On 2010-08-06 14:52:19 +0100, The Natural Philosopher said:

Dave wrote:
I was idly watching the refuse collection this morning and one thing
that struck me was the amount of time it takes to empty just one of
them. Take the bin to the back of the wagon, hook it up and press the
button for the rise, wait for it to empty and then want for it to be
dropped off again, then return the bin to the edge of the property.

It was a far quicker process when everyone used bin bags. OK I know
they were subject to animals ripping them open, but most of that risk
could have been taken away by the use of an open top plastic box to
drop the bin bag in. One for each bag that was regularly put out for
collection.

Dave

Of course it was more efficient. But it took at least 5 jobs to be
created to determine to use wheelie bins, evaluate their safety, order
them, get them to households, and re-equip the trucks to use them, not
to mention the extra jobs created to load them, daily. And of course
paste the stickers on refusing to collect them because they have the
wrong sort of rubbish in, or too much of the right sort of rubbish.

This is called 'investing in people' and any right minded (sic!) left
wing government knows that this wins votes and keeps the unemployment
statistics down.

I mean what else are these poor employees going to do? relocate to an
Indian call centre?

They haven't enough education, for that.

TBH, all the binmen I've seen in the last few years look like they work
bloody hard - they seem to be constantly running grabbing bin bags,
wheelie bins etc. (I assume because they don't get paid by the hour
but by the route.)

I'm glad that our council (Powys) seem to have quietly dropped
suggestions of wheelie bins which they mooted at one point. Their
recent proganda/newletter said that 94% of people were happy with the
refuse service, which made me worry that they were about to meddle with
it!