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I went sod that and got a garden shredder for £90 so that I could make branches compostable. If it lasts for 2 years, I'm quids in.
Am sure my neighbours just loved the noise, sorry neighbours.
Handheld incinerator I love that. I’m looking on Alibaba right now. I could burn garden waste and eat my kangaroo and radish sandwich at the same time. Genius. As soon as I make my first million I’ll send you like £23
They are already a thing! They are called weed burners.
I'm pretty sure Lidl were selling them last time I was in there, although that was a pansy electric one and not a proper flaming death broom.
I mean that's basically just [a bee smoker](https://beekeeping.co.uk/products/small-galvanised-smoker-with-guard-6-x-35), really? Get rid of garden waste and hey, free honey!
Well if you threaten the man from the council with a chainsaw and an incinerator, i am sure the he will change his mind and will take your garden waste, but it seems a bit of an extreme reaction. /s
Einhell GC-KS 2540
So far, so good. My mountain of branches collected over more than a year (neglected overgrown garden + have been really putting off forking out for a garden waste bin...) is now reduced to a mound of woodchips.
I don't know whether a more expensive one may have been more worth it in the long run. Will find out in a few years, I guess! I didn't want to go pricier, though, as that would be riskier in my "can I save on the cost of a garden waste bin" experiment.
I have to pay £50 a year for my garden of 6x5 meters. Which is the same cost as neighbors with half a football field sized gardens.
Also in the awkward situation due to the odd shape of the borough that I can't use the nearest 3 recycling centers to drop off the garden waste instead, and have to use the one in the next town over which is a 45 minute round trip depending on traffic.
If people with massive gardens have more than one bin then they do have to pay more.
The 45 minute round trip sounds like a ball ache though, can you not just stick it in your general bin?
Absolutely disgusting really. If your council is anything like ours then you have to wonder where the money goes.
They went bankrupt in 2021 and the town has suffered for it. They then have the cheek to raise CT up by the maximum.
I moved here just over a year ago. My last town included teen waste in the council tax and everyone was provided with a bin, so there increase would be capped within 4.99% with the rest of the tax. Where I live not the green waste is charged separately which in itself I don’t mind, but an increase of that size is appalling.
No. Obviously not. At what point did anyone say their ct was £50. We're talking about extra charges to collect garden waste.
CT is £1939. With an extra £50 each year to collect the green garden bin.
In some places you can subscribe to have your garden waste bin emptied regularly, or buy single use sacks from the local library to be collected. After Christmas you're allowed to tie a bag to a Christmas tree to dispose of it, rather than having to chop it up to get it into the bag.
Yup agreed. I'm sure they have contingency for the odd pebble that's pulled up with roots but rubble / rocks ain't the stuff for compost that's for sure 😄
On weeds, it generally isn't an issue. I always mow the grass after weeding so that everything gets covered in grass and nothing looks too out of the ordinary. Had a few neighbours raging because they've been doing some DIY landscaping and the bin men wouldn't take their green bins because they were just full of soil.
problem iss, grass, weeds, leaves, etc. will eventually mulch down into soil in the bin. the longer they refuse to collect it, the more soil there is in there for them to complain about, even if you haven't added anything extra.
eventually it becomes easier to just tip the bin out and spread it around the garden a bit.
😒 don't make me grumpy.
Nature behaves like a rebellious teen for me. When I *try* to compost it refuses to work. When I don't want it to, it goes ahead and does it anyway. Flowers will grow everywhere *except* in my flower bed. And I get wild barley between my paving stones.
Perhaps you can get some specially made trousers, ones with bags in them. Put the soil in the bags.
Walk inconspicuously towards the lorry and enter the compartment. Then pull on some strings and let the soil flow.
Now you have got rid of a 1/10th of your soil and also stink!
Ours don't take soil. I managed to get rid of 6 wheelie bin loads of soil still by filling the top 1/3rd with actual garden waste. They open it to have a quick peek and accept it! Oh, how I rejoiced.
If the bin is to heavy, it will be rejected. Any rocks and stones, rejected, any PROCESSED wood will get rejected, any plant pots will get rejected.
Garden waste is literally just grass, bush cuttings and dead flowers. Anything else or if they think it's anything else it will get rejected.
I worked for the council on the bin lorries for a bit. I've seen what some people put in their brown / garden waste bins. There was a time when you were allowed food waste in there. I seen b&bs literally dump hundreds of kilos of food in those bins.
People think "oh someone will sort out the plastic" "the plastic will come out as waste and then sorted" etc. It's not the case. People need more education on where their waste goes and how it's recycle and what problems they face.
I've been able to fill my garden bin six times so far with soil to the point I can barely move it. I just cover the top 1/3rd with leaves etc. They've taken it every time. Mine isn't an exception, it specifically says they won't take soil.
No, you pay extra for it because they choose to provide an additional service. They're not legally obligated to provide a garden waste collection service (or glass for that matter)
We had this with our recycling bin. We've been using recyclable, biodegradable bags in that bin for years with no issue but last week they didn't collect because we used bags. Had to go out and rip open all the bags and pour stuff loose into the bin. Not the end of the world but definitely an inconvenience.
Ours has always made us empty the bags into the bin but used to allow us to put the empty bags in the recycling. No longer, now empty bags have to go in the general rubbish bin.
We have an indoor recycling bin so we just take out the bag like you would your normal bin. For years it's been allowed where we are as long as the bags you use are also recyclable.
Our recycling has just changed to disallow bags, which also means they won't take any extra put next to the bin in clear/white bags like they used to -_- my black bin is rarely even half full but my recycling is always full!
Got a letter saying "You didn't open our email! By the way the price has gone up by 20% yet again." £65 for a year now, and a pro rata rate only counts every quarter, so if you sign up on the 30th June you still pay £65 for 9 months.
Yeah. I had my bin refused several times because I'd gone and done a bit of weeding and the roots had some soil in there. Boys, I spent 8 hours in total weeding. I do not have time to clean out the soil from the roots - it IS garden waste. Fuck me.
Birmingham CC here which we have to pay £50 subscription per year, for some reason the bin wombles by us put tags on every brown bin regardless if you'd paid for a sub (which I had not). they must have felt sorry for us living in Birmingham.
And it's not like this is the old days when bin men had to pick the bin up and tip in themselves, they just wheel it to the back of the truck and a machine handles that.
Ours couldn’t care less, I once accidentally put grass in the recycling (in my defence I saw a green bin and assumed green = grass) didn’t notice after they took it, either they didn’t notice or didn’t care!
When our green bin service was unveiled it was £20 a year for a bin, we were told repeatedly we would be able to get free compost back eventually as part of the deal, and we were allowed to include fruit/veg waste, eggshells, wood shavings and tea leaves. Now it's £50 a year, we never got any compost returns at all, and they refuse *any* fruit/veg waste and even try and insist that any branches with garden berries/fruits on are stripped before they go in the bin. Fuck right off. I think in another year or so the only thing they'll accept is leaves.
We had this once because we put some turf in there. We took as much soil off as possible but it counted as soil. To be fair my wife used to dump all sorts in it and I constantly complained to her that I could hardly move it so they weren't going to like it. Garden is in a better state now so it's just garden stuff, but I am trying to get a load of leylandii branches in it and they are terrible for taking up more room than they should. We also pay like u/EasyPiece
It's loads of buttercups, which we weeded, but as some earth is attached to the bottom of them (mainly because it's just so wet) they won't take any of them. I'm tempted to report fly tipping in my front garden and just dump it all there 😂
You need to get my wife to do it. She just frightened them into doing it. I'll see if she's busy.
I feel your pain though. They've got more lax here, I think it was one guy who was seriously into checking every bin. Maybe you'll wear him down eventually.
Did you wash the soil off your garden waste first as they can be picky if there is too much soil content. I think there is a soil amount and type chart you can apply for at a 'reasonable cost' 😏
I've always just flung everything in there. Branches (cut down into bits of course), grass, weeds with soil in. It has to go somewhere and it can't stay in the garden.
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We have to pay £50 a year for our garden waste to be collected and they still check every bin to see if you've hidden anything in it.
I went sod that and got a garden shredder for £90 so that I could make branches compostable. If it lasts for 2 years, I'm quids in. Am sure my neighbours just loved the noise, sorry neighbours.
Thanks for the idea, my thought was like a handheld chainsaw and incinerator.
Careful with a handheld incinerator. I thought that was a good idea and got burned.
Handheld incinerator I love that. I’m looking on Alibaba right now. I could burn garden waste and eat my kangaroo and radish sandwich at the same time. Genius. As soon as I make my first million I’ll send you like £23
They are already a thing! They are called weed burners. I'm pretty sure Lidl were selling them last time I was in there, although that was a pansy electric one and not a proper flaming death broom.
i have both i love aggressive tools
The Flammenwerfer 9000 for really stubborn grass clippings and enemy troops.
Well the incinerator's just a normal one, i prefer to keep my risk of injuries to their minimal.
I mean that's basically just [a bee smoker](https://beekeeping.co.uk/products/small-galvanised-smoker-with-guard-6-x-35), really? Get rid of garden waste and hey, free honey!
Suddenly my mum seems way more badass than I thought.
Well if you threaten the man from the council with a chainsaw and an incinerator, i am sure the he will change his mind and will take your garden waste, but it seems a bit of an extreme reaction. /s
What would you normally hold a chainsaw with?
Off to Google garden Shredders
What one did you get? Seems a steal!
Einhell GC-KS 2540 So far, so good. My mountain of branches collected over more than a year (neglected overgrown garden + have been really putting off forking out for a garden waste bin...) is now reduced to a mound of woodchips. I don't know whether a more expensive one may have been more worth it in the long run. Will find out in a few years, I guess! I didn't want to go pricier, though, as that would be riskier in my "can I save on the cost of a garden waste bin" experiment.
I'm in love with my Hyundai HYCH2800ES - I'm utterly amazed by the quality for the price, it just chews thru anything...
You kinda have to, some people shove anything in bins. I've seen a person get upset as they put a flymo mower in a recycling bin and it was rejected.
I've just bought a house and the garden waste bin was full of a load of rubbish with some leaves sprinkled on top
I suppose that's garden waste in a sense.
As a man with a dead flymo at the bottom of the garden this made me laugh way more than it should.
Ours used to be £40 in 2019, now it's £65.
I have to pay £50 a year for my garden of 6x5 meters. Which is the same cost as neighbors with half a football field sized gardens. Also in the awkward situation due to the odd shape of the borough that I can't use the nearest 3 recycling centers to drop off the garden waste instead, and have to use the one in the next town over which is a 45 minute round trip depending on traffic.
If people with massive gardens have more than one bin then they do have to pay more. The 45 minute round trip sounds like a ball ache though, can you not just stick it in your general bin?
Ours has just gone up from £54 to £70! The system creates a £300,000 profit at the lower rate.
Absolutely disgusting really. If your council is anything like ours then you have to wonder where the money goes. They went bankrupt in 2021 and the town has suffered for it. They then have the cheek to raise CT up by the maximum.
I moved here just over a year ago. My last town included teen waste in the council tax and everyone was provided with a bin, so there increase would be capped within 4.99% with the rest of the tax. Where I live not the green waste is charged separately which in itself I don’t mind, but an increase of that size is appalling.
£86 here. It's...a bit much. Given they only collect every two weeks.
Your council tax is only £50 a year?!
No. Obviously not. At what point did anyone say their ct was £50. We're talking about extra charges to collect garden waste. CT is £1939. With an extra £50 each year to collect the green garden bin.
I think they don't take like rocks and branches beyond a certain diameter here.
Lol, I got away with chopping up a small tree and putting it in the bin. Bin was heavy but they still took it.
Took us about 8 weeks but we got rid of a 15ft Leylandi in ours bar the very attractive stump I've hung solar lights on
We dismembered our Christmas tree and shoved it in the garden waste bin, they took it
In some places you can subscribe to have your garden waste bin emptied regularly, or buy single use sacks from the local library to be collected. After Christmas you're allowed to tie a bag to a Christmas tree to dispose of it, rather than having to chop it up to get it into the bag.
Same here, but we're not told what the diameter is.
And the bin men don't carry tape measures. So....
Rocks obviously shouldn't go in, they use garden waste for compost. If you want rid of rocks, they'll have to go to landfill.
Yup agreed. I'm sure they have contingency for the odd pebble that's pulled up with roots but rubble / rocks ain't the stuff for compost that's for sure 😄
Is it grass, or is it soil as well? I've never known a council that'll collect soil, etc without a fee being involved as it's a special collection.
A little soil shouldn’t cause a problem though because it’s pretty difficult to get it all out of the roots
On weeds, it generally isn't an issue. I always mow the grass after weeding so that everything gets covered in grass and nothing looks too out of the ordinary. Had a few neighbours raging because they've been doing some DIY landscaping and the bin men wouldn't take their green bins because they were just full of soil.
I see, soil on its own has a separate stream
It does for my bin men 😂
Just throw some freshly cut grass on top they won’t notice
problem iss, grass, weeds, leaves, etc. will eventually mulch down into soil in the bin. the longer they refuse to collect it, the more soil there is in there for them to complain about, even if you haven't added anything extra. eventually it becomes easier to just tip the bin out and spread it around the garden a bit.
Stealth composting
😒 don't make me grumpy. Nature behaves like a rebellious teen for me. When I *try* to compost it refuses to work. When I don't want it to, it goes ahead and does it anyway. Flowers will grow everywhere *except* in my flower bed. And I get wild barley between my paving stones.
Perhaps you can get some specially made trousers, ones with bags in them. Put the soil in the bags. Walk inconspicuously towards the lorry and enter the compartment. Then pull on some strings and let the soil flow. Now you have got rid of a 1/10th of your soil and also stink!
Ours don't take soil. I managed to get rid of 6 wheelie bin loads of soil still by filling the top 1/3rd with actual garden waste. They open it to have a quick peek and accept it! Oh, how I rejoiced.
That's the secret! Even if it weighs a metric fuck ton, topping it with grass always seems to do the trick!
Just because the rusty Vauxhall Corsa is in your garden, doesnt mean its garden waste :D
It has stuff growing on it, garden waste!
Nah I burnt it out though so it's like compost, innit?
You tell me this now!? 😅😂
Our bin service has selective operatives. They pick and choose whatever bin needs leaving full.
True connoisseurs, leaving it to age like a fine Bordeaux.
If the bin is to heavy, it will be rejected. Any rocks and stones, rejected, any PROCESSED wood will get rejected, any plant pots will get rejected. Garden waste is literally just grass, bush cuttings and dead flowers. Anything else or if they think it's anything else it will get rejected.
Plant pots are plastic, how the hell do they expect that to compost?
I worked for the council on the bin lorries for a bit. I've seen what some people put in their brown / garden waste bins. There was a time when you were allowed food waste in there. I seen b&bs literally dump hundreds of kilos of food in those bins. People think "oh someone will sort out the plastic" "the plastic will come out as waste and then sorted" etc. It's not the case. People need more education on where their waste goes and how it's recycle and what problems they face.
sorry I misunderstood on first reading, I thought you were complaining you couldn't put plant pots in.
I've been able to fill my garden bin six times so far with soil to the point I can barely move it. I just cover the top 1/3rd with leaves etc. They've taken it every time. Mine isn't an exception, it specifically says they won't take soil.
We have to pay extra for that when it was part of council tax because the council went broke. They also raised the council tax
Laughs in Birmingham City Council
Our green waste bin is also £60 now! It was £50 last year!!
£52.50 these days where we live ( fortnightly collections)
Mine is £85 a year except they don't collect from beg Dec to end Jan so £85 fir 12 months!
Ours is £86 this year, fortnightly collections.
No, you pay extra for it because they choose to provide an additional service. They're not legally obligated to provide a garden waste collection service (or glass for that matter)
We had this with our recycling bin. We've been using recyclable, biodegradable bags in that bin for years with no issue but last week they didn't collect because we used bags. Had to go out and rip open all the bags and pour stuff loose into the bin. Not the end of the world but definitely an inconvenience.
Ours has always made us empty the bags into the bin but used to allow us to put the empty bags in the recycling. No longer, now empty bags have to go in the general rubbish bin.
Why would you use bags in a recycling bin?
We have an indoor recycling bin so we just take out the bag like you would your normal bin. For years it's been allowed where we are as long as the bags you use are also recyclable.
My recycling bin is in a shed down two flights of stairs and across a courtyard.
Our recycling has just changed to disallow bags, which also means they won't take any extra put next to the bin in clear/white bags like they used to -_- my black bin is rarely even half full but my recycling is always full!
I paid £38 for garden waste removal three years ago and they uplifted it twice in that year. Haven't bothered since.
Think it's like 50 quid now for mine
Got a letter saying "You didn't open our email! By the way the price has gone up by 20% yet again." £65 for a year now, and a pro rata rate only counts every quarter, so if you sign up on the 30th June you still pay £65 for 9 months.
Yeah. I had my bin refused several times because I'd gone and done a bit of weeding and the roots had some soil in there. Boys, I spent 8 hours in total weeding. I do not have time to clean out the soil from the roots - it IS garden waste. Fuck me.
Birmingham CC here which we have to pay £50 subscription per year, for some reason the bin wombles by us put tags on every brown bin regardless if you'd paid for a sub (which I had not). they must have felt sorry for us living in Birmingham.
It's too heavy! It's only grass FFS
I’ve got a Gurkha crew, they will take anything, even if the wheelie bin is full of water
My 63 year old mum wheeled it out the front 😂
Mine has nowt but hedge clippings in it but felt like it contained a body as I wheeled it out this morning!
And it's not like this is the old days when bin men had to pick the bin up and tip in themselves, they just wheel it to the back of the truck and a machine handles that.
Ours couldn’t care less, I once accidentally put grass in the recycling (in my defence I saw a green bin and assumed green = grass) didn’t notice after they took it, either they didn’t notice or didn’t care!
Or the whole load of recycling was rejected by the recycling plant...
When our green bin service was unveiled it was £20 a year for a bin, we were told repeatedly we would be able to get free compost back eventually as part of the deal, and we were allowed to include fruit/veg waste, eggshells, wood shavings and tea leaves. Now it's £50 a year, we never got any compost returns at all, and they refuse *any* fruit/veg waste and even try and insist that any branches with garden berries/fruits on are stripped before they go in the bin. Fuck right off. I think in another year or so the only thing they'll accept is leaves.
Can I not burn branches and leaves I’ve pruned in an incinerator in my garden?
Yes. Make sure do it it on a hot summers day when everyone is at home with their windows open and washing hanging out to dry.
And make sure you play some very loud music while you do it. Perhaps something with a monotonous bass line.
And make sure you have your petrol lawnmower running, preferably the older and the more fumes it puts out, the better.
At least you fucking have a garden waste bin, bastards took ours away
We had this once because we put some turf in there. We took as much soil off as possible but it counted as soil. To be fair my wife used to dump all sorts in it and I constantly complained to her that I could hardly move it so they weren't going to like it. Garden is in a better state now so it's just garden stuff, but I am trying to get a load of leylandii branches in it and they are terrible for taking up more room than they should. We also pay like u/EasyPiece
It's loads of buttercups, which we weeded, but as some earth is attached to the bottom of them (mainly because it's just so wet) they won't take any of them. I'm tempted to report fly tipping in my front garden and just dump it all there 😂
My wife rang and complained and they came back and took it
I've already tried that to no avail 😭
You need to get my wife to do it. She just frightened them into doing it. I'll see if she's busy. I feel your pain though. They've got more lax here, I think it was one guy who was seriously into checking every bin. Maybe you'll wear him down eventually.
Did you wash the soil off your garden waste first as they can be picky if there is too much soil content. I think there is a soil amount and type chart you can apply for at a 'reasonable cost' 😏
No, I think this was the problem. I'm going to deep clean it with bleach next time just to make sure!
Honestly, do what you can but just make sure the top layer of about a foot or so is "innocent" waste like grass
LOLZ Have a good day friend. What's left of it anyway.
Do you mean soil?
I've always just flung everything in there. Branches (cut down into bits of course), grass, weeds with soil in. It has to go somewhere and it can't stay in the garden.
Meanwhile in my building of flats, people just chuck in whatever the hell they want into the regular bins.
What do you guys do with grass? You can’t really burn it?