Wheelie Bin News Roundup 13th August

Wheelie bin news roundup 13^th August

Residents living in a tenement in Greenock are furious after their wheelie bins were taken away by the council. They say they have been left with nowhere to put their waste and that they’ve been forced to keep rotting rubbish in their homes.

Council bosses say that they took the bins away after receiving complaints that they were causing an obstruction in the street. The residents say this is not true and that they have kept their bins across the street from their building for years without any problems.

Residents received a letter from the council stating that the bins were causing an obstruction and that there was fly-tipping around the bins. The council has given the residents black sacks which will be collected each week.

A council spokesperson said that their environmental services team monitored the area to see if the complaints were warranted and they saw that they were. They added that the council wrote to the residents twice about the issue and were keen to remove the bins as they were obstructing pavements and were a target for vandals and thieves.

Almost two-thirds of the recycling collected in Barrow in Cumbria is classed as contaminated and now council bosses are targeting offenders who either recycle incorrectly or who use their recycling bin for household waste. If refuse teams find that recycling is contaminated whether it’s a genuine mistake or not, the bin will be tagged and the owner’s address will be passed onto the council. A council officer will then visit the household and explain that the recycling is contaminated and why, to educate people and improve the quality of recycling.

If people repeatedly fail to heed this advice, they’ll be issued with a section 46 notice, which is a warning that if they carry on recycling incorrectly, their bin will be taken away and won’t be replaced.

67% of the recycling collected in Barrow from Match to May this year was contaminated, and whole lorry loads of material can end up being rejected if items like crisp packets and bin bags are found in it.

So much recycling is contaminated because people are unaware of, or confused about exactly what can be put into their recycling bin.

There have been calls for packaging manufacturers to label packaging more clearly and for them to face tougher regulations governing the materials they can and can’t use in their packaging.

The council has advised residents to check the packaging and if they are still not sure if it can be recycled, they should put it in their household waste bin.

If you have ordered something online and you aren’t in when the delivery driver calls, he or she might leave your goods in your wheelie bin, and you might think this is okay. But it certainly wasn’t for one Lincolnshire family. A couple ordered a £250 camera for their daughter for Christmas so she could use it on her photography course. The camera was delivered, then left in a recycling bin-which was collected and taken away.

The family were embroiled in a battle with courier firm UPS for seven months to get compensation.

They say they were horrified when they read the delivery note which stated that the camera had been left in their brown recycling bin-which had been emptied earlier that day.

A UPS spokesperson said that sometimes drivers are allowed to leave parcels in secure locations that are out of sight, clean and protected from the elements. They admitted that the parcel should not have been left in the bin and they apologised for any distress that has been caused.

After the story was brought to the attention of a local newspaper, UPS decided to give the family £250 in compensation after all.