Tales of the Village - it's rubbish!

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Our district council recently had to introduce a new system for rubbish collection. The old system had been a benchmark for excellence when it was first introduced about 10 years ago, but had become too expensive to continue. We shouldn't grumble - the next nearest district council is bankrupt and the laughing stock of the country. They spent all their money on a new head quarters and loans to the town's football team which all disappeared in mysterious circumstances. When the new scheme was announced, people were furious. The old cycle was for weekly collection of food waste (in a small box) and recyclables and fortnightly collection for garden waste and household waste - one one week, the other the next. People didn't love it but they were used to it. The new scheme has reduced collections. Food waste - which goes to an anaerobic digestion plant - is still weekly but recyclables are now fortnightly and household waste is only once ever THREE weeks. We now have to pay £35 per year for our garden waste to be collected every two weeks. People were very angry - especially at the three-weekly collection of household waste. The main outcry was from people with babies in nappies and there is a special deal that they can have a larger bin but still only collections every three weeks. We're OK about it - it's not a big deal. There are only 2 of us (and 3 cats) in the house and our bins don't get very full. We also have a big enough garden to keep the bins away from the house so we can't smell anything but many people don't. We don't use the food waste collection at all - well why would we, we don't throw away food. We buy what we need and any left over veg goes into the soup maker or onto the compost heap. We don't eat meat and we eat what we cook - the leftovers go into the freezer. The recycling bin is getting a lot more focus as the only way to go three weeks between collections is to sort your rubbish a lot more than we used to. Our garden bin is ALWAYS full - and our extras go into the neighbours bins if they have space. In return we don't mind if they stick their excess recyclables or general waste into our bin. I've found the whole change very positive. My husband decided we'd only survive on three weekly collection if the cats stopped using litter so they went 'cold turkey' and pee outside in the garden (or other people's gardens - little demons). Most times our bins still have lots of space in them. But if you want to upset a village full of people, any kind of refuse collection change guarantees a heated response. How does rubbish collection work where you live?