Ridiculous rubbish sack rule

MamaMoo_2

I live in Solihull. For a family of four, we have two purple bags of rubbish per week. We then have to bring these down to some large communal bins.
The purple bags are flimsy, and constantly break/rip, even when there is only a light load in there.
Before the communal bins, we had to leave the bins under the stairs up to our Maisonettes. The rubbish would then be ripped into by cats etc overnight, and the ripped bags wouldn't be collected, leaving us residents to clear up the aftermath.
After months of asking for big bins, we got some. However, somebody put some black bags in there, which the bin men removed and left beside the bins. Some cats got inside and now there's rotting food strewn everywhere.
I don't see the big deal with the black bags. Clearly, one of the new residents has just used black bags that the council left for them. (when you move in, you get a welcome pack. It has washing up liquid, a cloth, air freshener, some leaflets and 2 black bags. There's also no literature about needing to use pink sacks)
It really irritates me about how pinickity the bin men are!

cassie55

Ida_Notion wrote: »

My sister lives in a block of maisonettes, and always used to put her rubbish in a black bag before slinging it down the chute into the rubbish room. One day a few years back, all the tenants got a letter from the council saying that black bags were unacceptable, and that everyone had to use carrier bags (yes, really) from then on in. She'd already put the rubbish out before the post came, but resigned herself to following yet another daft council rule.

The next week she got another letter from the council, saying that they'd found the black bag that she had put out just prior to receiving the first letter, had been through it and identified it as hers because her name and address were on a bit of packaging within it, and that if it happened again she would be evicted.

Lovely. If councils had spent a bit less on sending out hate mail over the years, we might not be being plunged into darkness now when the street lights go out every night at midnight. Still, I don't suppose we should expect much more from a country where flood warnings and a profusion of wellies and umbrellas are signals of drought status

We had a letter from our council saying that the recycling people had noticed that we had not put out anything for recycling for 3 weeks and if we didn't start we would be fined £5,000.

Except we had been on holiday for 3 weeks :mad:.

Still nice to know that the council are spending their time threatening innocent local residents rather than doing anything about the huge potholes that threaten to swallow my car everytime I drive the road.

Ignite

Dorset are changing their systems in a few months time. We have at the moment a weekly collection for bin bags (any colour), weekly for food cardboard and garden (all in a 170l wheely bin) and fortnightly for mixed recycling.

The new system will be 1 170l (small) wheely bin for non recyclable collected fortnightly, 1 240l (large) wheely bin for mixed recyclables collected fortnightly and a small 7l caddy for food collected weekly. Now I don't have a clue how we (and other neighbours) will fit all of our rubbish into a small bin collected once a fortnight. With the number of nappies that we have, we will fill most of that in a week!

Sharon87

Here in Barnet we have a wheelie bin and a regular sized wheelie bin at that for general waste, another wheelie bin for garden waste and 2 different coloured recycling boxes. They don't care if the lid's closed or not

It sounds like heaven compared to some people's stories on here, but it's still not as good as Brent's refuse collection. You could recycle more and bung it into one box as oppose to separating it into 2 different ones. And they'll collect it from your front garden! Never had to put the bins out, usually had to bring them back in though lol.

giraffe69

We had a letter from our council saying that the recycling people had noticed that we had not put out anything for recycling for 3 weeks and if we didn't start we would be fined £5,000.

Await the summons and then say you had taken it to the council dump as the bin men were so unreliable!

Ch1ckenlady

We too just have wheely bins - though a buffet of them!

I wheely feel for others when I read these threads. Our bin men are great. Prompt, tidy, return the bins to the drive and even come back when I've forgot on occasions.

pulliptears

Wheely bins here, Grey for general waste, Blue for card and tins and brown for garden rubbish and food.

Our council refuse to accept brown paper bags within the brown bin, therefore I refuse to throw food in there as last year over the summer we were over run with maggots from the brown bin. 2 weeks between collections meant a bin full of rotting food and a council that were disinterested to say the least.

Food waste is now wrapped in carrier bags in the grey bin.

Esoog

cassie55 wrote: »

We had a letter from our council saying that the recycling people had noticed that we had not put out anything for recycling for 3 weeks and if we didn't start we would be fined £5,000.

Except we had been on holiday for 3 weeks :mad:.

Still nice to know that the council are spending their time threatening innocent local residents rather than doing anything about the huge potholes that threaten to swallow my car everytime I drive the road.

Pathetic. How on earth would they expect to be able to enforce this?

We personally have one wheelie bin for Rubbish and one blue box for recycling (card or glass/cans) We should also have a green bin and a blue smaller wheelie bin, but my girlfriends dad took them away and sawed them in half in protest at the council hehe

Sayaka

cassie55 wrote: »

Still nice to know that the council are spending their time threatening innocent local residents rather than doing anything about the huge potholes that threaten to swallow my car everytime I drive the road.

Try http://www.fixmystreet.co.uk

Mupette

I have to put cardboard broken up and in a carrier bag!!
Although i asked for an extra black recycle box and now just put cardboard in one and tins/glass in the other they seem to accept this.

Although not sure about the new half size bins yet.