Council gets itself in a twist over blue bin
Our
local council employs a three-bin system for waste collection - a black bin for general waste, a blue bin for
dry recycling and brown bin for compostable waste.
It’s a good system and after 22 years we have it nailed. But god forbid if one of your bins is damaged, as happened to us recently.
Our blue bin was damaged by, we can only assume, the lorry mechanism one collection day. It was in perfect condition when we put it out – but had a large split down the side when we retrieved it later that day.
I said to SWMBO that it will be a simple job to get it replaced. Eh, no.
My first call to the council’s customer services department was later that same day – I was told it would take about a week to replace it with a new bin and we should leave it out in the road. We did, with a note attached saying it was a damaged bin awaiting collection. Some village people don’t like it if you leave a bin out on a non-bin day.
Two weeks later it was still there. Another phone call and I was told that damaged bins are collected from our village on a Friday and, contrary to our previous call, we would receive a repurposed bin rather than a new one.
Two weeks on and the bin was still there. Yet another phone call and we were told it would now be treated as a priority and we’d have the replacement “soon”.
Two more weeks, another phone call and the startling news that damaged bins were not being replaced. OK, I thought, it’s not the end of the world and I managed to do a repair job using Gorilla tape (other heavy duty tapes are available).
So it was something of a surprise when just a few days later SWMBO spotted a man walking down the drive. It was a council employee checking our house name – because he had brought us our new blue bin.
You couldn’t make it up.
It’s a good system and after 22 years we have it nailed. But god forbid if one of your bins is damaged, as happened to us recently.
Our blue bin was damaged by, we can only assume, the lorry mechanism one collection day. It was in perfect condition when we put it out – but had a large split down the side when we retrieved it later that day.
I said to SWMBO that it will be a simple job to get it replaced. Eh, no.
My first call to the council’s customer services department was later that same day – I was told it would take about a week to replace it with a new bin and we should leave it out in the road. We did, with a note attached saying it was a damaged bin awaiting collection. Some village people don’t like it if you leave a bin out on a non-bin day.
Two weeks later it was still there. Another phone call and I was told that damaged bins are collected from our village on a Friday and, contrary to our previous call, we would receive a repurposed bin rather than a new one.
Two weeks on and the bin was still there. Yet another phone call and we were told it would now be treated as a priority and we’d have the replacement “soon”.
Two more weeks, another phone call and the startling news that damaged bins were not being replaced. OK, I thought, it’s not the end of the world and I managed to do a repair job using Gorilla tape (other heavy duty tapes are available).
So it was something of a surprise when just a few days later SWMBO spotted a man walking down the drive. It was a council employee checking our house name – because he had brought us our new blue bin.
You couldn’t make it up.
