie]

I won't get started on the above recycling debate, suffice to say it's crazy with the way it's going and all to appease the !%**"**&@!!!  EU <spit>.

But what I will say and will ALWAYS say.. there wouldn't be all this fuss and discussion if, as in everything, there was prevention rather than cure.  If we didn't have and were forced to have all the packaging on things that don't need it, if milk and drink only came in bottles which were collected or taken back to the shop.... if... if... if.... there would be no need for all this recycling as there wasn't many years ago.

This throw-away world has gone mad, people not caring what happens to things after they've used them... take ruddy filthy "disposable" (?) nappies.... thrown out anywhere that they feel like throwing them, for other people to clean up.  The majority of people today, especially the what I call, the low grades, couldn't give a monkey's for their waste and what happens to anything apart from themselves.

Sorry.. it's another one of my soapbox subjects and I feel strongly about it.  The way to change everything has long gone, peeps are too selfish, too self motivated to do things the way it should be done, nothing will work now to bring people to their senses, it's all gone too far.... so we get the situation we are in and everyone suffers!

Rant, rant, rant.... ad infinitum - phew, I've calmed down now (it sez ere)

Chrissie