Post by Dave on Sept 23, 2010 16:51:28 GMT
The Herald Express has often been accused on this very forum in the past of being guilty of some very lazy journalism, but nothing I have read as ever been as poor or so under researched as what I heard on the J.Vine show this lunchtime on BBC radio two.
While the story was about a woman who lives in Clifton grove Paignton wanting £5,000 compensation from Torbay Council claiming ‘unsightly’ green wheeled bins have decreased the value of her property, nothing that was reported was correct as regards the real situation now going on in the whole of Torbay.
J.Vine reported that the whole of Paignton had now been given green wheelie bins and the result was that people from other council and other people from around the country phoned and gave their views and they were all barking up the wrong tree simply because they did not know the real facts of the situation.
Many households in the Bay have had two wheelie bins for a good number of years now, one for general waste and a green one for things that can be recycled. The streets that did not have wheelie bins only did so because they had nowhere to store them, IE houses with no rear access or front gardens, or ones that had steps up the fronts of their houses, or in Carol and my case, no way of collecting from the front and as our rubbish has to be collected from the next street over via a small service lane, it was considered to far for the bin men to wheel the bins to their lorry.
What has happened is that all those who had green wheelie bins had them all taken away and replaced with two very small brown boxes that do not have lids only a net to put over them and another bin with a lid to put food waste in.The mad thing is that those green wheelie bins were then given to all those who did not have then before for the reasons I have already listed and as a result we now have streets lined with green wheelie bins that not only look very unsightly, they are causing real problems as they are half blocking the footpaths.
All those who have lost their green wheelie bins want them back and for good reasons in most cases as what they have been replaced with is a bit of a joke really for a number of reasons. These new bins have been given to people in flats as well and as they don’t want the paper etc if its wet, they say the bins need to be kept indoors. We only have a small kitchen and there is no way we are having them indoors and so ours are outside covered up with a sheet of plastic.
They have to be put outside on the path by 6am on the day of collection(that’s a joke all on its own) and if you are lucky they will get collected but at present don’t expect it to be on the day its meant to be collected.
One real problem is there are only two men per a lorry and they cherry pick whats in the bins once they get them to the lorry( causing real problems as they block the streets for ages) as they NOW only take what they consider is the higher value recyclable material and half of what used to go into the green bins they don’t want and so we now find even more is going in the general waste bins that end up in landfill sites and that seems crazy to me when its all meant to be about increasing our recycling rates here in the Bay.
We went two weeks without a collection and were due our first one a week ago on the Friday and it was not collected. On the Saturday a lorarrivedied in the nestreeteet over at 9am and was still there at 2pm and I went and asked them if they were doing ours as well( not sure they knew they had to collect ours from that road) and was told yes only to be told a short while later there was a problem with the compactor on the lorry and they would come back on Monday.
It was still there waiting for them the next Friday and it was the following Monday it was finally collected. Carol was good and stuck to the letter as what could be put in the bins, but most I saw later were still half full as it contained stuff they don’t want as they are a private company and as I said only want what makes them the most money.
We all want to play our part where recycling is concerned but this whole new system has been very badly thought out and at the moment is not working very well at all. If things don’t improve then with the mood of the people here in the Bay already at boiling point, I can see action being taken to try and get changes made so we can not only get our rubbish collected, but we can do so without all the stress its causing so many right now.
While the story was about a woman who lives in Clifton grove Paignton wanting £5,000 compensation from Torbay Council claiming ‘unsightly’ green wheeled bins have decreased the value of her property, nothing that was reported was correct as regards the real situation now going on in the whole of Torbay.
J.Vine reported that the whole of Paignton had now been given green wheelie bins and the result was that people from other council and other people from around the country phoned and gave their views and they were all barking up the wrong tree simply because they did not know the real facts of the situation.
Many households in the Bay have had two wheelie bins for a good number of years now, one for general waste and a green one for things that can be recycled. The streets that did not have wheelie bins only did so because they had nowhere to store them, IE houses with no rear access or front gardens, or ones that had steps up the fronts of their houses, or in Carol and my case, no way of collecting from the front and as our rubbish has to be collected from the next street over via a small service lane, it was considered to far for the bin men to wheel the bins to their lorry.
What has happened is that all those who had green wheelie bins had them all taken away and replaced with two very small brown boxes that do not have lids only a net to put over them and another bin with a lid to put food waste in.The mad thing is that those green wheelie bins were then given to all those who did not have then before for the reasons I have already listed and as a result we now have streets lined with green wheelie bins that not only look very unsightly, they are causing real problems as they are half blocking the footpaths.
All those who have lost their green wheelie bins want them back and for good reasons in most cases as what they have been replaced with is a bit of a joke really for a number of reasons. These new bins have been given to people in flats as well and as they don’t want the paper etc if its wet, they say the bins need to be kept indoors. We only have a small kitchen and there is no way we are having them indoors and so ours are outside covered up with a sheet of plastic.
They have to be put outside on the path by 6am on the day of collection(that’s a joke all on its own) and if you are lucky they will get collected but at present don’t expect it to be on the day its meant to be collected.
One real problem is there are only two men per a lorry and they cherry pick whats in the bins once they get them to the lorry( causing real problems as they block the streets for ages) as they NOW only take what they consider is the higher value recyclable material and half of what used to go into the green bins they don’t want and so we now find even more is going in the general waste bins that end up in landfill sites and that seems crazy to me when its all meant to be about increasing our recycling rates here in the Bay.
We went two weeks without a collection and were due our first one a week ago on the Friday and it was not collected. On the Saturday a lorarrivedied in the nestreeteet over at 9am and was still there at 2pm and I went and asked them if they were doing ours as well( not sure they knew they had to collect ours from that road) and was told yes only to be told a short while later there was a problem with the compactor on the lorry and they would come back on Monday.
It was still there waiting for them the next Friday and it was the following Monday it was finally collected. Carol was good and stuck to the letter as what could be put in the bins, but most I saw later were still half full as it contained stuff they don’t want as they are a private company and as I said only want what makes them the most money.
We all want to play our part where recycling is concerned but this whole new system has been very badly thought out and at the moment is not working very well at all. If things don’t improve then with the mood of the people here in the Bay already at boiling point, I can see action being taken to try and get changes made so we can not only get our rubbish collected, but we can do so without all the stress its causing so many right now.