What happens when councils charge for the periodic emptying of a green bin (compostables)

[Mr Gus]

Interested at to where folk draw the line & where those without composting that handles food waste, & properly curated will get on, or simply add it back to the "general refuse" bin for landfill?

It's happening around here at around £57 per annum (we get ours emptied around 4 times per year with actual garden waste, the rest is food waste type thing.

Truth be told, wife will be really pissed & will likely start chucking it in one bin (stuff unfit for even a wormery), as is we only fill a bin properly 1x every 6-8 weeks over the years, the rest of the time it remains empty. (standard collection for all 3 is fortnightly)


And of course fly-tipping remains the problem of the landowner so the police are not bothered as much as a tax man might be!

Introductory price for collection works out at £2.40 per collection ..cannot see many people willingly sticking that on top of everything else, anywhere do a PAYG?

Incoming problems obviously.

[Stig]

My local council charges £80 a year to have a brown bin for garden waste (fortnightly) but collect food waste (much smaller bin) weekly for free. There is the option to buy paper sacks for garden waste at £1.20 each of you want but I manage OK by composting & shredding garden waste as any food waste (peelings mostly) goes in the food waste bin -apparently for an anaerobic digester.

[Yuff]

Our green garden waste bin is now £50 a year, it was £35 last year, so I only renewed 2 instead of 3. Really only need 3 when the leaves fall and I thought I refuse to pay a 42% increase when it wasn't that hard to manage 2 bins.
It was the increase that annoyed me, another stealth increase when generally the service gets worse…..plus our council tax is the 2nd highest in the country, I think Cambridgeshire was the highest.
Annoying when Westminster is a third of the price……..hmmm wonder why…….

[Mr Gus]

Yeah, I'm the Cambridge-shires technically, amongst the highest poll tax for no good reason whatsoever!

[Bugtownboy]

Ours (Somerset) is a 180 litre wheelie for £63.50 or 80 litre paper sacks (£31.40 for 10.

Both collected every two weeks.

Food waste is collected every week.

We stopped our green bin a couple of years ago, partly because we ended up having to drag it up from the garden on occasion and then thirty steps to get to the drive, but mainly because we invested in more compost bins (3xDalek type).

We don’t have ‘waste food’ - veg peelings go in the compost, any carcasses (post stock making) do go in the food bin.

Tree prunings (fruit & nut mainly) get processed for the WBS.

Composting fascinates me - making such a valuable garden resource from waste with very little effort.

Have found that wine corks don’t compost readily, though

[Mr Gus]

Cork does not easily degrade, my corkball floating keychain (had since I was 17 & a water-skier) will vouch.
Wonderful stuff...

Good thermal & sound reducing properties, easy to cut & apply.

http://www.thermacork.com/harvest

Anyhow, having been subject to flytippimg previously, I can see a lot more garden waste dumped in drainage ditches by the perma-stupid, if it happens again I shall drop it off at the council offices as their problem overnight, complete with a letter, citing them.as part of the problem.

[Bugtownboy]

Cork is a wonderful material !

I used to save the occasional ( ) cork from wine bottles, but found few re-uses for them, hence trying to compost.

As it is, they now get dug into the veg beds and do seem to disappear.

[AGT]

I have 4 wheelie bins collected fortnightly , on a staggered rotation most of the year and monthly for food waste/garden waste in the winter generally when garden maintenance slows down
Paper bin
General waste bin
Plastic bin
Food waste/gardening waste

All included in council tax no extra

[Tinbum]

Our service is brilliant (except for the colours of the bins) at no extra charge .

Blue wheely Bin- plastics, paper, glass and cardboard every 2 weeks (You can actually have 2 of these bins as well)
Brown wheely Bin- food and compostable garden waste every 2 weeks
Green wheely Bin- everything else every 2 weeks

[Mr Gus]

That's one of the stupid scenarios round here..

Winter when food waste degradations SLOWS right down as does green clippings etc, it COULD be once per month, it should be, but never has been, now they've jumped the shark without presenting an option & freeing up time on rounds they are going for the full on charge! ..muppetry!