Rant, but maybe it'll amuse some of you.

VitaK

lynnemcf wrote: »

I live in a seaside town and we get campervans parked along the seafront. When they go home, they will leave a bag of "household" waste by the bin, are they breaking the law?

It does not matter if they leave it near a bin, in the middle of the street or on someones doorstep.

Some councils does not chase this as vigorously as others.

topsales

Funny how some of us of the 'older generation' managed very well with real nappies! The number of disposables going to landfill nowadays is absolutely atrocious...

topsales

Maybe an extra charge for disposal of them would be the answer..

PinkLipgloss

topsales wrote: »

Funny how some of us of the 'older generation' managed very well with real nappies! The number of disposables going to landfill nowadays is absolutely atrocious...

The 'older generation' seem to have managed very well with a LOT of things - doesn't mean I'm going to ditch modern life and live my life in the past!

Besides - a lot of 'older generation' mums were housewives who therefore had the luxury of a lot more time on their hands which many modern parents do not have as they are often working.

LannieDuck

topsales wrote: »

Funny how some of us of the 'older generation' managed very well with real nappies! The number of disposables going to landfill nowadays is absolutely atrocious...

My Mum's been really impressed with the disposable nappies available nowadays for my LO. She remembers the towelling nappies she had to use with me and my sister. Apparently they weren't very absorbent and leaked horribly. Her and my Dad still have vivid memories of them!

However, one of my friends is keen on reusable nappies and they look pretty good to me. I think they've come on a long way from my parents' time. I might give them a go with my next LO (if I can convince OH...).

RadoJo

Naf wrote: »

Precisely the kind of thing I want to point out that my council should look at. I agree with them that a shared house of students or workers would very likely manage with this bin; because they are not home all day every day, so waste from their lunch/dinner would not always be included in there. My wife & kids are home all day, and the bin already isn't big enough. The new baby will only exacerbate this, as will the fact that from October I'm not going to be working, I'll be at Uni - so I'll be home all day too.



How?

Without knowing your waste needs intimately, it's not possible to provide a foolproof solution, but some ideas: as someone else has suggested, you could try reusable nappies - the ones you have may not be suitable but you could test others to see if they work better for you; you could purchase items with less packaging (e.g loose fruit instead of that which comes with a plastic tray etc); buy a waste compactor so that you can maximise the space you do have; buy in stores rather than online wherever possible so that your items don't come with the protective packaging that you inevitably get when things come through the post.


How?

Take it to a public recycling bank - we had a plastic recycling centre in our local supermarket carpark about 2 years before our council began kerbside collection of plastics

Let's spend some of that housing benefit or higher rate CTC on it, yes? Instead of, say, my rent? Or my food bill?
Ok, so that's a bit flippant of me. But I wouldn't be prepared to do so anyway, I see no reason that I should when it's not like I'm being excessive with my waste. I buy things in bulk packs to split up, I reuse carrier bags, I tear the dratted windows out of envelopes. Unfortunately I can't do anything about the volume of nappies my kids go through, or about companies who pack things with polystyrene (even in this day & age!).

You provided absolutely no details about your financial situation so no way of knowing that you didn't consider this an option - I am really trying to offer constructive help here, so if you would prefer empty sympathy which won't actually get you any closer to resolving the situation then I am sorry that this is causing you such a pain in the arris and will say no more.

I imagine (and granted this might be a stretch to make such an assumption about their intelligence) that they would have offered this already.
I did consider looking at just buying another wheelie bin myself, but I'm not over keen on the idea when I should be able to get an adequate bin. If it was anything more than general household waste (say i was running a business from home) then I wouldn't be making a fuss, because then it would be my fault for adding the extra waste: but everything in that bin (bar the one-time extra few items from the previous tenant) is just the general waste I can't help but produce; and that ought to be taken by the council.

Quoting quotes is all stuffed up and I'm too tired to go back and re-jig it all, but hope the above (in blue) helps.

Leif

Unfortunately councils vary greatly from good to bad. The worst tend to be in poor areas. Some can be very officious, jobsworths that sort of thing.

It sounds like some wonk decided they would meet landfill and recycling targets, and they do that by stuffing the householder i.e. the customer. I guess they realised that when providing public services, the one factor that gets in the way of targets and efficiency is the public. Clever them.

I had a lot of waste due to moving in to a new house, and redecorating. When the bin lorry came, I asked if they could take bin bags, yes no problem, I just handed them over. Very friendly and helpful. Now I produce far less than one bin full per week.

meer53 wrote: »

I think both letters were far too long and too much of a rant. Companies who get letters like this tend to skim read them and there is always the possibility they may not take you seriously because of the way they are written.

You might be right, it was over dramatic rather than to the point. A simple statement of facts is better.

VitaK

An !!!!!!!! over dramatic rant letter gets treated as !!!!!!!! over dramatic rant letter.

I think you misunderstand the coucill. Their aim is to reduce the amount of waste going to the landfill. They are not attempting to achieve this by not collecting your excess waste.

Naf

RadoJo wrote: »

you could try reusable nappies - the ones you have may not be suitable but you could test others to see if they work better for you; you could purchase items with less packaging (e.g loose fruit instead of that which comes with a plastic tray etc); buy a waste compactor so that you can maximise the space you do have; buy in stores rather than online wherever possible so that your items don't come with the protective packaging that you inevitably get when things come through the post.

Reusable nappies are quite an expensive outlay; prohibitively so to get just to try out one type, than another. We really wanted to use them both for reducing costs, and for reducing waste, and gave them a good go with our first; bought the whole lot which cost us £100 plus a £50 voucher from the council to encourage people to do it (different council). Unfortunately they just did not work for us.
We already do buy loose fruit & veg where possible for us; and will be starting to use the local grocer in preference to the supermarket (quality permitting) very shortly.
Generally I do prefer buying in store; but for some things the price is dramatically cheaper online, some things just can't be bought in store; and just last week we bought a new bin from Argos, which had huge chunks of polystyrene packing in!
A compactor is something that I had thought of, as is a waste disposal (I.e. one of those food shredders that goes under the sink drain), but they don't seem to come cheaper than several hundreds of pounds.

RadoJo wrote: »

Take it to a public recycling bank - we had a plastic recycling centre in our local supermarket carpark about 2 years before our council began kerbside collection of plastics

I don't have any transport for it, unfortunately. If I had some then it wouldn't be such an issue to get these bags to the tip anyway.

RadoJo wrote: »

You provided absolutely no details about your financial situation so no way of knowing that you didn't consider this an option - I am really trying to offer constructive help here,

I know you (all) are, and it's very good advice. Thing is, I've already considered most of it and just can't really see any alternatives.

PILES

L33TSUPAH4X0R wrote: »

I live in a fork in the road, bin men come and get my bin, then an hour later they go down the other side of the fork

I put my bin out, it's emptied. I refill it, then take it across the road to be re-emptied an hour later.

Nappies are a problem for us too, and terrible washing machine and no disposable income means I could never manage reusables.

Don't always need to use the fork in the road trick, sometimes just a carrier bag of waste in the public bin now and again works.

Are disposble nappies cheaper then reusables?