Council hires hoodie spies to rummage through bins!

[tek-monkey]

Well it is the Daily Mail

I find this quite interesting though. People are going mental that their privacy has been intruded, yet anybody walking past could look in their bins. They threw it out, left it in their bin in the street, so surely they should be more careful? All they'll find in my bin is half a ton of beer cans every fortnight and the odd pizza crust, I don't care if they know I'm an alcoholic pizza eater.

Of course, the sensible question is why not just look what comes out of the trucks when they reach the tip?

 

[My Name is URL]

All they'll find in my bin is half a ton of beer cans every fortnight and the odd pizza crust

I blooming well hope you don't mix recyclables with waste food stuffs.....

 

[tek-monkey]

Lol, nope, all my beer cans go in the blue one. Although we do mix paper with the cans, as we never had a caddy when we moved in and the council refused to send us one unless we paid. Fook that.

 

[shoes]

I saw this earlier and refrained from posting due to the source, but it doesn't suprise me. Frankly I'm not all that against the argument for the environment however this is a bit cloak and dagger and of course wouldn't have even made the news if the council had pre-warned the residents. I imagine there would be an uproar "oh you can't go through my rubbish...."

lets be honest here its a bunch of half-witted cretins (the council) subcontracting to another bunch of half-witted cretins (hoodies) to perform the legwork in a half-baked plan.

who cares?

 

[tek-monkey]

Daily Mail readers!

 

[shoes]

haha

 

[db]

Lol, nope, all my beer cans go in the blue one. Although we do mix paper with the cans, as we never had a caddy when we moved in and the council refused to send us one unless we paid. Fook that.

really? when the blue bins were first introduced, i managed to break my caddy in the first week by overloading it with copies of razzle and readers' wives and dropping it in too heavily.. i phoned the council, told them the truth, and next bin day i found a new caddy waiting on my doorstep!

 

[tek-monkey]

They told me not a chance, I have to pay to replace it. I pointed out that it wasn't a replacement, and that we never had one, and was told thats not their problem. I was then also warned not to throw paper into my green bin, which means I should probably just chuck it in the street?

Regardless, I'm not paying for it. I pay enough in tax, no fookin way I'm paying for the bin. It was only about £15 or so they wanted, but that aint the point! Did think of stealing someone elses, but that just gives someone else the same problem.

 

[djstaffs]

They told me not a chance, I have to pay to replace it. I pointed out that it wasn't a replacement, and that we never had one, and was told thats not their problem. I was then also warned not to throw paper into my green bin, which means I should probably just chuck it in the street?

Regardless, I'm not paying for it. I pay enough in tax, no fookin way I'm paying for the bin. It was only about £15 or so they wanted, but that aint the point! Did think of stealing someone elses, but that just gives someone else the same problem.

Should of bagged up the paper and delivered it to the concil offices

 

[shoes]

Bag it up and leave it outside the council's front door, whichever department it is that deals with such things.

That is like saying "you have to have and ID card, otherwise we're going to prosecute you"
Where do I apply for one?
You can't.

EDIT: Whoops. Typed that and then wondered off for a bit to mess around with the plotter came back, hit submit and had been beaten to it!

 

[Lucy]

My caddy got pinched a couple of months back and they got me a new one within a week. I've done this several times as people like to take one of my bins, despite it having my number painted on it.

 

[tek-monkey]

Where do you live then? I'll be round to rob yours later!

With any luck the new house will have a bin, if I ever get it.

 

[henryscat]

Lichfield are getting blue bins:

http://www.lichfielddc.gov.uk/goingblue

No caddies, just hurl everything in - and they take more recyclables than Stafford (Lichfield allow tetrapak cartons, aluminium trays and so on). So.... If Lichfield will collect and sort all that lot, why does Stafford need caddies with less to sort....?

 

[The Stafford Beast]

So.... If Lichfield will collect and sort all that lot, why does Stafford need caddies with less to sort....?

They don't understand their own scheme. Take the brown bin for example. You can throw windfalls in there (fallen apples are windfalls if I am not mistaken), although not fruit that hasn't naturally dropped on the floor or salad leaves.
I understand that paper goes in the caddy, and cardboard goes in the main bin. But... what about thick card? Is that paper or is it cardboard?
Shredded paper must also go in the caddy, but it tends to fly all over the road when the bin is emptied!

Lichfield allow tetrapak cartons, aluminium trays and so on

As a comment to this, 'Tetrapak' cartons are not just cardboard. They obviously have to have a plastic inner liner so the liquid does not soak through. These cartons can be recycled at the centre by the Sainsbury's car park entrance.
It is strange that aluminium trays are not allowed but aluminium cans are, even though they also include a thin plastic liner so the acidic drink inside does not corrode the metal. I reckon they might have said that for a couple of reasons. 1) because of the grooves/folds in the trays they can retain stale food and thus do not trust us general public to wash them out properly. 2) They are so lightweight and fiddly to recycle they might not be economical. God only knows.

 

[henryscat]

They don't understand their own scheme. Take the brown bin for example. You can throw windfalls in there (fallen apples are windfalls if I am not mistaken), although not fruit that hasn't naturally dropped on the floor or salad leaves.

Indeed. Lichfield compost bins you can put any food (including cooked) waste in as well as garden waste. It seems bonkers to me that if Lichfield District Council, next door to Stafford Borough, are able to recycle or compost practically anything that Stafford can't/won't (?) offer the same service.

I understand that paper goes in the caddy, and cardboard goes in the main bin. But... what about thick card? Is that paper or is it cardboard?
Shredded paper must also go in the caddy, but it tends to fly all over the road when the bin is emptied!

Never understood at what point paper becomes card! I just guess. Never been keen on putting shredded stuff in because of it going everywhere.

As a comment to this, 'Tetrapak' cartons are not just cardboard. They obviously have to have a plastic inner liner so the liquid does not soak through. These cartons can be recycled at the centre by the Sainsbury's car park entrance.

Burton Manor Square also has carton recycling. Has to be said that Burton Manor recycling point is usually a right tip.

It is strange that aluminium trays are not allowed but aluminium cans are, even though they also include a thin plastic liner so the acidic drink inside does not corrode the metal. I reckon they might have said that for a couple of reasons. 1) because of the grooves/folds in the trays they can retain stale food and thus do not trust us general public to wash them out properly. 2) They are so lightweight and fiddly to recycle they might not be economical. God only knows.

I think (might be wrong) that everything gets washed at the recycling plant. But if Lichfield find it economical to collect/recycle certain things, then Stafford ought to as well. Of course could bring in the conspiracy theory here that being as a monstrous incinerator is going to be built at Four Ashes, does the Borough Council have an incentive to push recycling rates up further when it can send any waste it likes a few miles down the road to be burnt, with no landfill tax being incurred.

 

[My Name is URL]

I only have milk / oj in the tetrapak cartons... we regularly have to make the trip down to Sainsburys to drop them off and its always rammed full of them....

I also feel everyones pain on the thick paper / thin cardboard quandry...

 

[tek-monkey]

Having no caddy removed that quandry for me

 

[Gramaisc]

The instruction sticker that came with the original issue of the brown bins said that you could put windfalls in, but not fruit peelings. It also said "Do's & Dont's". Worth a thousand pounds a year just for that.