Fuss About Nothing?

Photo Copyright: Maggie May

Although I'm not the most patient of people, I think I am reasonable and try and see things through others' point of view even if I do fail at times.

However, my patience is now running very thin.

There has been a bit of a saga going on here for the last month concerning our household and the City Council. Maybe it is not the City Council's fault but they gave a contract to a firm who deals with our garden waste and all the other things that we now have to recycle.

I'd like to add that I am a keen recycler and fully support all recycling.

So what is the fuss about?

I pay the Council a sum of money every year for a green bin and the chance to have this emptied every week, providing I put it out on the pavement by 7 am on collection day.

The green bin is for garden waste, leaves and plants, small branches, weeds and grass cuttings etc. Among the other things that are on the list for collection in this bin is small animal bedding, providing they are not meat eaters and this includes rabbits.

I have had the rabbits for two years and there has never been any problem with the Council picking up my green bin contents........ until now, that is.

The problem began a month ago when my bin was not collected. I do struggle with getting the bin out because of my hip and spinal problems not to mention my sore wrists that are arthritic.

Well it is worth the effort to get the bin emptied. I have a small garden and cannot now cope with compost bins because it is all too heavy for me.

If the bin isn't emptied, then I have to struggle to get it in and out of the garden several times until the next collection date, while the bin gets heavier with more things being added.

The first time I complained by phone, I was told that my bin hadn't been emptied because I'd not paid my yearly subscrition. I was a bit surprised by this and went to the bank to find out if there was a problem. They said everything was fine and that they'd rung the Council for me and the money was going through by Direct Debit as it always had done. I was told it was an Council administration error.

However, the Council insisted that I hadn't paid and when I pointed out that my next door neighbour's waste bin hadn't been collected either, the girl I was speaking to told me that whole streets were on the fiddle and that they were clamping down on all the people who had green bins but were not paying.

I thought this was a terrible thing to say to someone who had always paid and I guessed the neighbour hadn't got into arrears either. I think the street had been missed out by the collectors.

The woman said it was my word against hers but because I was making a fuss they would send someone round to empty my bin. I asked them to empty the neighbour's bin too as it was out on the street next to mine.

My husband was painting the front door when the lorry came round on a different day from normal, especially to empty my bin. They told him I was not on the list of people who had paid so they shouldn't really be doing it. They didn't empty my neighbour's bin although it was on the pavement by mine.

When I learned about this I rang to complain about my neighbour's bin and to give them the details of my payment from the Bank Statement that I had found.

I asked why they'd left my neighbour's bin when it was out on the street next door to mine?

They told me the neighbour hadn't actually complained. I asked if they thought this was a complete waste of public money to have to keep coming back to empty bins several times when it could be done in one visit.

I was assured that everything would be collected the next week.

I shouldn't have been surprised when I realised my bin had not been emptied on collection day the following week. I was told, when I rang to complain, that I hadn't paid, so the Council couldn't collect. I reminded them of my Direct Debit details, told them of my health problems and the fact that I found the bins difficult even when they were not so full and although they seemed empathetic about that, they still insisted that it was because I hadn't paid.

However, they would phone through to admin and try and get me taken off the *black list*.

The next week I put my green waste bin out with a sinking heart because I didn't have high hopes of it being emptied. I was rather shocked to hear from my husband that next door's bin had been emptied but mine hadn't. The lorry had come but not taken my bin contents. Instead they had slapped a note on it to say it contained things that they couldn't handle.

I rang up again.

"Oh...... you mean there are animal faeces in the green bin? Well no wonder they wouldn't pick up."

I explained that the rabbits' droppings in their bedding didn't exactly come under the heading of smelly faeces. (Though technically they were faeces). I asked if they would go and check if there were new rules that said they wouldn't take rabbit's bedding/droppings anymore. They came back and told me that no, rabbits' droppings and bedding were considered alright for recycling and that perhaps the collectors thought I'd put in cat faeces.

I think a two year old would be able to know the difference between rabbit droppings and cat faeces and I asked them how the drivers could be enlightened about it. After a long think, the rather polite man I was speaking to asked if I could put a note on my bin saying that it was rabbit bedding and nothing to do with cats. The man was very apologetic and said he was writing quite a severe complaint to the drivers.

I did tell them that every time the bin is not emptied on collection day, I was going to complain and ask them to come out and empty my bin on another day. This is what they are obliged to do if the bin gets over looked.

So if you are all wondering why your Council tax bills are so high, then maybe this has something to do with it.

I am not getting too excited about my bin getting emptied on collection day. Maybe I will never get it emptied again.

Would you be annoyed if you were paying for a service that was not being done?

Any suggestions, if they continue to miss out my bin?

The Environment and Bags

Hosted by Cecily and MamaGeek

As many of you know, I am very much into recycling and saving things.

Harry and I have both taken large things to the city tip and smaller unwanted items get taken to Charity shops.

I am still putting out my clippings from my garden shrubs for the Council to pick up weekly and that seems an endless task. By the time the honeysuckle on one side of the garden has been brought under control, it is time to prevent the shrubs on the other side from taking over. Never mind, I do not begrudge the Council from taking my cuttings and turning them into compost to be sold, even though I pay for the bin hire. No I think that is a very good thing to do.

I am still saving all the paper and separating it from card. The aluminium is still going to Church to sponsor a girl in Bangladesh and I still tend to pick up cans in the street for recycling when I see them cluttering up our local area.

I sort out glass and tin for the kerbside collection and I take plastic to recycling points. Now we can take plastic bottles and plastic bags to the same point and also even silver lined milk cartons too.

I've mentioned before that it is all rather time consuming but I don't mind in the least.

I am sometimes concerned when I read that things that have been carefully separated and recycled have been seen to be squashed back together only to be sent to China or another faraway country, in containers for disposal there. Other news bulletins have proclaimed that recycled things do end up in landfill sites either here or in distant lands, but I give the Council the benefit of the doubt, thinking to myself that it is all worthwhile and the majority of recycled stuff does go to where it is supposed to.

The latest thing is to try and get rid of the use of plastic bags. They are horrible things and take years to break down and animals get their heads stuck in them and suffocate or chew them up and die. Many shops are now asking if you can manage without a bag and some even charge for plastic bags and this seems to be a very sensible idea.

I cannot resist the temptation to buy a cheap cotton bag from a charity shop or supermarket to help a cause and to save the planet and have more than the collection in the photograph. So please tell me why I inevitably get to the shops and forget to pick up the bags before I set out? Thus leaving me bag-less!

Might it be better to give out paper carriers with our goods, like they did when I was young, even if there was a small cost? Of course that was in the days before plastic bags were invented.

Photostory Friday is hosted by Cicely and MamaGeek. Why not pop over and see some really good posts?

The Dangers of Recycling!

A few months ago I noticed I was limping because of a pain in my right foot. The whole foot felt as though it was on fire & really hurt when I walked. My chiropractor pulled the affected foot about & asked if there was anything different in my lifestyle. After a very long, hard think, I realized what had caused it. Recycling!

Since Sam & family had come to live with us, there seemed to be much more to recycle.  All his beer & lager cans had been stamped on to make them more compact, using my right foot. (After a course of treatment, the foot pain eased, but this cost a fortune!) As we give all aluminium to a church scheme sponsoring a little girl in India, I was becoming embarrassed by the sudden influx of beer cans & tried to arrange them at the bottom of the bag, hidden from view. Didn't want people thinking that Harry or I were were verging on alcoholism! Now I use a little hammer to flatten the tins & my foot is back to normal. For people like us, who have no garage, recycling can present problems. Our kitchen is overwhelmed by little bags, boxes & bins, each packed with something or other that we have been urged to save by the Council.

The large wheelie bins are only emptied once a fortnight, so we really do need to recycle or there'd be no room left for real rubbish & anything left outside the bin will not be collected.Just looking at some of the houses round here, with small front gardens filled with bags of rubbish, makes it obvious that they are multi let homes. The bins  overflowing with rubbish do attract rats. (I will write about MY rat very soon!)

The Council also provides a box for a variety of things, including paper, glass, foil, tins, spectacles, shoes, batteries & textiles. This is emptied every week & believe me, is heavy when filled! We have separate compost containers provided for house hold food waste & I also have two compost bins in the small garden, but have stopped using these for now, on account of the large number of  fruit flies that somehow or other find their way into the kitchen. For a small yearly rent we have another large wheelie that we can fill with garden waste & cardboard. All this is made into compost & probably sold at a profit by the Council. Bit of a cheek that!

All this recycling is very time consuming & you have to be fairly fit. If you don't get a hernia or slipped disc lifting the heavy boxes, or damaged feet crushing the drinks cans, then you might forget what goes where or which day things are collected. You really need to be with it! Oh, & I still have to walk half a mile to the nearest plastic bank as the Council does not yet pick up plastic for some obscure reason. Is our city unique with all this nonsense? And why don't we get a reward for all the hard work?