Garden Waste

[jowwy]

For several years my local council has allowed us to put garden waste in the brown bin along with food waste for weekly collection. They changed this a few months ago so that the weekly collection will continue but if you wanted to put garden waste in as well you'd need an annual permit (stuck to the bin) for about £45.

As others have said, garden waste disposal isn't a legal obligation for them whereas food waste disposal is. I think £45 per annum is pretty darned good value for money for 50 collections.

as already stated - in our council it is free of charge and wont change........i dont live in engarland, here in wales we dont pay for prescriptions either. we do things a little different in wales

 

[I like Skol]

But if you can still take garden waste to the tip for free why would you fly tip? (probably a silly question -some would just fly tip anyway).

Yep, you answered it right there, sadly.

Indeed. I have never understood the mentality of people who will drive to a country layby to dump stuff when they could just have taken it to the local council recycling centre. But it happens all the time

I think most of the fly tipping is done by 'the trade' rather than domestic waste generators, who can usually dispose of stuff for free at the council tip (although some council's seem hell bent on making that increasingly difficult).
The moonlighting, knock on your door "want your hedges trimming?" brigade or the unscrupulous tradesmen who don't care or are desperate to get work in competition against the casuals, "Tell you what, I won't charge for taking away the cuttings". There is a cost to commercial disposal and even when I was working in transport nearly 15yrs ago that was approaching £100/ton at the weighbridge.
There is a huge chunk of society that doesn't want to pay that, after all who doesn't like a great price? But by doing so they are either ignorantly or by turning a blind eye, facilitating fly tipping.

 

[I like Skol]

we do things a little different in wales

Still have the same fly tipping issues though, I know I have visited and cycled there.

 

[glasgowcyclist]

as already stated - in our council it is free of charge and wont change.

For the moment.

The Controlled Waste (England & Wales) Regulations 2012 set out the powers that local authorities have to charge for the collection and disposal of certain wastes. Paragraph 4 of Schedule 1 to those regulations states that a council may charge for the collection of household garden waste.

Don't be surprised if when your council joins the many others who already charge.

 

[PaulSB]

@Alex321 I agree with all you say. As for the rest of it I really cannot be bothered. After 44 years in professional horticulture I feel I have some small insight into and understanding of the costs of running a small, probably self-employed, business.

It's quite insulting that in this modern day there are those who see professional horticulture as a low paid menial occupation.

 

[jowwy]

@Alex321 I agree with all you say. As for the rest of it I really cannot be bothered. After 44 years in professional horticulture I feel I have some small insight into and understanding of the costs of running a small, probably self-employed, business.

It's quite insulting that in this modern day there are those who see professional horticulture as a low paid menial occupation.

nobody said it was a low paid menial occupation......i just dont see why anyone would pay for the removal of said tree, grass and bush waste, when there a many free services currently available i.e my own time

and yeh i do think £45 an hour is extortionate for general garden maintenance ......

 

[figbat]

We pay for garden waste collection - in fact we have paid extra to have two garden waste bins, and over certain parts of the years they both get filled on the two-weekly rota. We don't have the time to take this to the recycling centre, which is often very busy anyway and entails a lengthy queue. It would also mean either configuring the car to take the load (then putting it back to passenger configuration) or dragging the trailer out, emptying it of the camping stuff that lives in it, and then putting it all back again etc.

We have two mature sycamores that at this time of year dump a lot of leaves. Through the early summer there is copious grass mowing. There is also weeding, pruning and general garden-keeping. I am happy to pay to have this taken away from my doorstep every two weeks. The wheelie bins are useful during the waste collection process too, being easy to take to the point of generation, easy to store etc.

When our council suspended garden waste collection for a few weeks it was still mowing season, so we got hold of a Hippo bag and used this to hold garden waste until collection restarted, at which time we decanted it all into the two waste bins over two or three collection cycles. We have no use or need for compost, or certainly not the amount we would generate which would be grass-heavy (which I understand is not a great way to compost). Our food waste gets collected too, weekly - if it wasn't a separate waste stream this would likely go into landfill.

 

[jowwy]

For the moment.

The Controlled Waste (England & Wales) Regulations 2012 set out the powers that local authorities have to charge for the collection and disposal of certain wastes. Paragraph 4 of Schedule 1 to those regulations states that a council may charge for the collection of household garden waste.

Don't be surprised if when your council joins the many others who already charge.

they already tried to charge and found out it was a waste of time charging as fly tipping went through the roof. So after a public consultation and the voting in of certain council members, it was decided it would be a free service......

if in the future it becomes chargeable again, they may come up against the same issues they faced before and votes may not going in their favour in council elections........thats the power of the ballot box.

 

[jowwy]

Still have the same fly tipping issues though, I know I have visited and cycled there.

find me a council area that doesn't have fly tipping issues.......its not just wales i can tell you

 

[T4tomo]

5 pages of rubbish, quite literally.....

 

[Alex321]

because i dont believe everyone who doesnt want to pay for a certain service is encouraging fly tipping.......i wouldnt pay for a removal service, but i also wouldnt encourage fly tipping just to save my self a few quid

just read the line i highlighted.......

Not sure why you don't believe it. Although they probably don't believe it either.

It is fact that if you are paying people to take things away, and going for the lowest price with fully checking their accreditation, then there is a very good chance they will be fly tipping it, rather than paying commercial rates for disposal.

He obviously wasn't talking there about the people who would rather take it to the council facility themselves. He was talking about people wanting somebody else to do it, but not willing t pay the full rate.

 

[Alex321]

Still have the same fly tipping issues though, I know I have visited and cycled there.

It does depend on where, but yes many areas of Wales do still have fly tipping issues.

I will admit, I was surprised just how much less of it there is (and general littering) when we moved down to the Vale of Glamorgan last year after living in Merthyr Tydfil council area for 20 years, then Rhondda Cynon Taf for around a year.

I know it is a much wealthier area, but I hadn't really realised just how much of the general littering and fly tipping is down to such factors.

 

[jowwy]

Not sure why you don't believe it. Although they probably don't believe it either.

It is fact that if you are paying people to take things away, and going for the lowest price with fully checking their accreditation, then there is a very good chance they will be fly tipping it, rather than paying commercial rates for disposal.

He obviously wasn't talking there about the people who would rather take it to the council facility themselves. He was talking about people wanting somebody else to do it, but not willing t pay the full rate.

again read the line i highlighted......he stated " Fly tipping is encouraged by the people who refuse to pay for the removal of waste by contractors"

i don't believe that to be true, just because your unwilling to pay for something, it doesn't mean your encouraging something else.........

 

[Alex321]

again read the line i highlighted......he stated " Fly tipping is encouraged by the people who refuse to pay for the removal of waste by contractors"

i don't believe that to be true, just because your unwilling to pay for something, it doesn't mean your encouraging something else.........

No, I won't read that again. It is out of context, and completely clear to the rest of us what he was referring to.

If you want to be overly pedantic, and pretend you thought he was including people who prefer to do it themselves, go ahead. That doesn't make what you were responding to "a load of nonsense" though. It means one line in what he wrote could have been a little clearer if you want to nitpick.

 

[Electric_Andy]

Ours is collected for free but you can't fit an awful lot in there if you doing heavy lopping. It's designed just for grass cuttings, weeds and pruning really. It also specifies nothing more than 10cm in diameter, which I have exceeded a bit and they still took it, but it was only marginally over. My partner used a gardener and he asked if she wanted to dispose of the waste herself, which she did so that wasn't charged for. I think the option should be to leave the waste if the customer wants it cheaper, but I expect some will give a quote and include waste removal and if it's to much the customer can always reject the quote and go elsewhere, or perhaps agree a lower price with waste not included.