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Local Council Bin Nazi's.

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posted on Oct, 31 2010 @ 10:46 AM
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I just need to vent this as it gets under my skin and there is not a thing I can do about.


When did the weekly rubbish collection become such an ordeal and when did the collectors become so concerned about occ health and safety and just being downright judgemental. My uncle was a bin man and he would be livid.
I guess some background, we have 5 different collections, 1 for paper/cardboard, 1 for green waste, 1 for Glass, 1 for platics and cans and 1 for regular rubbish. Now I am all up for recycling, hell why not that part isn't too hard. However it does create a myriad of rules that you have to comply with regarding what goes into each bin, which again isn't all that hard to comply with but you do tend to learn the hard way by not having your bin collected, something the bin men seem to take delight in. For instance if you put a finished bog roll in the cardboard bin and it has the tinyest bit of white tissue left on the roll they will not take your bin, they won't accept food boxes even if the box had no food in it, they just assume there was and leave it. Heaven forbid you put the wrong type of plastic in the plastic bin, not only do they not take it but you then get a pretty red sticker, which I would imagine after a few of these stickers would result in a fine or having your collection cut off and makies these little people feel important. But again it is easy enough to comply with and is not the most annoying part.

I guess it is not the bin mens fault they are only doing there job and the rules come down to whatever your local council says they are. And the rules our local council have seem determined by greed and greed alone and this is where it gets annoying. For instance they do provide households a large wheelie bin for both the paper and the green waste which is fine but they not only don't offer one for your actual rubbish they don't allow for you to even use one. Basically you just put your rubbish bags out in a heap.

And you can't just use any garbage bag either, you have to use the specific council made bag stated for your area one for rubbish and one for cans, which you can only buy at 2 places in the area. Run out of bags and use a normal hefty bag and they will leave it behind but take the other two council ones. These bags are also conveniently designed so they are smaller than regular bags meaning you have to purchase more of them and that they are useless for fitting around the rim of most bin holders. Also they seem designed to tear at the point where you tie it and of course a torn bag means that it will not be collected. And keeping with the torn bag theme this area has a significant cat issue and if they cats get to the bags overnight and tear them, then the bag does not get collected.
So I was sick of having my bin bags getting raided and thought I would buy a couple of plastic garbage cans with a lid for the bags, this was perfect it kept the animals out great but come garbage day when I put the bins out with the lids off so they could see the bags they would not take them. I was told that they are not allowed to handle non council approved hardware.

I nearly lost the plot, surely it is safer, cleaner and easier for them to pick a can up by the handles than to toss those crappy built bags around.

Then there is the glass collection, now it's great that I only have one issue with these guys and thats the fact they destroy which ever container/crate I use to to put the bottles out in. Sure you are in a rush and throw stuff around, I understand, but how come when I throw the same objects around they never break on me? How much force do they need to use to break it when I can't replicate the same.
And then it dawned on me.
You can buy from the council a specifically desgined plastic box, which I have seen and it is just the same as the type of box we use but has the councils logo on it.

So anyway, at least now I think I have everything under control even if I am still a bit dirty on the blatant profiteering from what should be a free public service and the fact that organizing my weekly rubbish takes more time than it needs to. Oh and whenever they put a notice in the letter box I can't understand it, even though this nation has 2 official language they use the one I can't understand, but agin that's no big deal either.
I nearly forgot but this one is quite normal really, they never come the same time 2 weeks in a row.

So that's my rant, I know nobody cares but I needed to get that off my chest.

Still it is not as bad as a colleague of mine whos local council have told her she can only put the bags out an hour before they are supposed to come, if she puts it out when she leaves for work or all night she will be fined. In the end she hired a houskeeper to come around and do some small things to make sure someone was home when the bins get collected. She didn't need a housekeeper though.

I'm sure others have similar issues.

-end rant-

edit: How old do I sound, I'm turning into my grandparents.

Next week those darn kids and there rock music

edit on 31-10-2010 by pazcat because: add



posted on Oct, 31 2010 @ 11:35 AM
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This was happening to people in my community. My dad is a super intendant, and before, if he put the bins out before 4 am when the trucks came, he would be fined.

Heres what we did, and heres what you should do.

Literally get everyone you can. No posters though. And tell them all to put the garbage out on the middle of the road at the time requested. Make sure you all do it at once, and make sure its at least 100 people in a small area.

While doing so, have everyone complain about the law, and trust me, within weeks; you will be allowed to put the trash out whenever you want. The way it should be.

This stuff gets under my skin as well. But the more people you have to fight the cause, the more successful you will be.



posted on Oct, 31 2010 @ 11:40 AM
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reply to post by pazcat
 


Whats worse is they claim they want recycling to save the community money yet they charge us for the service.

If its meant to save us money why are we being charged more?



posted on Oct, 31 2010 @ 12:12 PM
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reply to post by gandhi
 



That's a nice idea but unfortunately we don't know that many people yet, we are only new to the area and the one lot of neighbours we did know well have now moved. I honestly don't know what the rest of the community think about it, I don't know if this is normal or not as it was very different in Australia, for all I know they might get off on all the rules here.
If nothing else though it's still a good idea to meet more of the locals when ever possible.

reply to post by CanuckCoder
 



That's what I don't get, it's clearly an inconveinience just so the council can make money and still they claim the moral highground by calling it recycling. The only reason they don't offer more wheelie bins is because they are making money off of selling the bags which is causing more rubbish. We would gladly pay a one off fee for the bins and then there is no need for wasteful plastic bin liners. I suspect they are also to cheap to have the trucks modified, or more likely it is a union thing. Actually that would make more sense.



posted on Nov, 3 2010 @ 08:57 AM
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My council is pretty good. We just put all recyclables into one bin whether it's plastics, paper, metals or glass. I even got a nice gold star on my bin courtesy of the council... Perhaps a reduction in my rates would have been more applicable? My rates are criminally high... around $1,500 a year.

IRM




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