Wheelie Bin News Roundup 25th September

Wheelie Bin News Roundup 25^th September

The city of Christchurch in New Zealand will get its first electric waste management truck in October, and more trucks will be put into operation by the end of the year. Waste Management NZ, who coordinates waste management services across the country, already has an electric truck which collects leftover waste food from supermarkets.

The company also uses technology that keeps all of the waste in a sealed area. The gas that is given off from the decomposition of the waste is used to produce power, which is fed into the national grid. The power produced is enough to provide electricity for up to 18,000 homes.

 A builder from North Bradley in Wiltshire had £2,500 worth of material stolen from his driveway by thieves who used a wheelie bin strapped to their getaway car in the theft.

The masked men stole 400kg of driveway paving liquid which was worth around £2,500, by using buckets to pour it into the wheelie bin. A neighbour called the builder to tell him but by the time he got out of the house, the men had driven off with the liquid.

The builder then had to spend a further £2,500 to replace the liquid so he could do work for a customer as promised. He said it has been a huge blow to his business, and that he would have ordinarily put the liquid in his van but it had been raining heavily that day so he left it on the driveway. Police are appealing for witnesses.

Plans for a new multi-bin waste collection service are set to be put in motion, 3 years after it was originally piloted!

The service was piloted in Wigtownshire in 2014, but operational issues have gotten in the way of it being introduced to the rest of Dumfries and Galloway as planned. The council say that they hope that a report and timetable for a rollout will be completed in November.

Dumfries and Galloway Council used to only provide one wheelie bin per household but new regulations have prompted the move to a multi-bin system.

The fact that the scheme has taken so long to implement has been a costly headache for the council, who have spent more than £300,000 renting storage space for the so far unused bins.

Landlords in Hatfield have asked the questions about whether brown garden waste bins could be given to other residents, as they have no need for them. Landlords often pay contractors to maintain the gardens attached to the properties they own and they remove the waste, so there is no need for a brown bin. Some landlords have been angered as the council said that they did not want them back and had no scheme in place to reassign them. The council suggested that they take the wheelie bins to the local recycling centres and dispose of them there.

Some landlords have said they are baffled that the perfectly good bins might just be dumped instead of being given to people who might need more than one brown bin.

Suggestions for reassignment of the bins were put forward at a council meeting and it was put to the cabinet that the bins could be used in public parks, for dog waste. The council stated that this was not feasible as the bins would not be fixed in place so could be misused.

Residents who are unable to keep their brown bins can apply to have them collected, but only in certain circumstances.