£40 a year green tax

About 15 years ago we had a rat in the garden. This year we had rats. We put poison down and we haven't seen them soon. Our next door neighbour has started to keep chickens and I think that is the cause of this year's problem.

Croydon Council collects green waste from April till November, after which time it considers that nobody needs it - even though most of the leaves aren't down till well after that time. And of course nobody in their right mind does any winter clear-ups or pruning, do they? [h'mm]

We don't pay extra for this collection but I'd willingly pay an annual charge if it meant year-round collection. As it is, we have to take it all to the local recycling centre ourselves - which is fine when we're both fit and well, but DH has a bad back and isn't able to lift heavy stuff and I can only manage moderately heavy sacks.

We have our own green food waste compost bin into which we put vegetable matter and this goes into our main compost bin at the bottom of the garden, along with grass clippings and torn-up egg cartons etc.

Croydon makes excellent 'Croypost', which is free (originally the rule was that it was there for the taking to any resident who brings a bag or two of green waste to the recycling centre, but nobody seems to check any longer).
As to rats....we've seen one burrowing into our compost heap (at the bottom of our fairly large garden). And there are no animal products or cooked foods there. I like to kid myself that it was just the one, but I know that is unlikely to be the case. However, they don't bother us, so we leave them alone!

Never ever put animal food waste in compost- only vegetable matter if you want to avoid rats and other kritters. BTW one of the easiest ways to include layers that will not allow compost to turn to yucky mush- is to wet and tear up corrugated cardboard in between lawn cuttings.

With pernicious weeds, I bag them and leave them to rot for a few months before adding to compost- or take them to the council compost centre- as they compost huge amounts, the extreme heat kills all weeds and seeds.

Well, I tried to do my bit for the environment by composting everything and I just ended up with rats which upset the neighbours [I wasn't too chuffed about it, either] .

I don't waste much food either, so I don't miss having a smelly food bin in the corner of my conservatory (it was better there than in the kitchen, but it is just as well I am not using it now that the weather is so warm)

I do compost most stuff, Elegran, but I don't like putting pernicious weeds in my own bin, or even the dreaded alchemilla mollis, and I have a lot of woody prunings that would take forever to compost, I think.

We don't have separate waste food bins - but then the amount of food I waste is minimal.

Elegran - that's shocking! Truly! I do hope you reported him!

You are probably right, Jane It just seems so much more than composting it yourself for nothing (nothing except time and backache, that is)

I have stopped using the food waste backet, since I twice watched while a binman emptied the contents into a bin - the first time it was the garden rubbish bin (fair enough, it will compost down, but we have been told not to put our food waste into it) the second time it was into the landfill bin.

In which case it may well pay to buy a shredder so you can use a lot less bags. You are all very lucky that green refuse is collected for you- here there is no collection at all for green waste- let alone for any waste. We can take green waste to a composting centre- all recyclables to recycling centre- and the rest to huge buried bins where we have to use a credit-card style card to open the lid- and then the bag is weighed and put towards our account per kilo!!! No wonder we recycle a much larger % here than in the UK

We yre lucky to have space to have 8 huge compost bins on the go all the time. BTW we can get free compost from local composting plants twice a year.

An area near us charges £40 or so pa for a large green binful of garden waste to be disposed of. Our council charges £10 pa per bag of garden waste, and we could fill 4 bags some weeks.

I don't think it's cheeky, Elegran.
I doubt if the council makes a profit, if they are selling their compost at £2 a bag, when you take into account the costs of removing the waste, making it compostable, composting it, putting it into bags and then delivering it to the households that want it.

I have no objection to paying for food waste bags, They are not expensive and I only use one a week. Some weeks I do not use one at all as all the food waste I have generated has been compostable.

Well we all pay for garden waste to be removed one way or another, whether it is included in council tax or not . Our local council collects garden waste and no doubt charges for in our council tax.

My council in NW London, next to Trevor's has not as yet thought about charging to remove our garden waste. I would hate to put ideas into their heads. The brown bin should be emptied weekly but recently it has been fortnightly. If a charge was made, I would have little choice as our local tip has recently closed and it is a journey to the next one.

Our council remove garden waste free, compost it and sell it at £2 a bag. Good compost is a valuable asset. Charging for removing it is pretty cheeky.

Northumberland County Council charge £24 per annum per green bin. The green waste is collected from March to November.
I have never regarded this as a tax, but payment for a service. It isn't compulsory, so how can it be regarded as a tax?
It saves me the bother of either taking the green waste to the tip or burning it. I think it's cheap at the price. The council recycle the green waste and make compost which they re-sell and have won an award for being so enterprising.

They say they take pairs of shoes-- but they don't

I don't understand why there are so many different ways of dealing with waste in the various local authorities. If it was all standardised no-one would get confused if they moved to a different area. In N.Somerset we have a wheelie bin for ordinary household waste, collected every 2 weeks, a brown bin for food waste, collected every week, green bins for recycling, collected every week and green bags for garden waste collected every 2 weeks alternating with the ordinary household waste.

There also doesn't seem to be any logic in what can be put out for recycling - yesterday I put some old clothes (in a carrier bag) in the recycling bin there was also a pair of old net curtains - the clothes were taken but the curtains left in the bin .

I'm also in the Vale of White Horse FlicketyB and I get cross that we have to buy our own biodegradable food bags

We don't have a green tax but with four compost heaps to keep going we only put out enough garden waste to make it worth their while coming down the farm road. The blue bin waste collection is more important to us so we don't want them to stop coming altogether.

If they introduce a tax we won't pay it because we won't be putting out any garden waste.

In the Vale of the White Horse, incidentally the top local authority for recycling, the charge is £25.

Charging for garden waste removal seems to be ubiquitous, you are lucky that Brent has held off so long.

Haven't seen any piles of green waste dumped by the road side here. I suppose those with very little garden waste will put it in the domestic rubbish bin and those with tones will take it to the tip if they do not want to pay.

We don't have a tax. We recycle our garden rubbish in a brown wheelie bin which is taken away by the council the same as the other bins. We use it for lawn clippings, light branches, dead plants and also food which they give us biodegradeable bags to put it in. It works very well.

There is a similar tax in S. Gloucester. I live in N. Somerset and as yet no such tax has been implemented, if it were I think I would probably pay it as it would be difficult to take it to the recycling centre myself, I certainly wouldn't dump it.