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Local lass · Calnetalk Mayor Joined: 05 Jun 2007 Posts: 3101 Status:

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/itn/2008...-stunned-by-bin-fine-dba1618.html

this guy has got a criminal record and a 225 pound fine for.....

having his whelle bin 4 inchs open.

just where are we living cloud cookcoo land.

they should come to calne nearly every house has a over flowed bin at some point in the year

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rosco · Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2008 3:19 pm Post subject:

We were talking at work about this one - the criminal record was his fault for not paying the fine once it was issued, but the initial fine sees stupidly excessive and OTT - it's a council issued one, not the police so not the criminal justice system per se, i.e. civil system but with the word justice totally missing I think! :shock:

GTB · Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2008 5:39 pm Post subject:

It does seem overly excessive with his punishment. It's funny how the courts can dish out large fines for mediocre crimes yet neglect the slightly more serious aspects of criminality. Roll eyes

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Bear · Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2008 9:40 pm Post subject:

What I find interesting about this is that I would bet that a lot of the waste in his bin was the result of overpackaging by retailers as is the case with most of us and yet no action is ever taken about the supermarkets or producers who wrap swede in plastic for example. What we should be doing is trying to ascertain why his bin was full and what with to get to the root cause of the problem

GTB · Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2008 9:55 pm Post subject:

This is a wide spread problem which has been caused in some cases by the councils themselves. Having rubbish disposal collections fortnightly instead of weekly means that there is an inevitable build up in rubbish despite people recycling what they can. The council will take glass, tin and newspapers but not plastic containers like margerine or milk - which if you dispose of them in the bin it takes up valuable space. If you want to recycle plastics you have to drive them down to your local recycling plant.

I am all for recycling but Bear has hit the nail on the head with the blame being pointed at the retailers. If you use the big supermarkets like Asda, Tesco, etc you are left with a lot of unwanted unnecessary packaging after your groceries have been packed away but if you shop at Aldi or Lidl's you are forced to buy carrier bags, which then (if your tight like me! :wink: ) makes you use a re-useable bag time and again. Their products don't have a lot of silly packaging on either - probably why it's so cheap??

So, to recap, recycling should start at the source of the problem not at the end of the supply chain.
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Geddi · Posted: Fri May 02, 2008 11:27 am Post subject:

Hey there. I like this one...

R R R - reduce, reuse, recycle. They are listed in this order to make a point to retailers and all. packaging is stupid these days, although some aspects are improving. You get lass of the blocks of polystyrene now than ever before, it's more cleverly shaped instead.

I have a problem with the local system which is geared by NWDC (not long now until they are gone ~ wahoo).

There is apparently a need for councils to get our landfill down by **% and yet they issue wheelie bins which hold about five times more than the recycle boxes! Then they only empty the black boxes once a fortnight and the wheelie bins once a week! D'oh! To cap it off, they don't recycle the two things I most want recycling and have most of - cardboard and plastics!

I burn the non-toxic paper on my open fire, compost all my veg peelings and such, buy local and organic produce as much as possible (local bananas anyone??) and recycle all the metal and glass I get. The rest goes into my wheelie bin. I could, I am reliably told, take my cardboard, batteries and plastic to the tip at Compton Bassett, but I don't have a car and even if I did have, ain't that adding to the CO2 as well?

It's getting better, but it could be a LOT better.

Oh yeah, as for fining someone for a four inch gap in his bin. From what I can gather the family had been warned and warned and warned and warned and warned ... and took no notice. They called the council's bluff, or so it seems. The law was obviously passed for a reason and a fine proposed to back up the law. The family involved took the proverbial and got a shock when the council finally acted. Should have been wiser really, there are plenty of bins around to drop a few bags in if needs be.. :wink:
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Democracy is dead.

rosco · Posted: Fri May 02, 2008 11:35 am Post subject:

Geddi · Posted: Fri May 02, 2008 1:03 pm Post subject:

Rosco - you're right, there is a lot more which can not be reused as there used to be. I remember gathering bottles up after adult parties as a kid. We'd take these to the local pub off licence and get the deposit back. Few bottles were broken in them days!

In the Netherlands and Belgium and possibly further throughout the European mainland even plastic bottles now carry a deposit of 25 cents. This is about 15p or so and it makes a huge difference to both litter and recycling efforts. (stories recently about plastic litter increases on beaches over the last 30 years).

There has to be better ways to do these things and there are. Most of it is suppressed by the industries most likely to get affected by it. Was it Ford who supposedly bought and shelved a technology for resolving fuel for cars?

There is a campaign which has been running for about 20 years now: the Anti Shopping Campaign ~ Do it Yourself, Let it Stay on the Shelf, Don't Go Shopping Today.

This says it all, we buy stacks of stuff we don't need. We are a nation of shoppers now, instead of a nation of shop keepers as we once were known to be. We don't manufacture any more, we shop. China and Indonesia and Bangladesh make stuff and we buy it for three months or years and then bin it.
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Democracy is dead.