In article , Andy Hall wrote:

In effect, the local authority has halved the service by reducing the
collection frequency. Have they halved the amount of money collected
that relates to this part of their service? I very much doubt it.

Down here (Folkestone) our collections went to biweekly for the landfill
waste and we were all given a box and a bag for recycling. Tins and bottles
(plastic and glass) go in the box, paper and cardboard in the bag and
everything else goes in the wheely bin. If you ask them they give you another
bin for garden waste which goes to a local farm to be composted (annoyingly,
no food waste, peelings etc can go into this - something to do with dumping
food waste onto farm land apparantly). Box and bag are collected every week.

Not had a problem with maggots and we dump all sorts in there - including
meat waste (bones, scaps etc etc). The advice from the council was to ensure
that the lid was shut and then the flies can't get in and there isn't a problem.
In practice, this appears to work despite every ones concerns.

Also, we find that the two of us adults, a five year old and a two year old
copes with the wheely bin only being emptied once a fortnight - and that is
with disposable nappies going in it (yes, I know...)

Can begin to whiff a bit towards the end of the fortnight but as long as the
lid is shut then it is fine - only people I know around here who have had
problems have been overfilling the bin so the lid doesn't shut.

Did they poll their customers and ask if they were happy to have
collections only every two weeks? Who knows.

We didn't As I say, it's actualy worked out quite well despite our
concerns - the most annoying thing is that they dump down the instructions.
Plastic bottles can be recycled - plastic packaging can't. When I asked about
what types could and couldn't they admitted that a lot of packaging can but
it was too complicated to tell people how to identify them :-(

Either way, if they are going to reduce a service, they should ask the
customers first and provide an option to opt out. In other words, if
the general level of service is halved and I don't accept that, then
there should be an option not to pay and to go elsewhere for rubbish
collection.

not quite the case here - the landfill collections were halved but they added
the recycling ones at the same time. Of course, on the days where we have both
the recycling lorry always seems to meet the landfill truck in the middle of
our street heading in opposite directions...usually around the time the school
at the end of the road kicks out. traffic chaos...

Darren