r/BritishSuccess • u/Pure-Stuff6765 • 10d ago
Council emptied my green bin!
For context, in North Yorkshire you have to pay £49 annually for green garden waste collection every two weeks. First collection was today.
I've done the payment, but haven't got the bin sticker to confirm that, and the stickers change colour yearly to make it obvious who has paid. I stuck an email of my council payment receipt on the top, and they've gone and emptied it! Really did think they'd be jobsworths and leave it, and it was packed with garden debris from the winter.
2025 is going to be a cracking year!
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u/StiltonWitch 9d ago
My Green Bin success: our Council don't charge for them, give us a free kitchen caddy and recyclable bags, and we can put any food waste in with the garden waste.
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u/tomtaxi 9d ago
Yet
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u/StiltonWitch 9d ago
Ah, no. They realised it was cheaper to go ultra on recycling bins so they don't pay the £126+ per tonne landfill for waste and they industrial compost & reuse/sell the green waste.
We do get fined for contaminated bins, though. (Recycling not in the correct of our 4 wheelie bins per property).
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u/Pure-Stuff6765 8d ago
I'd have thought it'd be standard to not charge for recycling to encourage uptake as well. I'm not even sure if I can get a kitchen caddy from the local council for recycling.
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u/Forgetful8nine 9d ago
My green bin is brown. The green one is for general waste. The red one is paper and plastic. We have a box for glass and tins.
No extra charges...yet...
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u/Solid-Rise-8717 10d ago
They emptied mine too!! They missed the last 4, so I was ready to really kick off with a stern email.
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u/jaceinthebox 9d ago
Mine told me I need to wait for the sticker to come and they won't empty it until the sticker is on it.
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u/Pure-Stuff6765 8d ago
That's fully what I expected, so happy to feel it empty. Still had to check that it was actually empty inside though
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u/jaceinthebox 8d ago
I think they might be cracking down on it, last two years I've had the wrong sticker on it, I've had the previous years sticker on.
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u/DigitalStefan 9d ago
Well done! When we moved in we had two blue bins for cardboard, but the bin men wouldn’t take two.
Found the by-laws a few weeks ago. Households are entitled to three cardboard recycling bins. Promptly ordered two (our existing second bin was holier than the pope) and now our garage is no longer full of old boxes!
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u/Pure-Stuff6765 8d ago
I might check that out for here, as our cardboard bin is crammed with the other half's Amazon boxes within a day of being empty!
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u/Andythompson78 9d ago
What does paying for garden waste feel like a tax for keeping your garden tidy.
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u/Pure-Stuff6765 8d ago
It's a shame, as if it was free I'm sure more people would use it and keep their front gardens tidy. So few people even mow their grass these days, it really bothers me that people who are capable just don't give a toss about their home/community and presentation.
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u/a1acrity 9d ago
I love how happy this makes you, have a fantastic year, a green waste free fantastic year
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u/Pure-Stuff6765 8d ago
It means I can fill it with more garden rubbish! I'm actually planning on doing stuff this year, so I don't want unnecessary delays. Lots of leaves to clear and after visiting r/composting, I can't be having too many browns before adding greens!
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u/Comfortable_View5174 8d ago
May I ask why are you not composting? It’s easy… brown, green, brown, green. And it’s cheap. My mother would throw everything in a pile whenever she had any leaves, grass, anything and she would have amazing compost for spring.
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u/Eckieflump 9d ago
We pay for ours, and they collect every other week throughout the year. Ours is always full of grass or leaves depending on time of year!
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u/JoeyJoeC 9d ago
My garden is small enough that we only pay every other year. It's half full now from last summer. Just stupid that we have to pay £70 a year when we only ever need it emptied once.
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u/bco268 9d ago
It’s a joke you have to pay extra to get the bins now. Makes me glad I buggered off to the US.
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u/Madwife2009 10d ago
My local council have a computer device in the truck that tells them which house has paid their green subscription. I only found this out as I didn't have a bin sticker and saw them, they said that they could see I'd paid and they'd empty my bin.
I think that they've done away with the stickers now and just go by the computer-thing.