Why Weekly Wheelie Bin Collection is Not Good

Whilst at first glance the UK’s government apparent U-turn on the going back to weekly wheelie bin collections would seem like a poor decision, yes there are many benefits, not just the obvious one’s either, like no longer struggling to fit two week’s worth of rubbish in to your bin, thus reducing the number of bags you have to carry down the drive and place at the side of your wheelie bin in the hope the refuse collectors take it with them.
The government has said the cost to local councils will be too high to provide a weekly bin collection service to all their residents, and you have to agree the cost whilst I have no idea how much that would be nationally, I can see that a whole new refuse teams and refuse lorries would be needed, great in theory, job creation nationwide but this would all need to be paid for by someone, rate payers perhaps?
Another relevant point that has not been highlighted much is the cost of changing all our wheelie bins, these would all be swopped for smaller ones, we won’t get such large wheelie bins with weekly collections so all the old ones would have to be collected from every house and new ones delivered in their place, again job creation but lots of lorries and fuel required.
Given that the majority of UK wheelie bins are produced in Germany some 600 odd miles away all these new bins would carry a fair size carbon footprint during their travels over land on the back of lorries burning high amounts of fossil fuels, not to mention the wear and tear on the lorries and their consumables such as tyres, brakes engine oil.
Ignoring for one minute the cost of wages and new refuse Lorries that need to be paid for and focus just on the environmental impact of the UK going back to weekly refuse collections the true cost to the planet adds up to quite an alarming amount, take the amount of oil used in manufacturing a plastic wheelie bin, add to this the oil being burnt in the factories producing the bins and then the oil burned by the lorries delivering the raw plastic material and then later the finished wheelie bins right from a factory overseas to your driveway in the UK.
Rinse and Repeat
The life span of your average wheelie bin isn’t as long as you might think, on average a wheelie bin has reached the end of its useful life after just 5 years, it then needs to be swapped for a new one, the old one collected and taken to a plastic recycling company who process the old broken wheelie bins back in to pellet form to start the whole process again, maybe even the recycled plastic is re-used in the next lot of bins.
My final point is to ask yourself a question, given that most of us in the UK either have two or sometimes 3 different wheelie bins at home would you really want to have to put the bins out on the bottom of your drive or on the pavement 3 times a week, once for each one?

The Wheelie Bin Travels

Wheelie bins travel a fair few miles in their lifetime, bear in mind that the life of a wheelie bin is a hard one, they get knocked about, kicked, lids get slammed and the then twice a month a lorry comes along and shakes it about trying to empty it of loads of rubbish.
So have you ever stopped to think how far a wheelie bin travels in its lifetime, well read on to find out more. The vast majority of wheelie bins in use today throughout the UK are made in Germany so roughly speaking that’s around 600 miles (Berlin to London). Once the wheelie bin arrives at the distribution depot they are then transported out typically to the local authorities or their respective agents, the distance here will vary dependent on where you live within the UK, for purposes of this article let’s say that’s another 200 miles to get your wheelie bin dropped off at your local council depot, the final part of this first stage in the life of your wheelie bin is the last few miles to your house, lets add another 30 miles to the tally and hey presto your new bin sits proudly round the side of your house having been loaded and unloaded several times and driven around 830 miles to get here.
Okay so the first part of a wheelie bins travels were pretty easy for it, what follows is where the wheelie bin has to withstand the punishment of twice monthly collections and all round general abuse we all through at our wheelie bins without a care or thought about respect for them.
A typical wheelie bin will have a lifecycle of around 5 years and based on an average twice monthly collection service will equate to be emptied around 130 times before your wheelie bin will reach the end of its useful life. Taking an average home and working out the distance from side of house to the road side typically could be 30 yards there and back roughly works out at an additional 4000 yards over its 5 year working life, which adds about 2 ¼ more miles to the running total of the distance your wheelie bin has travelled.

Life After Death For Your Wheelie Bin

Wheelie bins are made from plastic using a process known as injection moulding, the two main elements which are the head and body will be formed separately, and additional parts such as wheels, axle and hinges will of course be added to make a fully functional wheelie bin.
Because wheelie bins don’t exactly have an easy life and quality does vary between manufacturers UK/EU bins will be certified and tested to EN840 and an additional feature of quality wheelie bins is ultra violet protection which is highly beneficial as without this the wheelie bins exposed to sunlight go brittle much quicker and tend to split very easily as do the lower quality wheelie bins which often originate from China.
The number of bins that are replaced each year from damage and wear is considerable, 100’s of thousands of wheelie bins are replaced and rather than sending these bins to landfill they are collected by local authority’s and then passed to specialist plastic recycling companies.
Once the old or damaged wheelie bins have been collected by the plastic recycling specialists they need to go through a few steps prior to being recycled,
Step 1:
Washing, all the years of crud inside and outside needs to be removed, along with any stickers such as house numbers, all these stickers have adhesive behind them that needs to be removed prior to any recycling taking place.
Step 2:
Removal of the wheels, axles and hinges, basically all that a plastic recycler is interested in is the parts made from plastic, metal and rubber components would be stored separately and these would be collected by their respective recyclers.
Step 3:
At this stage the body and lid of the wheelie bin get dropped in to large shredders and comes out the other side as small regrind pieces of plastic, this regrind plastic is then tested and graded as to its composition. Regrind plastic is often re-used as is by adding a quantity to a mix with virgin plastic in the production run of a new plastic product, any that is not used will go on to the next stage in the recycling of plastic process.
Step 4:
This is the final stage in the recycling of plastic wheelie bins, here the cleaned granulated plastic is processed in to a recycled compound by melting and extruding in the form of pellets. These plastic pellets can then be used to manufacture a wide range of products, some of which could be more wheelie bins but equally likely is your new cars bumper could have been your tired old wheelie bin in a previous life.