Spy chips in wheelie bins!

[dexterdoglancashire]

Do you have a council tax bramble? if so, was it reduced? how long have you had this system in place? is it working? DDL

[Peter]

Great cartoon in today's mail.

Tall garden fence viewed from above looking along it with tree halfway down.

Each side of tree, but on opposite sides of fence, husband leaning over, egged on by wife saying "Just think how much we're saving putting our rubbish in next door's wheeliebin". and doing same.

[Sunbeam]

Cambridgeshire CC take great pride in their recycling facilities - they collect glass/garden/kitchen waste/cardboard/tins etc etc but they don't collect plastics - the least biodegradable substance there is...our nearest plastics recycling point is 5 miles away!

When we lived in Saffron Walden (8 miles from where we live now) they collected everything except glass and garden/kitchen waste -

what I don't understand is why they don't share facilities - collect all recyclable waste and swap that they don't process - ie Saffron Walden hand over the glass & and kitchen waste, & CAmbs the plastics - this way they would be truely green.

I also think the supermarkets should be penalised for packing fruit and veg in stupid plastic/polystyrene cartons!

[dexterdoglancashire]

Hi Peter - yes I saw that as well! DDL

[blackkitty]

In principle I don't mind paying for waste removal by weight as we take lots to the recycling centre and put loads in the compost bin. The last few weeks our bin has only been about a third full. However, before they do so I think we should all demand to know exactly what the council spends having it collected and demand an equal reduction in council tax. I also get really cross about suggestions that collecting rubbish only every forthnight will force people to recycle, it won't, all it will achieve is lots of germs and rats eveywhere. To my mind if they want people to throw less away, give us smaller bins. Okay rant over...

[nick the grief]

I wonder if you could pass on the charges to the supermarkets as most of our rubbish is packaging that can't be re-cycled

[dexterdoglancashire]

It's a thought Nick! shall we all have a mass "Vine" revolt against packaging in supermarkets? DDL

[bramble]

Do you have a council tax bramble? if so, was it reduced? how long have you had this system in place? is it working? DDL

Hi DDL, no we don,t pay council tax. The system is in place now about two years. Yes, it seems to be working very well. My mother lives in the council area and has to buy tags at Euro3.50 weekly. I live in the corporation area and pay a yearly fee of Euro200 yearly. The only thing is, there are rumours of an increase and people are now saying they will not pay if it goes any higher. We only have two bins at the moment. One for househols waste and the green bin for newspapers and tins. We take everything else to the bring centre in our car where you put it in large bins for free. We are awaiting our brown bin which we will get shortly. This is for green waste.

[Nat]

Can Anyone Say what these chips look like ? or does anyone have a piccy they could post??? just blasted my bin with the pressure washer ...Hummm, how good do they stick ? ?

Nat

[Lesley Jay]

The one they showed you on the TV was a small, black oblong box attached underneath the front edge of the bin at the top. The chip is inside the box.

[Nat]

Going to check ..... Right away .... what a cheek they have, we pay for our disposal, i have always tried to recycle as much as possible ... even if it means lugging bottles to the big bins, i reuse my and anyones jars for jam and pickles, kitchen waste goes to my chickens( and anything else they might eat from the garden and lottie ) Grrrr ... ill stop here ..it just makes me so mad, i might be one of the lucky ones not to pay much(if it was all weighed) but either way im sure we will all end up paying a lot more that we are already !!!

Nat

[Alison]

Obviously it makes sense to get people to recycle more but the inconsistancies don't help. We have three bins, normal waste, garden (but definitely nothing from the kitchen - how do they know where those cabbage leaves have come from?) waste and paper (not card, envelopes or the yellow pages). Bottles, plastic, card etc have to be taken to the recycling centres, easy for bottles but less so for plastics as I'm never sure whether you can put any recyclable plastic in or just ones with certain codes - not sure what all the different numbers mean. The paper bin confuses me, it says no envelopes but are they OK if you tear off any plastic / adhesive? I've asked the council but they don't know.

Also the pay by weight thing doesn't take into consideration what your waste contains ie plastic is light but doesn't decompose where as some heavier items don't have such an environmental footprint.

Best stop now, will calm down with some chocolate and a cup of tea!

[Nat]

Pass some choccy over here !!!

[dexterdoglancashire]

The chip in our bin is round, slightly bigger than a 10p piece - there was a picture in the Mail recently. What gets my goat is the fact that if we are charged for getting rid of our "non green" waste - why doesnt my local council take all recyclable plastics? they only take bottles! not cartons, food wrappers and the like! DDL

[NOG]

Cos they are playing the same game they all play. Fiddling the figures.

The just find the cheep loophole.

This Game is called meeting the recycling figures. Central Govenment say you must reduce the amount of stuff that goes in the land fill. And we will measure this by the amount of stuff recycled.
So what do they do. They look at the easy way of meeting the figure....Grass cuttings. They already cut all the parks and playing fields and this has always been composted. So they collect your grss seperatly and add this to the stuff they have always been collecting and say we have reduced ladfill by n.