Wheelie Bin News Roundup 10th June

A huge 900 missed bin collections are reported in Birmingham every day according to an email sent to the city’s councillors. Labour councillor John O'Shea said there was a ‘serious problem’ and that the council was trying to ‘iron out’ issues. He wrote in the email that a change in workers’ shift patterns from a four-day week to a five-day pattern had caused confusion over rounds, with some round changes just ‘not working’ and this had resulted in the missed collection.

Some residents are complaining that their bins haven’t been emptied for five weeks and that the piles of rubbish were attracting rodents.

Firefighters had to put out a wheelie bin blaze outside of a library in Nottinghamshire and said it could have spread to the building if it wasn’t for the quick thinking of members of the public who called them. It’s believed the fire was started deliberately, and that this fire was one of a spate of fires that have occurred in recent months. Fire officers advised staff to remove their other bins away from the building and to get them fitted with padlocks to avoid any incidents in the future. Anyone with information on the fire is asked to call the police on 101. 

A Facebook post on Dumfries and Galloway Council’s page has attracted anger and ridicule from residents. In the post, the council claimed that it is increasingly unable to collect people’s bins because they’re being overfilled. This has resulted in full bins being left on pavements and being ‘tagged’ to indicate that they’re too heavy or too full to be moved and emptied. The post attracted 1600 comments in less than 24 hours with residents calling the council’s waste management and recycling system a ‘shambles’ and a ‘joke.’

Residents in most areas of Dumfries and Galloway don’t have access to kerbside recycling, so many made the argument that their bins might be lighter if there was some sort of recycling scheme in place.

Some residents asked how refuse teams decided how heavy was too heavy and one said sarcastically, “I look forward to receiving my bin weighing scales in the post.”

One woman angrily pointed out that her bin was tagged as being too heavy, even though her husband had wheeled it “from the back garden, through the house, and down eight steps to the road.”