Forum Topic

How to put out your recycling?

As far as I am aware the instructions from Ealing Council reads as follows:Please leave boxes, bins and sacks visible at rhe front boundary of your property on your refuse and recycling collection day. It is essential that you do not put out boxes, bins and sacks on the pavement where they can cause accidents.Why then oh why do so many people persist in leaving all their recycling out on the pavement, sometimes days before a collection is due? In some cases in my area there can be as many as 20 black bags all heaped up on the pavement.Not only is this unsightly, it is antisocial, unhygenic when food waste is thrown into black bags which are then ripped open by vermin, and a hazard to people passing by, especially those with impaired vision.Is it not about time that the council started issuing warning notices to some of the worst offenders? It is the few who are setting a really bad example to everyone else.

Jean F Fernandez ● 5270d9 Comments

I keep my rubbish in a large bin next to the house and a large number of times the dustmen can't be asked to take the bags out of the bin, however, they do take my neighbours' bags out of their bins. When I asked them one day why they did not take my bags out of the bins, I was told that if the bins had a lid on them, they were not allowed to open them. Since then I leave the lid of on the collection day, only to find they still don't take the bags out most of the time !

riejet oliver ● 5270d

Jean - If you put in a complaint to Ealing Council about a particular household, they will visit and issue a warning, even speak to someone in the house. (I know this from a recent experience - and it was a Council official, not someone from Enterprise so shouldn't have changed.)I thought we were supposed to remove black bags from dustbins and always do. Since there is usually no food in the black bag, animals don't attack it so it doesn't bother me to leave it out overnight in case of early visit from bin men.

Clare Gittins ● 5270d

I've always found the bin men take bags pu of our bins. I wonder if it will all happen tomorrow

Sara Nathan ● 5270d

I have already done that and I am aware of the procedure, after all I am a streetwatcher.The council appear to have a staff shortage, or at least they did over Easter, so I just hope they now have sufficient envirocrime officers to call on some of these householders.

Jean F Fernandez ● 5270d

I have an ordinary size metal dustbin and normally the binmen do remove the black bag from the bin. There has been the occasional missed collection.In a street nearby this morning a black bag was lying on the pavement, contents pulled out all over the place, probably because someone has just put food waste into the black bag.No wonder we have so many foxes and rats in London!

Jean F Fernandez ● 5270d

What about people who live in flats who don't have a "boundary" or the only entrance is their stairway or right outside their front door?The bin men will not go into each garden to check if there are bags/recycling there so what's the option?Also, making this point this week is pretty harsh given that the council have so comprehensively screwed up the collections.

Sarah Harris ● 5270d

Sarah, I can fully understand your frustration at the fiasco experienced so far with the new contractors, in our streets we have also had the same problems, Our paper, cardboard and white sacks were finally emptied on Saturday morning.Whilst I accept that my timing was perhaps unfortunate in starting this discussion now, I felt was necessary to highlight the fact that certain residents have been clogging up the pavement with up to 20 black bags of household rubbish, well before normal collection day! This has been happening in my area week in and week out!In recent weeks we have had sofas, mattresses, old wardrobes etc all dumped on the pavement which sat there for days. The people who do this just want the stuff out of their garden and are therefore acting in a rather selfish way. Not only is it unsightly but they are actually blocking the pavement!In some cases I guess landlords may well be responsible for throwing items out when they have a new tenant but surely people should have some sense of responsibility?I agree it must be extremely difficult for flat dwellers, I have no answer for you there, it is surely up to either the management of a block or perhaps down to the council to come to some arrangement for rubbish colletion.  Although I think we may have more problems in the future if the new contractors are still working for Ealing Council. I just hope that the reports that the new contractirs have simply been throwing ALL the recycling stuff into the same truck are untrue, otherwise why are we bothering to sort everything out?I am aware that there is also a problem for residents who live above shops, especially having to try and recycle everything and then find somewhere to store it all. Along Horn Lane most days one can find an assortment of bags containing household rubbish, fortunately they have, in the past, been collected on a regular basis by the previous contractors.I don't have the answers, I just wanted to say that it is sometimes very frustrating being a Streetwatcher, which is all voluntary by the way, and at times it does make one feel like saying 'Why bother, no-one else seems to!'

Jean F Fernandez ● 5270d

Regarding flats - there is often a condition in the planning permission that amenity space for bins has to be included.  Unfortunately this can be conveniently "forgotten".  It should be even easier to share a food waste bin now that we are allowed to use the compostable bags (with the seedling logo).  Several flats could just add their bag to the large bag kept outside.  If you don't have a small caddy you could ask the Council for one or you could buy one from Sainsbury's in Essex Place (Chiswick).  A small caddy and a roll of bags costs less than £5.  Flats near me have changing tenants.  They used to recycle, they now don't (or maybe only one flat does). There is one poor lady who every week seems to be the person who ends up sweeping up all the mess that is strewn about overnight.Unbelievably there are people who put black bags ON TOP of the lids of the bins when the bins aren't full ie they can't be bothered to lift up the lid. I think they should be bothered into doing this.

Philippa Bond ● 5261d

Every time I go away I hope that on my return I will find that the situation has been sorted.Another week has passed. How much longer?  Met the first wheelie bin on the pavement today. It's enormous. How unnecessary.

Philippa Bond ● 5252d