Opinion : Are you keeping your green wheelie bin warm in the cold weather?

Regular readers will know that I am not a great fan of the newfangled wheelie bins.

Now it seems the recent spell of cold weather is causing problems emptying green bins that are frozen in the cold weather.

According to an article that appeared on the Wycombe District Council website today entitled ‘Frozen green waste‘ the ‘sudden drop in temperature has resulted in some garden waste freezing inside the green wheeled bins. This is preventing us from emptying bins that are frozen.‘

The article goes on to advise residents to ‘help by loosening the materials inside the bin before presenting it for collection‘ and ‘If you are able to keep the garden bin in a garage or shed, this can also help prevent the waste freezing‘.

Do they really expect everyone to shake their bin to loosen it’s contents before putting it out?

Surely there’s a major flaw if the bins have to be kept in a warm garage or shed so the contents don’t freeze?

What ever next? Maybe we will see residents keeping the bins in their living rooms beside a nice warm fire and wrapping them with blankets when they are put outside on the pavement?

Perhaps residents should chuck a cup of cocoa in their green bin before going to bed and pour a plate of porridge in on the morning of emptying to keep it warm?

It seems the green bins are very high maintenance things to look after.

Considering the gardens aren’t growing at this time of year it would be better to abandon the green garden waste collections until early March thus saving the Council taxpayers money which could be put to better use, for example the restoration of weekly black bin collections.

Is anybody actually using the green bins even in the height of summer? The green bin collection scheme is rolled our virtually all over Wycombe yet on green bin collection day very few bins are put out on the pavement for emptying. Perhaps the bins are shy too and don’t like to be seen in public?

Has anyone actually worked out the cost/benefit of the green bin scheme? It may tick all the boxes when assessed for it’s green credentials but ‘being green’ is so 1990’s. I for one certainly feel that time has moved on and the mad-cap environmental schemes of yesteryear need to be reviewed.

I say give us back our weekly black bin collections, their far more useful and we don’t have to mollycoddle the black bins by keeping them warm in the colder weather.

What do you think?

*My next blog will be published on Friday evening around 8pm here on the WycombeToday.com website.