Kerbside plastic and food waste collections begin next week


South Gloucestershire Recycling Collections

But have you received your new bins and recycling bags?

South Gloucestershire Council’s new kerbside recycling collection service for plastic bottles and food waste begins next week (Monday 22nd November) but not all households have received their new bins.

A package of two grey bins for food waste and a white bag for plastic bottles should have been delivered to all homes in the area (except flats, which will not initially receive the new services) but residents in some streets of Bradley Stoke say they don’t yet have the new containers.

A recorded message on the Council’s StreetCare hotline (01454 868000) was last week advising residents not to be concerned as deliveries of the new bins would continue over the weekend (Saturday 20th and Sunday 21st November).

The Council also says that “supplier problems” with the white recycling bags may mean they are not available in time for the first collections.

The current two week schedule of alternating green and black bin collections will continue, with plastic bottles being collected in the same weeks as the black bin. Food waste will, however, be collected every week.

A further change being introduced is that cardboard, which could previously be placed in the green bin, must now be put out separately for collection.

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39 comments

  1. Ok, I’ve got mine. I’m probably being a bit thick … but what is the big one for? Little one for food waste, big one for decoration? Confused.

  2. Chris, the little one is for food waste then the big one is too empty the be little one into and stick the big one out too be emptied when bin day is.

    Hope this helps 🙂

  3. What are we supposed to do with the cardboard? Put it under the food bin? I don’t know about you, but I have three kids, and all those toilet rolls and toothpaste boxes are not going to stay “under” that bin for long. They’ll be all over the street.

  4. A little more notice of the change to cardboard would have been nice. Mine is all in my green bin mixed with my garden waste – so what do I do now? Have to empty the lot and separate it? And like Andy says, it’s going to end up all over the street as I have loads of cardboard waste. Can’t wait to see the devastation after our next bin day.

  5. The cardboard requirement is the issue. Might have been better if they had given us a bag for it, bit like the plastic bottle one.

    I am glad I don’t live in a flat or one of the newer houses with little outside space. Goodness knows where they are able to keep all the bins, bags and boxes, as someone elsewhere said “7 and counting”.

    I can see the estate agents description, 3 bed semi, space for 1 car and 7 bins, close to local school.

  6. Given they’ve changed the policy mid-cycle presumably they’ll show a little common sense and wait a full cycle before enforcing it – like Natalie’s my green bin is full of cardboard and leaves (wet). I don’t particularly want to (let’s rephrase that – I’m not going to) sort through all that.

    Editor – any chance the Journal could get confirmation on that?

  7. I don’t think they’d be stupid enough to expect you to empty and sort your green bins, given they’ve just sent out the info. Any cardboard mixed up with your garden waste will still compost.

  8. What a time to do this just before Christmas.
    South Gloucestershire council no foresight yet again.
    What are you suppose to do with all the cardboard from Christmas?
    You can at your own cost buy an insert to go into your green bin, I do not know the cost.
    These should be free from South Gloucestershire Council as this was imposed on us.

  9. Echo the comments about the number of boxes and bags but glad they’ve finally got round to it. I can also see a lot of cardboard being blown about too.

    My biggest issue is that it’s only plastic bottles that will be taken – so in theory you could have a clearly marked recyclable tray which will end in landfill, or your bag doesn’t get taken at all if you dare to try and sneak it in with the bottles.

    A lot of neighbouring councils will take all plastics – Bristol and Swindon for instance. I queried with this with South Gloucs and the response was that there isn’t a market for it, but if other areas are taking all plastics that would suggest that some thinks they can make money from them.

    Just another disappointing example of the inconsistencies and lack of foresight at the local level.

  10. Interesting point Owen regarding recycling inconsistencies. SGlos won’t take Tetra-Pak type juice containers for some reason but other councils do.

    On a rainy day that cardboard is going to make one soggy mess on the pavements, wonder who will clear it up?

    A general question – what is going to happen with all the newly-separated food waste? By law it can’t be used for animal feed (Foot and Mouth risk) so does it go for incineration or a separate landfill?

    Black bin, green bin, cardboard bag, newspaper bag, kitchen waste x 2, glass box, tin can box, plastics, battery bag = 10 different bags/boxes now but I may have overlooked a couple….

  11. Can we refuse (pardon the pun) to use the food bins or to accept the new regime? It’s all very ill conceived and all done at short notice (sound familiar??)

    Fitting the small food caddies into the kitchen is challenge enough…let alone the ‘genius’ idea of stopping putting cardboard into the green bin. This effectively means the green bin is going to be good for nothing over the winter months when we’re funnily enough not creating too much garden waste….Meaning the bins that were introduced at great expense a couple of years ago is now obsolete at a time when we’re trying to keep costs down!!!!

    Oh and also – another great idea – line your bin with newspaper it says….how many people actually have newspapers in this internet age?!?! We’re lucky if we even get the weekly free one through the door!!

    Yet again out council haven’t listened and done what’s easiest for them without considering the real world (a bit like building a park and ride next to an existing park and ride over by Parkway!)….always good to see our money well used!! 🙁

  12. bristol council take cardboard in green bin, why cant south glous? Is our council tax going to go up because they will have to employ street cleaners to clear up the mess that will be created from loose and damp cardboard!!??? The bin men arent going to do it! It’s a joke!
    Someone I know in Bath, who has the same loose cardboard issue says you know when its green day as the streets are littered with cardboard afterwards. Great, cant wait!! The insert should be given free!!

    We should have been given more notice too, no way am I sorting out my green bin now, like previous comments, its all covered in damp garden waste.

    I can’t see this loose cardboard idea working, apart from the mess on the street, it’s storing it for 2 weeks before they collect!!!

  13. Sorry, but just haven’t got the room to store cardboard, or the bag for plastic bottles, so I’m afraid plastic bottles and cardboard is now going in my black bin along with my little bit, if any of food waste, I just can’t be bothered any more. Most of my neighbours agree.

    I believe these new measures will actually lead to less recycling as people are just becoming brow beaten by it.

    As someone has pointed out, it will be a waste to send a lorry out to collect the green wheeliebins over winter as all will be empty, you cant even put soil or tree stumps in them now – pathetic!

    I could have sworn that we pay more than enough Council Tax for the council to work for us, to me it seems to be the other way around!

    Mr Angry!

  14. The people of Bradley Stoke and Stoke Gifford should start a campaign to get South Gloucestershire Council to supply the inserts to go in the Green Bins for Cardboard free of Charge.

    I suggest we all E mail South Gloucestershire Council demanding these inserts for free.

  15. One upside is that you dont have to collapse the larger cardboard boxes anymore and struggle to squeeze them into your green bin!

  16. I live in a development of flats, and we are not entitled to these recycling bags, boxes, wheelbarrows, what ever other choice the council have thought up (not that there room to store it all anyway).

    In their wisdom the builders of this development decided to put locks on our communal bin stores containing communal black bins which get full pretty quickly – so what happens? Those residents who cannot be bothered unlocking the stores or can’t remember the code, dump their bags in the green recycling bins which are outside the bin stores, rendering any efforts made pointless, so I don’t bother attempting to recycle any more.

    To make matters worse, if one person dumps a bag on the ground outside a store, a lot of the residents follow suit, “baaing” as they go, assuming that the bins must be full. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen rubbish piling up, only to go into the store and find them half empty.

    Last week it was so bad that I felt like I was parked in a land fill. I did sympathise with the bin men who I saw shovelling it all up.

    I sympathise with all you out there who may have to face this in your streets, it’s not pleasant, and I agree with most comments that it’s just going to make matters worse.

    I would love to recycle properly, but without a car, it cannot be done sensibly, when anything I do is rendered pointless by other people.

  17. Re cardboard. I suggest you put all the smaller bits of cardboard into a larger cardboard box/cereal packet. That way they won’t get blown around.

    I do find it amazing that a change to waste collection can engender so much wailing and gnashing of teeth. I’ve recycled for around 15 years in the various places that I’ve lived – once you get used to a small change in your recycling habits, it becomes second nature. Reading some of the comments on here it sounds like the world is coming to an end.

    Yes, the council can screw things up, but the bottom line is that they have to pay for every ton of waste sent to landfill. When I lived in London a new recycling regime came in – it took a little while to bed in, but once it did the system worked fine. Give it chance. Some of the defeatist nonsense such as ‘I just can’t be bothered any more’ is just laughable.

  18. Following on from DaveP’s suggestion of asking South Gloucestershire Council about the cardboard issues, we’ve received the following statement:

    “The information about changes to cardboard collection was contained in the service leaflet that was distributed to residents along with the new waste containers and on the council’s website. We fully appreciate that there will be a ‘bedding in’ period for the new recycling services, so if a resident has already mixed cardboard with green waste in the green bin this will be collected in the first cycle of collections, but we would ask residents to keep these items separate for subsequent collections.”

    “Smaller items of cardboard can be placed in larger cardboard boxes and then either placed under the bin, or residents can use a sturdy bag, like a bag for life (not a plastic bag) to present loose cardboard at the kerbside. This will be returned after collection.”

  19. Don’t know about others but my green bin is filled with just cardboard most of the time and not garden waste, would make sense to keep the green bin for cardboard and make alternative arrangements for the garden waste. I usually compost the garden waste.

  20. My green bin will be almost redundant for sure, other than grass cuttings over the summer. Would much prefer to use this for cardboard, especially as the alternatives for card seem to ultimately result in it taking up yet more space in my house or getting into a soggy mess outside. Could at least do with another green box. One for card and plastic, another for tins and glass. My green bin is essentially an ugly garden feature now. Will the council take it off my hands? Can just compost my small amount of grass.

  21. Agree with Geoff above, I live at a road junction where the bin days change for left or right and I have not have my bin emptied for two weeks because I guess it was thought I was on the wrong week, checked with council/Sita yesterday followed their advice for my Thurs/ green collection, they left all the plastic bottles probably because they failed to give me the right sort of bag and the one I used didn’t have handles or was the wrong colour.
    Like Geoff above, its all gonig in the black bin, I can’t be bothered with petty mindedness when I think I am doing my best.

    Geoff2 ( fed up with idiots)

  22. Geoff2 (above) wrote “checked with council/Sita yesterday followed their advice for my Thurs/ green collection, they left all the plastic bottles probably because they failed to give me the right sort of bag”

    Or possibly Geoff because plastic bottles aren’t collected on green bin week, they are collected on black bin week.

    Geoff3 (equally fed up with idiots)

  23. There are a number of houses in this area where residents have to leave their bins outside their front doors or drag them though their living rooms as the planners didn’t give them rear accesses.Now they have more bins to cope with.
    This system is far too complicated and not user friendly-obviously invented by a bureaucrat or a politician.
    How long will it be before South Glos start charging by weight to take your rubbish away. Just watch this space!

  24. Your probably right, I’m sure there will be an upcoming European directive ordering the UK to do so.

    A friend of mine who lives at Emersons Green had his white plastics bag delivered yesterday, or should I say thrown, a white van drove around with a chap in the back throwing the bags at driveways and front paths, many just ending up on the pavement.

    What a shabby outfit South Gloucs are, we pay (excessively) for a service and they can’t even put my bin back where they got it from, I’m always having to rescue it from next door or at the end of the street.

  25. Put my papers in the green box with the cardboard on top so the snow would not get the cardboard wet and none of it was collected and the collectors left it exposed to get wet.

  26. Do people who live in Flats still have their green Bins?

    If so what use are they to them if they live in an upstairs flat?

    What a waste of council tax payers money.

    I suppose they could be recycled by cutting them in half and using them as sledges.

    The lid could be recycled as a sledge for a small child

    From the Evening Post on the 1st December

    30 new staff hired to help collect waste
    MORE than 30 extra crew members have been recruited to deal with the new recycling services introduced in South Gloucestershire.

    An additional 14 carts have also been bought to cope with the material now being collected from kerbsides across the district.

    Why when essential services are being cut!

  27. Yesterday was green bin day in my part of Bradley Stoke.

    The first refuse truck appeared at around 10.00am and emptied the green bins. The next one came at around 2pm and took the contents of my green box and bag. However, neither collected the cardboard which was left until approx 6pm when a further refuse truck appeared out of the darkness to collect the piles of cardboard left out all day awaiting collection.

    The result is that there are still loads of cardboard blowing around as the collectors either couldn’t see all the cardboard or couldn’t be bothered to pick it up because it was cold and dark.

    Why does it take three vehicles to collect our green waste, and why come after dark when I for one had given up and just chucked my cardboard in the black bin for collection next week.

    What a waste of money and resources!

  28. Some councils collect all items for recycling in one bin and are sorted at a recycling plant, two less lorries needed and people are still employed at the recycling plant, that would have been collecting.

  29. do you lot have nothing better to do?
    Steve P clearly doesn’t as he’s been watching the bin men all day long but the rest of you? Work, friends, children, hobbies anything at all??

    We used to have fortnightly black bin collections, our bins were frequently chock full and smelly. We now have weekly food waste collections, largely eliminating this problem.

    we used to have to put plastic bottles in the black bin or recycle them ourselves. they are now collected from right outside.

    all seems like progress to me! stop complaining life’s too short!

    And if you really can’t be bothered just put everything in your black bin. god gave you free will, use it!

  30. I, and loads of residents down Juniper Way, left our new shiny white bags outside on Tuesday. Green bin day.

    Nobody took them. So, as the wind got up, the plastic bottles started blowing around the road.

    I’m wondering if I missed something… 🙂

  31. gyre you did miss something the plastics are collected on your BLACK week.
    The new third refuse vehicle will collect food waste and plastics on your black week then food waste and cardboard on your green week.
    It was our green week this week I came home to find my neighbours cardboard strewn all over my front garden where the wind had blown over the bag it had been left out in.
    At least my food waste was collected this week. Last week they left it behind-I’ve no idea why.
    I think the new recycing services are a good idea, hopefully once we all get used to the new system it will be fine. It’s down to us to be careful about how we present our cardboard. Surely it’s better it’s now being recycled rather than just composted?

  32. Cardboard out next to green bin as told, Food Waste in the container as told, Whole street not collected. Neighbour complained to the council and they came and collected her cardboard and food waste and left everyone else’s in the road. Called the council and they are coming again now!!! How much Co2 will this use!!!!!

  33. So far my green bin has sat empty whilst I pick up the cardboard that is blowing around my garden. Most new houses have small gardens with very little waste. Which council moron came up with this idea of using the green bin for garden waste only? Swap them around!! Green bin for cardboard and sacks for garden waste. I am going back to picking soggy cardboard out of my hedges…

  34. I emailed the council about this whole cardboard debacle last week and they have not replied yet. I’m beginning to think that they don’t care. Does the editor know if anyone from the council(s) see this site and its comments?

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