General Chat

I have recently received information from my local council in Scotland to say, that the frequency of bin collection is to change very soon and I shall be notified of the new collection dates.
So at present, all our bins are emptied every 2 weeks. We have 4 bins.
Green for glass Blue for paper, plastic recycling etc. black for organic matter including food and garden waste and another black for non recyclable waste.

The new collections will see glass on 3 monthly and all other bins on a 3 weekly collection. My recyclable bin with paper & plastics is full up after 1 1/2 weeks so today after 2 weeks its was full to the brim and so glad it was bin day.

But food in the organic bin and very soon grass, to be in the bin for 3 weeks is surely an environmental disaster. The smell from rotting chicken bits and rotting grass is disgusting after 2 weeks, so in the summer, what will the smell be like after 3 weeks? I once forgot to put the bin out and it had prawn shells in it!! The smell was nauseous as it was in the bin for a month.

I read online that the Government passed the Environment Act in 2021 which states, that food waste must be collected at least once a week :-S

So was this act only passed in England or does it apply to Scotland as well? If it applies to the whole of the UK, then my council are breaking the law with 3 weekly collections!

Has anyone else in Scotland been notified of a 3 weekly collection? Has anyone in England been notified of frequency changes recently?

Florence in the hebrides

Our food waste is collected separately from anything else and is collected weekly.

This might answer a few questions

https://www.localgov.co.uk/Changes-to-food-waste-collection-and-recycling-What-actions-do-councils-need-to-take-/54208

Well we have never had weekly food waste collections as all food waste goes into the organic bin which is emptied 2 weekly.

That tells me that Scotland has its own rules!

Joan rural Aberdeenshire is rolling out an extra Orange bin for mixed recycling so you will have an extra bin me thinks?

Yes it looks as though Scottish environment is separate but there is a lot on line about the regulations and it looks as though some areas do have weekly food waste collections. Looking at the English rules and regs it looks as though we are all going to have to come in line I think I saw 2024/5 somewhere. so maybe Scotland will be similar.

Infact on the new leaflet, it says our council will soon be providing new food caddies to every home along with a starter of compostable liners and then you have to buy your own after that. It states the waste food can either be placed direct into the organic bin or you can wrap in newspaper or use a compostable liner. You can get full size paper liners for your organic bin but they are about 60p per liner.

We don't have a caddy as these are new homes but i tel to ask and was told we all will be getting new ones very soon.

Yes Joan, I looked online and you will get replacement bins plus a 3rd orange one so 3 in total, we have 4!

Our new collection dates for April on the council website says TBC.

Florence, I'm in England and don't have separate food bin collections or indeed, separate food bins! So not Scotland having it's own rules.
It is advised here to put food waste in green (garden waste) bin. Ours used to go in the compost bin but now I'm own I've been wrapping food waste (what little there is) and putting it in the general waste bin. I don't eat meat so no problem with disposal but surely animal remains can be wrapped and put in general bin?

Collections every three weeks would suit me fine, currently it is bi-weekly.
I can't think how families, six of us, managed with one little aluminium bin back then :-S Hardly any plastic? Food wasn't wasted? No internet shopping with all that packaging? A less throwaway society?
The fact we're provided with those hideous wheelie bins out of necessity gives me the horrors :-0

Our food bin is collected weekly and always has been. The others vary according to colour. In Scotland each council does its own thing but I gather England is going to be the same everywhere. The councils are predicting chaos!! This makes interesting reading.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-64995473

Yes Andy's mum, each council makes their own rules in Scotland and ours seem to be in a complete world of their own!!

Today i received 2 things I had ordered from Amazon. Came in a huge box, loads of scrunched thick brown paper etc Totally unnecessary. My blue bin was just emptied and already I'm filling it back up again. There is no getting away from it.

When I was young, there were 5 of us and one tin bin but..... we had bonfires regularly to get rid of papers and we had an open fire so burnt paper etc as well. That's how we managed. We also had a rabbit that got green veg peelings and nannas chickens got potato peelings etc

But having bonfires and open fires isn't considered environmentally friendly anymore because of polluting the sky so instead it all has to go in a bin!

Last summer, our 2 weekly grass cut somehow didnt always work out with the organic bin collection and the consequences were, the grass rotted, slugs appeared and the bin stank. So how is a 3 weekly collection along with food waste going to be? Awful me thinks.
I am disabled and i cannot manage to tip the bins on the side and operate a hosepipe to clean them, assuming they wont get blown away whilst drying in the wind ;-)

I just don't see who is benefiting here with 3 weekly collections, certainly not the householder!

The lids are orange Joan, the bins are black!

I think the new rules to be implemented in England at some stage has been thought up by those lucky people with long drives and large gardens. They haven’t given a thought to those with little or no garden or without access without going through the house.

By the by, our food waste is now picked up weekly from a caddy instead of festering for 2 weeks in the garden bin. We were given a small caddy for the kitchen and a larger one to put out for collection.

Back to plastic crates and rolls of plastic bags then.....

The real problem, the creation of waste, needs addressing. We can't go on being such a wasteful society!

We have 5 receptacles (6 if you have a garden waste bin) - bag and boxes for glass, tins, cardboard, paper etc., a food caddy and a wheelie bin for general waste. The wheelies are collected every 3 weeks, all the others collected weekly It works really well as far as I'm concerned, we have so little food waste, 90% of it is peelings and coffee grounds. We haven't yet sorted a compost heap so peelings will go on that eventually. Our wheelie bin is the smaller one (140L?) and I usually only have 2 bin liners worth every 3 weeks.

Our food left-overs go into the Compost Bin which is collected weekly from March to around December, then bi-weekly in the winter months.

The advice we've been given for many years re food waste is to wrap the food and put it into plastic bags, and put it into the freezer until time to put it out in the bin.

Don't forget that it is not only smells ................. rats are attracted by smells, and here we have things like raccoons, and if you live in the right (?wrong) area even bears becoming habituated to garbage cans in cities.

I am fed up with it all to be honest and one councillor made the mistake of asking me what I thought of the idea, I told him and he is in no doubt that I don't like the idea.

ZZzzz you mean you dont like recycling anything?

Local advice used to veto freeze the food left overs like Sylvia. But what if you got a small freezer or a full freezer?

Here in WA most councils run a three bin system; one bin (yellow lid) is for recycling materials such as glass paper cans etc, another bin(red lid) is for general waste and the third (lime green lid) is known as the Fo-Go bin which in reality is an acronym for food organics, garden organics.

The Fo-Go bin is emptied weekly and the other bins are emptied on alternate fortnights so that on bin collection day two bins are put out.

Bins are usually 240 litre, but our own particular Shire will provide smaller bins for general waste as well as a smaller fo-go bin for those who do not have much organic waste.

On a personal note, we have both a compost bin and a worm farm

We recycle as much as possible and are happy in general with the bin collections. However we heard that supermarkets often have recycling for thin plastic, like bags, film, cat and baby food pouches....

We collect all those into big bags and take them to the supermarket when we go every 3 weeks or so.
I understand this is not an option for many, but it certainly reduces the general waste.

grannyfanny, WA recently had a similar recycling system which was heavily promoted by the major supermarkets. It was for all the 'light' plastics such as shopping bags and clingfilm type of products.

Then it was discovered that the Company offering the service was not recycling the material but was storing vast amounts in warehouses up and down the State so the system collapsed and all that material has to go in the general waste.

Edit. Just done a bit more research into the scheme here is a link to the ABC story

https://tinyurl.com/mtt4e4hw