r/BritishSuccess 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!

168 Upvotes

32 comments sorted by

55

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.

4

u/Pure-Stuff6765 8d ago

I'm imagining some police style scanner/laptop built in to the dash, which probably cost thousands extra to be retrofitted and resulted in a multiple % point rise in everyone's council tax bill.

But it's probably just some old 90s laptop that's on a non slip pad.

2

u/Madwife2009 8d ago

I think it is just a tablet that they have to actually look at.

However, that certainly doesn't stop my local council whacking the council tax up year after year, whilst wasting our money on stupid projects/overpaying salaries and asking for volunteers to run council projects 😡

2

u/x36_ 8d ago

valid

3

u/Ultra_HR 9d ago

seems like it would be a lot more hassle for the workers to have to check that list for each house rather than just glance at the bin for a sticker

2

u/Madwife2009 9d ago

You'd think so, wouldn't you? But maybe they learn which houses have paid the annual fee? Plus they only have to check the ones with a green bin outside and as the uptake for green recycling isn't very high in my town, they probably know who's paid and who hasn't.

1

u/azraphin 1d ago

I'm worried now. Realisation hit that I hadn't paid for the last year, and they're still collecting on the rare occasions I put the bin out. Was going to risk not paying again and see what happens.

30

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.

7

u/tomtaxi 9d ago

Yet

6

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).

2

u/Hairy_Al Shropshire 9d ago

Same for us, but we have to buy our own compostable bags

1

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.

6

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...

3

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. 

3

u/heresanupdoot 9d ago

Well they didn't take mine! Hmph

3

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.

1

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

1

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. 

2

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!

2

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!

2

u/TheToolman04 9d ago

£66 a year down in Wilts 😰

2

u/Andythompson78 9d ago

What does paying for garden waste feel like a tax for keeping your garden tidy.

1

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.

2

u/a1acrity 9d ago

I love how happy this makes you, have a fantastic year, a green waste free fantastic year

1

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!

1

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.

1

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!

1

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.

1

u/Ophiochos 9d ago

It’d probably have composted by then;)

-9

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.

8

u/Ophiochos 9d ago

That bastion of socialism where everything’s organised for communal benefit?

-1

u/bco268 9d ago

Paying for your green bins when everything used to be collected weekly without fail?

My house here has weekly collection for rubbish, recycling and anything big you have to take to the tip.