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Starting next year, our local council is going to impose a separate charge of £25 per annum for emptying our garden waste wheelie bin. This will be in addition to the normal council tax. Residents will have the choice of whether they want to pay the charge (and get their bin emptied) or not. We haven't been told yet how the bin men will know which bin they should empty and which they shouldn't. Does your council have a similar plan?
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Yes, we do in South Kesteven, Lincs. One is given a security type sticker, about the size of a postcard, to put on the bin. No sticker = Not emptied. Emptied every two weeks and once a month in the Winter, October to March, roughly
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Yes we do.
Used to be large fibre glass bags with a see through pocket on them to place your receipt - like a road tax.
Now we have large green wheely bins that you had to buy and I have absolutely no idea how they know you pay you annual fee as we have no visual form of proof
I happen to have two large green wheely bins (long story) so I am going to fill and put one outside the neighbours house to see if it get emptied.
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What's garden waste? Ours goes on the compost heap or bonfire.
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"What's garden waste? Ours goes on the compost heap or bonfire."
I agree. Can't get enough of the stuff.. Compost is the engine of the garden. If you keep throwing "garden waste'' away your soil will become poorer and poorer, unless of course you buy back your own garden waste as compost from the council.
Last edited by: CGNorwich on Thu 13 Jun 13 at 09:09
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>> What's garden waste? Ours goes on the ........... bonfire.
That pollutes the atmosphere. There should be a BED (bonfire excise duty) for people who have bonfires.
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>> >
>>
>> That pollutes the atmosphere. There should be a BED (bonfire excise duty) for people who
>> have bonfires.
>>
So what happens to the stuff the council takes away or you take to the CA site?
Doesn't it get landfilled? Whatever you do with it, it will be converted back into CO2 in the end.
So will the fuel used by the collection vehicle.
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>> >> >
>> >>
>> >> That pollutes the atmosphere. There should be a BED (bonfire excise duty) for people
>> who
>> >> have bonfires.
>> >>
>>
>> So what happens to the stuff the council takes away or you take to the
>> CA site?
>> Doesn't it get landfilled?
No, it gets converted into compost of some description and sold.
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>> >> So what happens to the stuff the council takes away or you take to
>> the
>> >> CA site?
>> >> Doesn't it get landfilled?
>>
>> No, it gets converted into compost of some description and sold.
>>
I compost everything myself, only perennial weeds and infected stuff goes to my local recycling centre and I've always put those in the landfill skip not the garden waste skip which goes for composting which they then sell, I've worked on the basis that if I don't want it in my compost then the Council won't want it in theirs.
Following a trip there last week there is no way I am ever going to buy any of their compost.
I was told by some young bloke in a yellow jacket that under no circumstances would he allow me to put my bags of a clematis which has just succumbed to clematis wilt in the landfill. Apparently if it's green then it goes in the compost and there's no exception; I tried to explain that the RHS suggest that infected plants are burnt or landfilled; he was adamant that he wasn't allowing it in the landfill. As I don't have the facility to burn stuff it went in the compost. As I was putting it in the compost skip I noticed that someone had dumped a van load of chopped up Japanese Knotweed in the skip so I went over and told the guy who just shrugged and said something along the lines of 'It's green, ain't it, mate?'
At that point I lost the will to live but their compost is never going anywhere near my garden.....
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"At that point I lost the will to live but their compost is never going anywhere near my garden....."
I wouldn't worry. Commercial composting plant is far more efficient than anything you achieve at home. The stuff ferments at a far higher temperature and is sustained at that temperature for far longer than your heap . The temperature will kill any weeds or pathogens.
You are probably buying the stuff anyway without knowing it. Compost from re-cycling plants forms a a major plant of many commercial composts and the like
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Appreciate what you're saying CG about commercial composting but I was mystified as to why, at the official, Council sanctioned, centre they didn't seem to care less that they were disposing of one of the 30 listed plants in the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 which it is an offence to plant or cause to grow and which is also 'controlled waste' under the Environmental Protection Act 1990 which can only be disposed of at a properly licenced landfill site.
If they don't care about that then what else is going on?
Similar to when I caught the maintenance people looking after our local sheltered housing disposing of mercury filled low energy bulbs into the normal domestic waste bins for the sites. Their excuse was that that was how they'd disposed of flourescent tubes in the past and as these were Compact Flourescents then it should be OK; only the two offences then... They also disposed of their cooking oil straight into the drains, but that's another story...
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Cockle,
The front of house staff on these sites are rarely well enough trained to do more than sort and direct.
EPA etc will be a closed book and even it is was open most would struggle to read. If you're serious about these breaches then you need to take it up in writing with site management copying in the relevant officers (Environmental Health? ) at the Council.
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Bromptonaut, it is already in the hands of my ward councillor, and he's the sort that does get to the bottom of things and get things done so I'm waiting, with interest, for a reply.
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>> Appreciate what you're saying CG about commercial composting but I was mystified as to why, at the official, Council sanctioned, centre they didn't seem to care less that they were
>> disposing of one of the 30 listed plants in the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981
>> which it is an offence to plant or cause to grow and which is also
>> 'controlled waste' under the Environmental Protection Act 1990 which can only be disposed of at a properly licenced landfill site.
Do you really expect the workers there to know the ins and outs of such regulations? They help (or not) people put stuff in bins. Garden waste = all dead green stuff. It's not really mystifing why, you are clearly someone who is into gardening, most aren't. I'd bet most people wouldn't know what Japanese knot weed was if they fell over a bag of it and I include myself in that.
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Don't get me wrong, sooty, he has my sympathy, trust me, and I fully understand that a bloke, probably on little more than minimum wage if he's lucky and probably 'trained' in about an hour, can't be expected to know the ins and outs of every bit of legislation.
Given the above do I expect him to know? No, probably not. However, SHOULD the guy advising everyone at the 'tip', now a 'recycling centre' or 'waste transfer station' with a yellow jacket on with a big label on the back saying 'recycling advisor', know? I would say, yes, purely because he's advising the general public who by and large don't know and need, good, advice. And there's the nub of the matter.
The difficulty is that we are all being exorted to 'be green' and 'save the planet' but in doing so there is a possibility that genuine mistakes can be made that cause more harm than good. The Japanese Knotweed is just a drop in the ocean as to what's going on generally.
How many people put CFL's, batteries and electrical items containing PCB's into normal domestic landfill rubbish, most I would suggest, but they would probably be horrified if you told them that that can mean mercury, cadmium and other heavy metals risk contaminating their water supply which results in dearer water when the water companies have to take it out because of the inherent health risks this poses.
Domestically people can get away with doing exactly the above, and they do. Commercially, in theory, you can't. If I'm found at work putting dead cells in the normal waste rather than the proper bin it's a disciplinary issue, as is disposing of fibre optic off cuts in anything other than a 'sharps' box, likewise cable, any PCBs or cardboard. To even transport the waste from a job to our yard for correct disposal, even just cardboard boxes, I'm supposed to have a Waste Transfer Note, if I haven't and I'm stopped then strictly speaking I've committed an offence.
Now, I don't have an issue with this, it's my profession and, rightly, I should, and do, have to know how to dispose of my waste safely, correctly and responsibly. However, the local recycling centre is also run by a commercial business to whom it's been contracted out so they are also a business and should be subject to the same regulations as I am when at work.
Ironically, the same Council which runs the centre above has just prosecuted a local business because he couldn't produce Waste Transfer Notes, etc, for the transfer of his cardboard boxes in which he has his goods delivered to a registered company licenced to take his waste away. His argument that he used all those boxes to repackage the products for onward posting and was therefore recycling them 100% was not deemed to be a defence until he reached court when some common sense finally appeared and his case was dismissed.
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I'm going to take a stab in the dark and say you work with or in EP? ;)
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No, just for a company that has to be seen to be pretty much squeaky clean on these things.
There are so many hoops to jump through these days that I sometimes feel like a performing dog!
It's not like I've spent my life fly tipping or anything but now I have to be able to prove that I'm not, and document everything; and it seems the 'professionals' don't.
It's a bit like proper roadworks guarding with road closure notices, etc, it seems to apply to certain companies who have to submit the proper paperwork and others just seem to turn up, do the work and disappear without an eyelid being batted; but that's another story entirely.....
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>>
>>
>> No, it gets converted into compost of some description and sold.
>>
We have recently tidied up several hundred yards of overgrown hedgerow, extracting the fallen trees, thinning the others, pulling out encroaching blackthorn. Apart from the timber I cut into logs, the remaining pile of brushwood would have filled several lorries. I really don't see the council being interested in having it.
In any case putting it into green bags for the council to dispose of would probably take 20 years at the permitted one bag per week.
So we had an enormous bonfire in the field, and had baked potatoes and a barbecue for the whole family and helpers, sitting round the fire till late evening.
It was still burning the following day. so I raked up the debris and cleared the lot. Now the field is restored to its proper usable size, and the hedgerow will re-grow and again provide a haven for wildlife.
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Now we have large green wheely bins that you had to buy and I have absolutely no idea how they know you pay you annual fee as we have no visual form of proof
Some councils use an RFID chip with an associated reader on the truck - if you check at the front of the bin below the opening lip in the middle - you'll find the housing for it - ours have the housing but no chip. I wouldn't pay the Isle of Anglesey a penny more than I do, given their woeful history of mis-managing public money over thelast 20 years.
Last edited by: R.P. on Thu 13 Jun 13 at 13:04
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Diss is what Cornwall charges: www.cornwall.gov.uk/default.aspx?page=2936
I take my jardin waste to the tip recycling centre, and save the dosh.
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Craven District Council are introducing a garden waste collection service July 1st. £24 per bin until March 2015. Fortnightly collections, suspended Dec thru Feb and you need to display a valid licence on your wheelie bin.
Averages out at £1 per collection according to the council.
Dirt cheap in my opinion if you have grass cuttings, prunings etc to remove. Far less than the cost of a night out on the beer and a curry. Worth every penny for the convenience, even if the local tip is less than a mile away.
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Poole Borough Council charge £31 for a March to December service, including the supply of a 240 litre green bin. The "licence" is a stout adhesive label with the year of issue. If the binmen don't see the right year on the bin they don't collect.
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I have had a black plastic compost bin for 8 years and never used it. My 'top' back lawn...moss primarily, is 80' x 30' and front lawn 40' x 7'. The latter has a 12" border, in which my old Mum comes and does something occasionally with the coloured things in it. Im not a gardener! Would all the grass cuttings and overhanging shrubs from my neighbour, which I cut back twice a year when in the mood, make decent compost? If so I'm missing a trick here.
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>> Dirt cheap in my opinion if you have grass cuttings, prunings etc to remove. Far
>> less than the cost of a night out on the beer and a curry. Worth
>> every penny for the convenience, even if the local tip is less than a mile
>> away.
>>
Or if you go here
tinyurl.com/62mjzjr
for your night out, you get three curries and three drinks for less than twenty four quid.
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>> for your night out, you get three curries and three drinks for less than twenty
>> four quid.
>>
I doubt whether I could eat three curries at one sitting.
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Thanks for the link Duncan but 3 drinks isn't a night out. Although 3 curries is!
One of the few drawbacks of rural living is getting to these places. The last train back from Lancaster to my local station leaves at 19:24, and if we want a big night out in Leeds the last train leaves at 19:19, or 17:40 on a Sunday. Hence the attraction of day trips to 'the big city' on days off, or some good local pubs after work with minimal walking.
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My council charge for garden waste collection. Some folks have a wheelie bin others big green bags. I cannot be bothered with this process.
I have a couple a compost bins for grass cuttings, shreaded paper, veg scraps and leaves. Eventually this all get put on the lawn.
All prunings etc go in a heavy grade black sack. Leylandii cuttings are also bagged.
A couple of trips per annum to the tip is far more convenient especially with nn bags of Leylandii.
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>> Or if you go here
>>
>> tinyurl.com/62mjzjr
>>
>> for your night out, you get three curries and three drinks for less than twenty
>> four quid.
Yeah, you can fly tip your rubbish in the car park, and then vomit on it on the way out, like the rest of the clientele.
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add the surveillance cost in case your neighbors are using your bin.
This might soon require a bin with a padlock. For which council will charge you separately.
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Last year, Reading Borough Council announced, with some fanfare, that council tax charges would not be going up for the forthcoming year. Hooray, we all said. A few weeks after that, they announced that they would be introducing a charge for collecting garden waste, which had been a service provided at no extra charge to the council tax in the previous year. They were then asked by so many people how they could reconcile a zero council tax rise with an extra charge for a previously included service, and which other services would they start charging for as an "extra", that they had to back down pretty sharpish. Must have thought we were all born yesterday.
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It has to be said, my council often changes what is acceptable in the various bins and boxes we litter the streets with on rubbish days. However, the current correct green bin contents is paper wrapped food waste, garden waste and shredded paper.
So if they made an added charge, they'd be charging for collection of stuff we've already paid for in our council tax. And you can bet the amount of landfill (black bin) waste would rise, and the already endemic rat population would further rise with food waste being kept for nearly a fortnight in black bins (black bin emptied every two weeks).
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No my council doesn't (at least till now).
If such charge is introduced, I shall put small quantity of garden wastes in normal bin with other rubbish on top of that so that non compliance will be very hard to discover :-)
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>> Starting next year, our local council is going to impose a separate charge of £25
>> per annum
£25. Is that all?
Vale of the White Horse charges £37. tinyurl.com/q9t94lu
Cheaper to flytip though ;)
>> We haven't been told yet how the bin men will know which bin they should empty and which they shouldn't.
Simple. Our council keep records of who's paid and issue a bin to them. No payment means repossession of the bin.
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Excelent. I have a pirated bin I can use.
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>> Excelent. I have a pirated bin I can use.
There's probably more checks than what I mentioned to see if you're a paying customer or not.
A post-it on the lorry drivers dashboard for example ;)
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>> Excelent. I have a pirated bin I can use.
Downloaded from The Pirate Bin?
Last edited by: Roger on Thu 13 Jun 13 at 16:39
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>> >> Excelent. I have a pirated bin I can use.
>> Downloaded from The Pirate Bin?
>>
Witty - not surprising from the "Jolly Roger" :-)
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Grass clippings don't compost well unless mixed with coarser material. I got rid of my composters after reading that someone had died from the vapour coming off a composter, due to toxic spores rapidly affecting his lungs. My nurseryman is in any case scornful of home-produce compost, saying it has very little valuable content.
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>> Grass clippings don't compost well
I've never bothered collecting them. Leave them on the grass and it will rot-in. If you keep harvesting the clippings you deplete the soil and then have to use fertiliser.
Does your nurseryman sell compost by any chance? :)
Last edited by: Cliff Pope on Thu 13 Jun 13 at 10:47
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>> I got rid of my composters after reading that someone had died from the vapour coming off a composter, due to toxic spores
I hope you got rid of your car when you learned that 2,000 people die annually in road accidents.
You can be exposed to these toxic spores by walking over grass, so please concrete it over.
www.pca.state.mn.us/index.php/view-document.html?gid=12773
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Wokingham (which is one of the healthiest places to live btw www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2013/jun/11/what-makes-wokingham-englands-healthiest-place :-) )
£1 per 75 litre compostable brown bag for for garden waste collected fortnightly or £60 per year for a 240 litre brown wheeled bin for garden waste collected fortnightly.
For ordinary waste you can only use council issued bags, you get an allocation then you can buy more. They changed the colour of the bags in April but still seem to accept the old colour. "80 blue rubbish bags with a total capacity of 6,400 litres are supplied per year for each residence for household waste. You can buy more blue rubbish bags at £4 for 10"
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I don't collect grass clippings, the mower mulches it all. For other clippings (shrubs etc), I just throw them on the grass, and they get mulched by the mower the next time I cut the grass.
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>> I don't collect grass clippings, the mower mulches it all. For other clippings (shrubs etc),
>> I just throw them on the grass, and they get mulched by the mower the
>> next time I cut the grass.
>>
That's OK if you don't mind having a messy lawn. I want my lawn to be as close to a bowling green as I can get it.
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>>
>> That's OK if you don't mind having a messy lawn. I want my lawn to
>> be as close to a bowling green as I can get it.
What, covered in old duffers wearing white flannels?
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What, covered in old duffers wearing white flannels?
More like broken beer bottles and syringes around here !
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I refuse to pay £40 a year to have our garden waste collected. I take it to my out-laws and they chuck it on their compost heap.
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>> My nurseryman is in any case scornful of
>> home-produce compost, saying it has very little valuable content.
Well, he would say that wouldn't he? Nothing wrong with home compost. If you're putting in vegetable peelings, grass and other coarse material it will be nice, black and crumbly in a years time. It's a very good soil conditioner.
Grass on it's own will compact down too much, pushing out the air and ending up with anaerobic bacteria, producing a foul smelling green slime.
Last edited by: corax on Thu 13 Jun 13 at 18:25
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And a shocking amount of heat !
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There are two rules for making good compost
1) you need a good mix of material and a balance beween nitrogen (green material) and carbon. For carbon use thing like straw or similar dry material, cardboard, or even newspaper torn in strips. Too much nitrogen and not enough carbon is why compost goes black and smelly. Most people don't add enough carbon
2) Turn the stuff over from time to time. If you have a plastic bin just tip it all out and put it back in again
Remember compost doesn't have to be perfect. It will still do the soil good and its free!
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Quite right CGN!
I have quite a large garden (for a suburban house) about quarter acre. Have a number of trees - apple, silver birch, cherry etc which are pruned every couple of years to keep them in check. Lots of grass, a veg patch and a conifer hedge down one side. Everything goes to compost or as mulch. Even clippings from conifer hedge (every bloomin' year!) composts down if mixed with other stuff. Takes a couple of years for it all to rot down completely (some of the bigger shredded woody stuff is used directly as a mulch between shrubs). Was lucky a number of years ago when local council had an offer on big plastic compost bins - about a fiver each I think - bought 5 which replaced my previous rather chaotic "compost heap". Something quite satisfying about filling the bins, letting them heat up then turning one into the other and seeing the thousands of red worms get to work!
Shredded paper (Mrs W shreds everything with our name, address on and all receipts etc !) is good to mix in - worms seem to love it.
Anyway, point is, we never throw away anything compostable! And that is almost everything that originates from vegetable matter - it all goes back on the veg patch! Does our clay soil no end of good but seems to disappear to quickly - can't get enough of it!
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Have you noticed that all the stuff we don't want people to put in landfill anymore is actually the stuff that causes no harm in landfill.
Whereas all the stuff that we still want buried, is the nasty stuff undiluted.
What are we saving? Diesel on bin lorries?
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Every Thursday - three separate bin lorries come here to collect our waste - a significant amount of litter, bottles,papers,cans are left on the verges by them as they collect. An inholy mess. I am about to write to the Council to tell them I'm stopping recycling until they sort themselves out.
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It does seem a bit steep to me that a council can charge extra for services one might reasonably expect to be covered by the substantial council tax impost.
OTH, there is considerable pressure on finances locally, but there are surely ways to save money by cutting non-essential functions which really should not be in the remit of a local authority.
I mean, as I am sure you will know from my previous stances, all the PC ordure foisted upon us. I am happy for my council tax to go towards useful functions such as, but not limited to, roads, lighting, rubbish collection, public toilets, police & fire services and education. Things which are really necessary for the quality of ordinary life.
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Listening to an excellent radio programme on R4 last night hosted by Clive Anderson on the legal world of surveillance - maybe if the idiotic buffoons from county and town halls spent less money on trying to be "secret squirrels" and then spending thousands in Courts trying to defend their actions - they might be able to afford core services.
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>> Have you noticed that all the stuff we don't want people to put in landfill
>> anymore is actually the stuff that causes no harm in landfill.
>>
>> Whereas all the stuff that we still want buried, is the nasty stuff undiluted.
>>
>> What are we saving? Diesel on bin lorries?
There are two issues with landfill of which one, volume, is addressed by recycling of 'harmless' stuff. Aside from the amenity issue we're running out of holes in the ground to fill with waste. And once buried plastic and glass last for ever.
The other, as you correctly identify, is pollution. Collection of food waste, which is coming shortly here in Northants, should help with that.
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A farmer or somebody with a tractor and trailer could make a nice few bob if they started a "round" and charged something like £2.50 per bin per time!
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>> Aside from the amenity issue we're running out of holes in the ground
>> to fill with waste.
Why don't the authorities put general waste into disused mines? Coal mines, tin mines, ........
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>>Why don't the authorities put general waste into disused mines? Coal mines, tin mines
Good idea, there's enough of em in Cornwall, and Blackburn, Lancashire.
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Dropping into mine shafts might work but one would have to have staff/machinery/conveyor belts to move the stuff into the disused workings. A mine shaft itself would be quickly filled.
My landfill bin, emptied every 14 days, contains 2 carrier bags of food waste and that's it. Based on what I put into it I could get by on a quarterly collection but I would be a bit smelly!
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>> My landfill bin, emptied every 14 days, contains 2 carrier bags of food waste and
>> that's it.
How do you dispose of the rest of your general waste?
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>>
>> There are two issues with landfill of which one, volume, is addressed by recycling of
>> 'harmless' stuff. Aside from the amenity issue we're running out of holes in the ground
>> to fill with waste.
Not everyone agrees we're running out of space:
raedwald.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/no-shortage-of-landfill-in-uk-update.html
I'm not trawling through the figures to verify them - but at least they are some figures.
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>> Not everyone agrees we're running out of space:
>>
>> raedwald.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/no-shortage-of-landfill-in-uk-update.html
>>
>> I'm not trawling through the figures to verify them - but at least they are
>> some figures.
I suspect the blogger there has an agenda. Suitable sites still have to be licensed and nobody wants landfill in their backyard. Even inert stuff, without the smell, vermin etc of household waste, generates thousands of lorry journeys.
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Well maybe, but he does of course say he's only talking about licenced sites.
Lorry journeys? Pah - that's employment, innit. What you going to do, put drivers/mechanics/manufacturers/filling stations/tyre makers/refining plants/miners out of work? :)
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Separate charge for emptying garden waste bin - Meldrew
