When Is Bins ? - A Light-Hearted Look at our Domestic Refuse Collection System

 As one of the foremost and incisive questions of our age, "When is Bins ?" deserves some thought…and hopefully a reliable solution for the afflicted (i.e. most of us!).

In days of old, life was much simpler when it came to getting our rubbish collected….

Most of us had just one dustbin - we put it out for the dustmen (as we affectionately referred to them in those days) on the same day each week, and with any luck it got collected the same day. 

Life is much more complicated nowadays when it comes to dealing with our domestic waste.

The advent of recycling and climate change awareness, was generally a good move given our profligacy with the earth’s resources over the last 100 years, and came none too soon. But it has led to a multiplicity of schemes for collecting, sorting and processing of our domestic waste, with very little standardisation between collecting agencies. The real ‘killer’ when it comes to the poor householder, though, has been the change to fortnightly rather than weekly collections.

What this did was to make it essential to remember in which week of the 2-week cycle a particular collection fell…and then put out the right bin in good time for the collection (usually occurring at crack of dawn or even before in winter!) 

You might think this procedure should be relatively easy once you got used to it…but it isn’t. 

Many’s the time I’ve seen anguished neighbours puffing up the road with a full recycling or general waste bin desperately trying to catch the attention of the receding bin-lorry's driver because they’ve forgotten that week was their collection week…for that particular bin. And the knowledge that your bin won’t get collected again for a whole fortnight can be a bit of a facer if it’s     a) already stuffed full and b) starting to ‘mature’ nicely in the summer heat.

Most of us have adapted to life’s increasing complexity in this area by devising a strategy of some sort to help us remember which bin goes out when, and usually manage to put out the right bin on the right day…until something crops up to disrupt our routine and makes us forget. Another issue, of course, is those inevitable bank holidays, when collections get rearranged and the timing of the visits goes somewhat awry….and then there’s the summer holidays when we’re away from home and can't put the bins out ourselves. 

The concept of domestic waste collection can now reasonably be said to 'cover a multitude of sins' (or should it be bins ?!).

Could things be made a bit simpler ?

If local authorities were to collect general waste weekly, this might help somewhat. You would know you were due a collection every week, and could at least guarantee your general waste (generally the smelliest bin in summer) wouldn’t pile up. You could also use it to 'sneak in' some of your recycling waste if the bin was overflowing. Sadly, LAs are all acutely short of cash nowadays so there is very little likelihood of a return to the balmy days of weekly collections for any of the bins. Neither is it likely that they will combine recycling and general waste into a single collection, since this would require 2 bin lorries visiting at the same time. Bin days in our area certainly demonstrate that it's difficult enough accommodating one lorry in our modern car-park-like side-roads nowadays, let alone two at once. Garden waste is always likely to remain on a separate schedule, given it's usually a subscription-based collection in most LA areas and is normally dealt with by separate agents.

Assuming we retain at least two separate collections, with approx. 14-day collection frequencies, with an optional additional garden waste collection, how can we find a way of remembering when the days fall ? 

One solution which I devised for my own use, having gotten thoroughly fed up trying to keep track of things 'ad hoc',  is to use the power of modern spreadsheet packages such as MS Excel to generate a list of dates for the whole year. If this is done at the beginning of each year, it can be printed out as a matrix and used throughout the year. The software comes as part of an online calendar and diary package designed to capture everything from future appointments to brief diary summaries for those who want to record their day to day life events, past present and future. The list of refuse collection dates can be transferred to a wall planner-style printout and printed as an A4 sheet to stick on your fridge door. All you need to tell it is the first collection date in the new year and the frequency for each collection (usually 14 days) and it will do the rest.

You can download the Excel workbook file and try it for yourself using thislink. Please read the instructions on the worksheet labelled ‘Info’ before using the workbook to ensure you get the best out of the package. It should run happily on Excel versions from 2010 onwards, but you will need to enable macros for the buttons to work. You’ll find the refuse collection dates generator on sheet ‘Notable Dates’. 

The e-diary is set up for all calendar years up to 2038, starting with 2025, so if you decide to start using the e-diary this year to record events, there's ample time (and space!) to build up your 'life's chronicle', before you start writing your memoirs…you can even search the whole diary across the years for anything of note.

Returning to the subject of waste collection, anyone interested in finding out more about what actually happens to our recycling waste in UK can check out the recycling articles I've posted on our local community fridge’s website.

Wishing you all happier bin collections for 2025….

First published 1.1.25