Man given crimial record over wheelie bin

[0iD]

BBC NEWS | England | Cumbria | Father fined for overfilling bin

A father-of-four is left with a criminal record and fined for overfilling his wheelie bin by four inches.

Crass stupidity of the system, yet again

[Stringent]

If they are SO worried, make all packaging bio degradable. Simple.

[TheAnimus]

Serves him right, you can't just not show up in court.

Surely its simple as goto court, your honour they can in no way prove that the rubbish in question on x was mine, and not a fly tipper... case dismissed?

[TiG]

The point is it shouldn't get to court, overloading a bin by 4inches should not be monitored, there should not be people looking at this, It's an unneccesary role and a waste of time and money.

Yes not going to court was stupid, but lets stop the stupid things happening in the first place.

TiG

[TheAnimus]

Granted, but i'd imagine the council has worked out its cheaper to employ some numpties at 20k per year, than the cost of collecting all the excess refuse?

Even if its not, its no excuse not to goto court because you disagree, most often court is needed because the parties can't agree, each thinking their in the right and the other is been petty.

[MadduckUK]

where does it end then? five inches? SIX? before you know it people have seven inches open and the country has gone down the toilet

[lodore]

with only collecting rubbish every two weeks how can the bin not overfill?

[TiG]

1 Wheelie bin, 2 parents, 4 children, collected once a fortnight, I'm not bloody suprised its over the top.

As for TheAnimus's comment on the council. Having been to one recently for work, the amount of money i've seen used to look after the silliest little things astonishes me.

TiG

[0iD]

Same as my household, same collection period, but we don't have a problem with overfull bins because we do a lot of recycling.

[pauldarkside]

So if someone's (not necessarily this guy) already paying their council tax (which includes a percentage for refuge collection and disposal), recycles and puts out too much rubbish they're facing a fine? That's utterly obscene. They're not getting the service they're paying for and the service they get is inadequate.

The whole recycling system is a joke and the service you get depends on your post code; different standards depending on which district you live in; shipping plastics off to mainland Europe or China(!); bringing in fortnightly collection without offering/providing suitable provisions; the government's land fill tax not being recycled back to local councils so they can build alternative disposal methods; and so on.

There needs to be a complete shake up of what's being delivered by the supermarkets and manufacturers from whom we get the stuff in the first place. There's talk over blaiming supermarkets for providing buy one, get one free deals and the like, but in the case of frozen foods, for example, it benefits already strapped for cash families/consumers. The councils simply don't have the funds to deal with the waste, we don't have the space to dump it (Plymouth/South Devon is already trucking in loads of their rubbish to North Cornwall because they've run out of space) and the government doesn't have the balls to act and instead jumps on the bandwagon without actually doing anything meaningful.

No doubt many millions will be spent (read: wasted) discussing solutions and coming up with reports instead of getting on with solutions we already have; low cost alternatives are available for disposing of waste locally without having to ship it off (councils just need the funds); the government can legislate suppliers to standardise packaging (with the help EU if need be to at least make it standard throughout Europe).

I'll end my rant there because the whole subject of waste just pisses me off and the current way of dealing with it all is arse about face.

[Lucio]

If the council had instead chosen to levy a £20 "overfull bin" fee, chances are it'd have been paid without more than a grumble.

[Salazaar]

First I heard of it was from a neighbour who said someone had taken a picture of my wheelie bin, but I thought nothing of it.

Chances are that was the same neighbour who tipped off the council in the first place! I can't imagine that any council actively polices rubbish bin but if they get a complaint from another member of the public they are duty-bound to look into it. Unfortunately.

[beanbandit]

Totally OTT for filling up his wheelie bin. Just shows the complete downfall of common sense. Plus what a waste of tax payers time & money for even taking something so petty to court.

[greenalien]

Totally OTT for filling up his wheelie bin. Just shows the complete downfall of common sense. Plus what a waste of tax payers time & money for even taking something so petty to court.

I agree 100%. Whoever the officious official was who had this prosecution brought should be sacked for wasting Council Tax payers money.

[TheAnimus]

The thing is, am i the only one here who thinks its a good idea to force people to contribute less waste?

Providing a cost to dumping is a very fair and easy way of doing this, in a flat of 2 busy people, we barely produce 1/10th of a wheely bin, and don't do much recycling (thanks barnet council for been useless).

now to enforce this, taking a picture, and fining is a very cheap efficent way of doing it, if most people pay up, odds are it might even cover the cost of the scheme.

He didn't show up for court, enough said.

[TiG]

NO NO NO NO NO.

Its not efficent way of doing this, It shouldn't be seperated at homes, it should be done when it reaches the dump/recycling place in my opinion.

Develop technology to sort rubbish using a conveyer based system, Its a stupid way of doing things.

TiG