[Closed] Bin Men - you have one job to do.

They get paid around 30k

*applies for bin man job where on_and_on lives

they are so busy and so pushed to finish that they have to run/jog/trot to keep up with the truck so they drop the bins where they finish

IIRC, that's because of Job & Knock not because they have performance targets

Hoole chester long narrow streets of terraced houses, black bags left in huge piles at end of entries, one driver.collection operative to move about 200 bags along street, me stuck behind screaming idiot in bmw,who couldnt get past, after watching bin man/driver loading binbags into back of crusher, i got out of van and started helping them, they where so surprised, said many thanks and moved a hundred yards up road, stopped and repeated the same,bmw driver just sat there fuming after i suggested he help out.

you dont realise how heavy stuff is in bin bags, and some burst, and some have liquids in, by the stuff leaking from back of bin truck, huge respect to them.

There's 2 of us in our household and we struggle to even half fill a plastic bin bag a week, often we'll go 2 weeks between putting out refuse. We fill our green box though with glass, paper and metals every week. I don't understand quite how some people produce so much refuse.
Although from experience at work where we have a rubbish bin, a recycling bin and white/ coloured paper recycling - being generous, about 75% of people here can't work out what goes in which bin...

Only problem I have is that when our recycling bin is slightly overflowing they wont take it but they take the 8 bin bags of mostly recyclable waste from next door in the non recyclable collection. We had 0.5-1 bin bag per week as a couple a 1-2 now we have a baby.

You've obviously never watched the bin men in south Devon then. I can assure you those beys is in no hurry

I did a summer on the bins between travels. Hard work, round here there are no limits to bags put out. 6am start lifting 12 - 15t of horrible crap in searing heat, mainly running. Some crews were great, some were nasty. Same went for public, some had tea out every week, some would shout at you if their new empty black bags were not in the exact place. One lady asked us not to reverse into her vile cul-de-sac as the truck 'smelt'.
On the whole the career men were pretty depressed and agency staff pretty useless. If you have a complaint, do it via your refuse office at the local council, it will likely get dealt with (it does here) failing that, spend your free time getting worked up about something a bit more important.

There's 2 of us in our household and we struggle to even half fill a plastic bin bag a week, often we'll go 2 weeks between putting out refuse. We fill our green box though with glass, paper and metals every week. I don't understand quite how some people produce so much refuse.

Same here, when people get up in arms about their bins only being emptied every couple of weeks I can't really see why they care.

I can see it might be different if you have kids though.

Surprised no none has said it.........

It's a rubbish job really......

IGMC

I can see it might be different if you have kids though.

All the 'art and craft' they bring home from school has to go somewhere....

DrP

Here in north Sweden

Cool place reference dude !!

I wonder what the correlation is of those complaining about fortnightly collections and voting for brexit

Why dont you research it, something to do on those long dark nights.

Otherwise they'll walk back to the wagon, get a tag, walk back to the bin, place tag on hinge of bin that states either "overfilled" or "wrong items in bin" or "wrong plastics in bin" etc.

Locally, Calderdale council are doing a really good job.

hmmmmm, have to say the bin man that does mine is a grumpy ****er, and has a bit of a "jobs worth" attitude. I live alone and struggle to fill a bin, but leaves me 15-20 black bin bags every week. He had a right strop when I tried to give them back and put them straight into the bin...

Family of four here. Half fill our rubbish bin for its fortnightly collection.

Put out 6-7 bags of recycling every two weeks. And we are by no means fanatical about recycling every possible item.

they are so busy and so pushed to finish [list]by 9.15am[/list] that they have to run/jog/trot to keep up with the truck so they drop the bins where they finish

FTFY but ours are all sat in the caff eating bacon sarnies by 9.30

Family of four here. Half fill our rubbish bin for its fortnightly collection.

Put out 6-7 bags of recycling every two weeks. And we are by no means fanatical about recycling every possible item.

Not dissimilar here.

Two in the house, weekly collections alternate between rubbish and recycling (so each fortnightly). We've a full sized wheelie bin for crap, a 'blue box' for crap and two large sacks for paper and plastics.

On a collection, the recycling is full. The rubbish is barely half full.

Nothing against the bin men but where we live, the council send them out during rush hour, completely blocking up the narrow streets round here. And yes I have watched them do their job on many occasions whilst been stuck behind them while trying to get to work, and they walk very slowly, they don't trot around in a hurry like Junkyard's bin men do.

Where do you earn 30k as a bin person?! Ours are pretty good and take everything I put in whether bagged or not. Occasionally put my bin back next door but that's hardly a big deal. We get weekly bins and fortnightly recycling but I'd rather it was the other way round.

I was a binman for two summers and it was one of my favourite jobs. Any moany faced grey tops got their bins put back miles away on purpose. We ran the rounds so we could finish by 11am.

One person used to have a single carrier bag in their bin most weeks. I'd reach in to grab the bag and run to the next bin so the truck could make fewer stops, but they wanted their bin PUT ON THE TRUCK! They'd deliberately also put a bottle top or piece of paper in there so they could complain about their bin not being emptied properly.

I know their bin got eaten by the truck at least twice...I'm sure that did nothing to lower their stress levels!

As long as my bin's within sight I'll not be losing sleep. Who cares if it's put back where you left it? It's an arbitrarily-selected point on the pavement.

some councils in manchester and north wales are now going to 3 weekly collections of rubbish

Junkyard - lazarus

have any of you ever tried this job?

Sort of..

I did for two weeks, years back, I was working as a parkie for a local council and was asked to cover for two weeks on the bins.

Wages started at £7.00ph! The gang I worked with pretty much had to jog the whole shift, the abuse they had to put up with from drivers was unelivable! Good team spirit and the driver said the job was easier now that there was no splitting black bags to shift anymore.

I just remember been covered in dust stuck to my sweaty neck and back and painful feet that stopped me sleeping at night!

Going back to digging 8hrs in the park was a doddle in comparison, top respect to our binmen out there.

Every Monday we get our recycling collected and the recycling box thrown on to the drive adding another crack (to the box not the drive) and means when one of us comes home we have to leave the car in the road and get out to move the box before pulling on the drive.

Every other Monday they also collect our green waste. This entails emptying 1/3 in the lorry, 1/3 on the road, and leaving 1/3 in the bag so there is something to spill out when it is thrown back on the drive (also see above).

Every other Monday when they are not collecting the green waste they empty the big black smelly bin of nappies. This they usually manage ok as the contents are contained within a few black bin bags so more effort for them to scatter across the road. Also the big bin seen a little too heavy for then to manage to throw back on the drive. So it's left on the pavement, often obscuring access to the drive.

And don't get me started on going to the [s]tip[/s] waste recycling center 👿

The best thing in the world to my 2 1/2 year old is a road sweeper, followed closely by the bin Lorry. Great lads around here and deserve every penny.

They quite often have two jobs, cos theyte paid piss all and They rush because they're on ' job and knock', a highly questionable practice the unions choose to protect, so they can get to their second jobs as taxi drivers/ delivered very drivers etc. Two people from companies I've worked for are dead as a result of this practice. We don't value these people and the service they do all of us and the bin men don't decide collection regimes and a 180/240l fortnightly residual collection is plenty for a family of four, assuming you're not a grotesquely wasteful, idle get.

£30k? Possibly, pulling some serious overtime, about 8-9/hr for a loader 10-12 for a driver (paid per shift so 8x hourly typically) a lot are agency so get **** all in terms of pensions etc too

Interesting that you'll call out the union rather than the employer that offers terrible conditions.

The market innit. They get paid what the contractor bid for in 2008 (pre austerity) - 20%. A lot of collection contracts are making big losses hence a lot of consolidation and joint procurement exercises between councils. Most of the permanent staff are tuped so not being paid any less than they would be as a public sector employee, but will have squeezed in other ways. The contractors got to deliver a universal service for not a lot of money when you look at at what's involved. Not a defending emoyers particularly more we just don't recognise the work of public utilities (which this should be) we'd give up the protection from infectious disease and resource depletion before we surrendered our cars iPads etc.

Also the convenor and safety rep are usually long term employees so the current way of working is often what suits them and they're used to, they'll have spent years getting it to that point, its not a conspiracy people just resist change cos they've got their own view on it

Clackmannanshire has gone to 3 week bin collections...they seem to do a great job, but suspect the 3 week gap will cause issues.
Stirling appears to be good as well, but where I am apparently the streets are too narrow to get the recycling truck down, so they only recycle paper (the wee mini-artic trucks; ignoring the removal and delivery trucks that do fit down these streets daily!). We go to the tip with our recycling when the car is full, so it isn't just thrown away in landfill.