Garden waste in Green bin

mrcheez

Neighbour is putting garden waste in her Green Greyhound bin. Been doing it for about 3 years now.

How is she allowed to get away with that? Conscience-aside could we all feasibly put whatever we want in the green bin and not have repercussions??

bgo1

In theory the bin collectors should be doing periodic checks and then rejecting the bin if its too full of contaminates like the green waste.

It would save the company money on processing/turn around time if everyone did the right thing.

They may have a very high compliance rate for green bins and hence not be too bothered about small contamination percentage overall or the workers may not be doing their tasks fully.

Why not just inform the company and they will carry out a check in their next collection run - usually they put a sticker or the like on the bin with reason for rejection.

brijo

I had a notion that the composters liked a bit of green waste to get the recipe right - balance against all that "brown" food waste. Don't assume that it's the "wrong" thing to do. But operators do vary.

bgo1

I think we may differ on bin colours..The green bin is for recyclables and no operator would want any green garden waste in it as this is the money generating bin for them and there's only one type of grass thats sellable in ireland ahem. The brown bin is for composting and some grass is no bad thing.

brijo

Yeah my mistake, whoops. That's a no no alright. Hard to believe that any operator wouldn't be clamping down on that.

mrcheez

bgo1 wrote: »

Why not just inform the company and they will carry out a check in their next collection run - usually they put a sticker or the like on the bin with reason for rejection.

I contacted the company who have flagged it for a check on the next run.

Ticks me off that I spend the money on using my brown bin yet this person creates a lot more garden waste than I do and just lumps it into a green bin to get it picked up for free. :mad:

bgo1

mrcheez wrote: »

I contacted the company who have flagged it for a check on the next run.

Ticks me off that I spend the money on using my brown bin yet this person creates a lot more garden waste than I do and just lumps it into a green bin to get it picked up for free. :mad:

Too right and if everyone did it right then in theory there would be a fair reduction in the cost of bin collections due to the reduced processing times and better quality of recyclates available to the operators.

Some of the recycable materials are currently non recyclable and have to be landfilled/incinerated bcos of the contamination by food/green waste (obv cheaper to lump it in to green bin) and landfill is very expensive, incineration is cheaper but not ideal and involves sending recyclables abroad as the incinerator in Meath is already at full capacity.

monument

bgo1 wrote: »

I think we may differ on bin colours..The green bin is for recyclables...

My green bin is general waste (blue is recycling and brown is compost).

greasepalm

i had builders in doing a few jobs,pity they dont or cannot see the difference in recycling correctly,poor skip bag loaded with cardboard and packaging and timber.i unloaded most of the timber and recycled the cardboard and plastics.
got rid of all the timber in a local skip for e5.

mrcheez

monument wrote: »

My green bin is general waste (blue is recycling and brown is compost).

The thing is, this person puts out their green bin with organic material in it on the day the "green bins for recycling" are collected in our estate, so it's clearly aimed at the free bin collection.

Plus the collection company have confirmed the green bin should only contain recyclables when I asked them.

bgo1

greasepalm wrote: »

i had builders in doing a few jobs,pity they dont or cannot see the difference in recycling correctly,poor skip bag loaded with cardboard and packaging and timber.i unloaded most of the timber and recycled the cardboard and plastics.
got rid of all the timber in a local skip for e5.

The builder will send this to the skip company premises who have workers to manually separate this out for recycling (extra money for the skip company) and/or landfill (landfill gate fee is charged into the price of the skip hire).

If concerned id just check what premises the skip hire company bring it too and do they sort, or do they send it on to another permitted facility for sorting etc. If you ask and you get reticent answers well you know yourself..