Durham residents have complained to the local council about the amount of rubbish piling up around wheelie bins close to their homes in the Lambton area, bin reductions have been reduced to once per fortnight  but with so many homes having multiple occupancies and not enough bins to cover.  

Colchester Council scrapped weekly general waste collections last year and since then they have found an increase in fly-tipping and found more people are being forced to go the local tip, despite all this recycling rates have gone up.  

Stories that have appeared in January include Conwy Council in North Wales introducing monthly bin collections, a Tesco Superstore in Stroud may have their recycling area withdrawn due to business and others are flytipping in the containers and wheelie bin manufacturers in Australia heading to court over the use of some confidential drawings.

A food waste trial run by the Bristol Waste Company aiming to get people thinking about how they could reduce their weekly food waste, Bristol families throw away on average £60 worth of food every month and the energy alone generated from food waste could actually power the city.  

Stories in this weeks Wheelie Bin Roundup feature an unusual way on how a council chose the colour of their wheelie bins, a warning to residents in Warrington to discard batteries in the correct manor and a story about residents blocking a street with wheelie bins to stop bad parking on school runs.

Have you ever been tempted to sneak another bag of rubbish into your neighbours bin?  A resident in Gloucester was dismayed to find that his bin had not emptied because his lid was an inch open due to a neighbour putting another bag into his bin causing the lid to be ajar.  

Marks and Spencer has been on the receiving end of some anger after one of its stores disposed of £10k worth of food on christmas eve that had been pledged to be donated to charity.  Despite running initiatives designed to help the environment, it is not the first time Marks and Spencer has been seen throwing food away.  

Everyone buys too much food at christmas which then translates into more food waste, recent figures published show that we throw away the equivalent of 2 million turkeys, 5 million christmas puddings and 74 million mince pies at christmas.  Love Food Waste have paired with Unilever to help families across the UK cut down on their food waste and shopping bill by 15%.

Aside from our usual stories about wheelie bin arson, thefts and other common occurences, we have featured 3 stories that appeared in the news that made us laugh as well as leaving us scratching our head at the same time. 

A community centre in New Zealand has begun using a new solar powered wheelie bin lifter for glass recycling.  The machine lifts the wheelie bins that are full of glass and tips them into a storage container, these are then taken away to be manufactured into new glass.