Garden waste collections

[BN9 BHA]

Good old Lewes, the most expensive. Luckily, it's not far to our local recycling area, so I just fill up a couple of plastic containers, and empty them into a green recycling skip. I've only got a postage stamp sized garden in any case.

No surprise that LDC is more expensive, are we one of the only areas in Sussex that doesn't get a wheelie bin for household rubbish?

I have a composter in my garden for grass cuttings, I also bought a dustbin type incinerator for burning weeds and cuttings, thought it would save trips to the tip, although the last time I lit it the fire brigade showed up someone reported that my roof was alight. Of course it wasn't and I was in my garden when I was burning the garden waste and I had a hose pipe to hand.

 

[Tubby-McFat-Fuc]

I assume i'm missing something here,
Our grass/hedge cutting go in the normal green rubbish wheelie bin.
Whats the benefit of paying for the additional collection?

You evil nasty man.
Don't you know the wheelie bin is for HOUSEHOLD waste only. Not nasty garden waste.

Do what I do. Dump all your cuttings on your bounding with the street on a windy night, and let nature take away your garden waste. (If its not windy enough, jusy give it a midnight boot into the street. It will soon disappear!

 

[Hastings gull]

£35 a year in Rother, yet £50 a year in Hastings.

Actually I pay £44.00 in Hastings, but your point is still valid. Great value if you have a large garden.

 

[The Birdman]

The council are offering brown wheelie bins for your garden waste, at a cost of £52 for fortnightly collections. It's a really useful service, I'm surprised it's taken this long to introduce it, but it seems a bit expensive. The same service is £35 in the Horsham area, so why is it 50% more expensive here?

It's a great success in Mid Sussex they have a waiting list and introduced a new pick up truck to help with the demand.

 

[Triggaaar]

It's a great success in Mid Sussex they have a waiting list and introduced a new pick up truck to help with the demand.

Is the £65 for weekly or fortnightly collection?

 

[Triggaaar]

I saw this advertised at Hove Tip (sorry, recycling centre). Agreed to share it with someone, went online to apply... only to find they don't offer this service in my part of Hove!!!

Maybe it's rolling out slowly - we just got the leaflet through the door, but I see others here have had it a while.

 

[Super Steve Earle]

HDC charge to sell you the bin as well!

Do they? I've never paid for one.

They do. Can't remember how much, but I had a letter this Spring offering the service. I phoned to take it up, then they hit me with the cost of the bin, which may have been another £40 odd. Either way, it was expensive enough to a) complain about it and b) not take up the service.

 

[Sussex Nomad]

How can anyone say it's worth the money? What do we pay council tax for?

 

[Stoichkov]

I'm not convinced that purchasing vehicles and then driving HGVs around the town, picking up garden waste and then transporting across the County for material that could otherwise be (mostly) taken care of by home composting is the way forward

Its just chasing a fairly pointless 'percentage of waste recycled' target.

It would make far more sense to work towards something more useful like trying to reduce the net weight of waste produced by household for example or something like that.

Like food waste innit - better to try to prevent it than simply collect and recycle it. Residents would benefit more from spending less at the tills on food than they ever can by dumping excess out in special caddies at the kerbside. That'll be the next thing though...

 

[Westdene Seagull]

Have I got something wrong?
And £35 in Horsham. So why is it so expensive here?

I have some inside information on this. Last year I was part of a residents panel that worked with City Clean around all areas of their operation. Garden waste came up and was discussed. City Clean were already in the process of designing the garden waste service. The £52 cost is to allow the service to breakeven. I can't remember the exact percentage that is required to breakeven but it needs around 40% of residents in the suburbs to take up the offer. The challenge in Brighton and Hove is that it has a far greater number of people concentrated in the city centre ( who obviously aren't going to want the service ) than in the suburbs. Something towns like Horsham don't have an issue with.

This means the take up per head of population will be lower than many other places. Personally I think £2 a pickup isn't too bad to stop me having to make a mess of my car and the petrol it would cost me to go to the tip. It's important that only the people that use the service pay for it - it's hardly fair that someone living in a central city flat helps pay to have the waste collected from my 100 foot garden. That said, I won't be taking up the service as I compost nearly all my garden waste.

 

[Triggaaar]

I have some inside information on this. Last year I was part of a residents panel that worked with City Clean around all areas of their operation. Garden waste came up and was discussed. City Clean were already in the process of designing the garden waste service. The £52 cost is to allow the service to breakeven. I can't remember the exact percentage that is required to breakeven but it needs around 40% of residents in the suburbs to take up the offer.

Thanks for that.

The challenge in Brighton and Hove is that it has a far greater number of people concentrated in the city centre ( who obviously aren't going to want the service ) than in the suburbs. Something towns like Horsham don't have an issue with.

I don't understand the logic of this. Brighton will have more people living in the centre, so they shouldn't need as high a percentage of people to take up the offer in order to have a similar number of people per km. Also I'd imagine fewer people in Brighton have a car, so they'd need the service more. Of course charging a lot more than they do in Horsham doesn't help.

It's important that only the people that use the service pay for it

Yes and no. As someone said previously, we all pay council tax and then the council does the things the council should do, and a lot of those things are for groups of people, not for everyone. If the breakeven price is £52 when 40% of people take it up, but more if fewer people take it up, subsidising the service a little could help.

it's hardly fair that someone living in a central city flat helps pay to have the waste collected from my 100 foot garden.

Oo get you

 

[The Albion Roar]

I have some inside information on this. Last year I was part of a residents panel that worked with City Clean around all areas of their operation. Garden waste came up and was discussed. City Clean were already in the process of designing the garden waste service. The £52 cost is to allow the service to breakeven. I can't remember the exact percentage that is required to breakeven but it needs around 40% of residents in the suburbs to take up the offer. The challenge in Brighton and Hove is that it has a far greater number of people concentrated in the city centre ( who obviously aren't going to want the service ) than in the suburbs. Something towns like Horsham don't have an issue with.

This means the take up per head of population will be lower than many other places. Personally I think £2 a pickup isn't too bad to stop me having to make a mess of my car and the petrol it would cost me to go to the tip. It's important that only the people that use the service pay for it - it's hardly fair that someone living in a central city flat helps pay to have the waste collected from my 100 foot garden. That said, I won't be taking up the service as I compost nearly all my garden waste.

I'd be astonished if as many as 40% of suburban residents take up the offer. Like you, many - if not most - people with a garden already do their own composting, as we've been encourage to do.

The only time I'd want a collection is if we've undertaken a major tidy up of the garden (branches, bushes), and there's just too much to compost. In which case, there are already garden waste firms who take that volume away for not very much.

That said, it's no bad thing that a garden/compost waste service is available, and if it's required on a regular basis by any given household, £52 a year isn't too shabby.

 

[Tim Over Whelmed]

Ours in Arundel costs about £70 a year, I think. Last year they would collect my bin because we had food waste in there, which were windfalls from the apple tree that had rotted whilst we'd been on holiday. After a debate about whether I'd buy half a tonne of apples and put them in the bin they were collected.