@steephill If I tried that I would be fighting my way through brash piles every meter.
We have two compost piles which contain all the kitchen waste, lawn mowings and vegetable garden waste. All the tree trimmings, sapling etc get dumped in huge piles and eventually burnt. They could go to the tip free but we do not have a trailer. We have piles ranging from a couple of meters in diameter up to 10m in diameter where a couple of elms were felled and all the branches left before we bought the house. that one is out of the way enough that it will simply be left. If I ever get a bucket for the tractor I will put some earth over it which will make it rot down some time this century.
I'm not in the UK so our system is a little different, I'm also rural so we have a different system again to the towns around here.
We get weekly general rubbish collection and once a month recycling which is limited to 7 bags/items so I can put out 7 car tires or 7 fridges or 7 bags of sorted recycling, or any combination. but to get that I have to remember to call 5 working days before the pick up date which we never do. On the flip side the tip is free open long hours including sat/sun and you can go at any time you like with a mobile app that will unlock the gate.
Garden waste collection fees come in last year at £35 for a brown bin + £30 for every extra brown bin fortnightly collection, I don't use mine that much but for rose cutting / perennial weeds / diseased plants etc and not forgetting the slugs and snails I chuck in there as well. I compost most of my own garden waste I quite pleased I compost and get something else at the end of the process.
As some of you may know or not I do garden maintenance for a living and its surprising how many people flat out refuse to pay for a brown bin just out of principle, not that they can't afford it but the usually reply is I pay more than enough in rates. Some clients have 4-5 bins which is quite an outlay
So if they don't have a garden waste bin it goes in bin liner for them to get rid of most likely goes in the general waste bin then to land fill . A bag of grass can weigh on so its costing the council more to get rid of ( I think they go off weight when going to land fill )
I can understand the argument that not everybody has a garden , but not everybody has 2+ general waste bins so do other tax payers who only fill half a bin be subsidising them who have more General waste bins or should they be paying extra as well ?
I don't have a home composting bin at the moment but I am going to get one. We do have free weekly collections of garden waste. They have to be weekly because waste food goes in the same green wheelie bin, but I wonder how long this will last - there was a proposal to charge last year but the council didn't approve it (for now...).
Environmentally, surely it's horses for courses? If I let the council take my garden waste away, you have to consider the extra fuel the bin lorry is burning (green waste is heavy), as well as the extra fuel I am burning going to a store to buy compost since I don't have my own. You also have to take into account that the bought compost comes in a non-recyclable plastic bag.
Home made garden compost is very different thing from bought potting compost and has different uses. We make a fair amount of garden compost which is used for mulching/soil improvement. However we still buy several bags of MPC and John Innes loam-based composts each year for pots and containers.
We use the fortnightly Garden Waste wheelie bin for which we pay around £50 p.a. IIRC for perennial weeds or those which have seedheads, thicker prunings, thicker brassica stalks etc as we don’t have a shredder. We don’t fill it to the top for every collection, but feel that the system works for us. Some neighbours club together and share a bin.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
I'm with you @Lyn. I'm fed up of the so called experts in councils/government etc preaching to everyone, and making folk with a conscience feel guilty about every s*dding thing they try to do. Let people home compost if they want to, let them try and help reduce their carbon footprint if they want to, let them drive their cars if they want to, let them fly on a plane to another country for a holiday, but stop making everyone feel they have to live in a cave and forage for berries in order to be 'correct'. Most gardeners try and do their best. It's all anyone can do.
It's a place where beautiful isn't enough of a word....
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
If every person in the UK went completely green from tomorrow, it wouldn't make a bit of difference. Those countries pumping out toxins , in the less advanced countries , have just finished talking at the climate conference and have yet again backed off from making the hard decisions . If they ,China and USA did half what was needed they would do as much in one week as the whole of the UK could do in a year.
I tried to find out up to date information on our council website to determine the actual cost of our green waste collection. Apparently Mid Devon likes to keep this a secret (until they send out a renewal notice, presumably) since I couldn't find the information.
I don't have a problem with a reasonable levy on green waste collection. I do have a problem with the local waste site charging stupid amounts of money for simple things for disposal. (A bag of garden stones that have been dug up are classified as "rubble" for which a premium has to be paid!) And then they grizzle about fly-tipping and the costs of clearing it up.
I'm a great believer in the saying "Don't let the best be the enemy of the good." If you can't do a lot, it's still worth doing what little you can. I don't how it helps the situation to say, my/our carbon footprint isn't as big as his/yours/theirs, so why should I bother?
When I worked on the post office counter, the other clerks laughed at me because I kept all the little plastic coin bags and took them back to the bank in my lunch break. Sue, they said, you can't single-handedly reverse climate change. My reply was Fortunately I'm not doing it single-handedly.
I've heard it said (I can't remember on what authority) that per capita energy consumption in the USA is eight times the global average, and having been there, I can believe it. But I don't think we are justified in blaming them and doing nothing ourselves. We needn't wait for the worse offenders to clean up their act before we start on ours. Change comes about for lots of different reasons, one of them is good people setting the right example.
Posts
As some of you may know or not I do garden maintenance for a living and its surprising how many people flat out refuse to pay for a brown bin just out of principle, not that they can't afford it but the usually reply is I pay more than enough in rates. Some clients have 4-5 bins which is quite an outlay
So if they don't have a garden waste bin it goes in bin liner for them to get rid of most likely goes in the general waste bin then to land fill . A bag of grass can weigh on so its costing the council more to get rid of ( I think they go off weight when going to land fill )
I can understand the argument that not everybody has a garden , but not everybody has 2+ general waste bins so do other tax payers who only fill half a bin be subsidising them who have more General waste bins or should they be paying extra as well ?
Environmentally, surely it's horses for courses? If I let the council take my garden waste away, you have to consider the extra fuel the bin lorry is burning (green waste is heavy), as well as the extra fuel I am burning going to a store to buy compost since I don't have my own. You also have to take into account that the bought compost comes in a non-recyclable plastic bag.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
I think £50.00 a week in rates should cover any waste disposal and won’t pay extra for it.
Ive seen RHS compost heaps, just like huge bays as big as a room.
I think they will continue to make compost in their gardens.
I wonder when these people that try to tell us that everything we do is bad, start looking at the bigger picture.
I get so annoyed😱😱😱😤
Let people home compost if they want to, let them try and help reduce their carbon footprint if they want to, let them drive their cars if they want to, let them fly on a plane to another country for a holiday, but stop making everyone feel they have to live in a cave and forage for berries in order to be 'correct'.
Most gardeners try and do their best. It's all anyone can do.
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
Those countries pumping out toxins , in the less advanced countries , have just finished talking at the climate conference and have yet again backed off from making the hard decisions . If they ,China and USA did half what was needed they would do as much in one week as the whole of the UK could do in a year.
Doesn't mean we should keep doing what we do, but sometimes you wonder why you bother
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
I don't have a problem with a reasonable levy on green waste collection. I do have a problem with the local waste site charging stupid amounts of money for simple things for disposal. (A bag of garden stones that have been dug up are classified as "rubble" for which a premium has to be paid!) And then they grizzle about fly-tipping and the costs of clearing it up.
When I worked on the post office counter, the other clerks laughed at me because I kept all the little plastic coin bags and took them back to the bank in my lunch break. Sue, they said, you can't single-handedly reverse climate change. My reply was Fortunately I'm not doing it single-handedly.
I've heard it said (I can't remember on what authority) that per capita energy consumption in the USA is eight times the global average, and having been there, I can believe it. But I don't think we are justified in blaming them and doing nothing ourselves. We needn't wait for the worse offenders to clean up their act before we start on ours. Change comes about for lots of different reasons, one of them is good people setting the right example.