I monitored a refuse & recycling contract for three years. You are
right to be concerned. In the last ten to fifteen years, local
authorities have been cutting back on refuse collection services across
the board because they are obliged to meet strict recycling quotas.
This has given refuse contractors carte blanche to be as picky and
fussy as they like about what they will or won't pick up. You can waste
hours on the phone to the local authority complaining about these
issues, but the only way that you will achieve any change is to lobby
either your local councillor or the committee responsible for the
service, ideally with a petition signed by others. If that has no
effect, try to get the local media involved, because nothing scares an
elected councillor more than the thought of bad publicity.

Fridges, cars, DIY material, car batteries etc etc - although local
authorities are obliged to provide facilities for disposing of these
things, there are allowed to charge. It used to be that second hand car
dealers would fight over the rights to impound abandoned cars - legion
are the stories about backhanders thrown to highways inspectors in
return for scrap cars - but now no one wants them, what with the low
cost of second hand cars, so the councils charge high fees just for
scrapping a vehicle, because the car dealers don't want them anymore.

Taxpayers who can't drive to amenity tips are being discriminated
against because they have to pay extra to the refuse contractor to
collect bulky items. This effects the poor, disabled and elderly. Of
course it's all wrong but you can only change local policy by lobbying
politicians.

For years local government ignored the issue of recycling. These were
the golden days when binmen would collect anything. Then when the
horrendous cost of recycling was suddenly realised, swingeing cuts were
made to the general refuse collection service (along with cuts to
street cleaning and similar grounds maintenance work). To make matters
worse, so much is now being recycled that the value of recycled paper,
glass and metal has tumbled, meaning that local authorities get far
less income than they had budgetted for.