Garden waste collection - annual licence

Tue 13 Feb 2018, 17:24

Where will they put the compost now the new Community Centre is there, it will make such a mess they used to pile it up on the waste land which is no longer there.

Tue 13 Feb 2018, 12:11

Every year the council drop off bags of composted waste at the Spendlove centre and you can just go down with a barrow and collect as much as you want.

Tue 13 Feb 2018, 11:48

Ask the council Alice

Tue 13 Feb 2018, 11:13

If that is true and it's so close - why do we have to drive 30 miles to drop off our extra green waste at Stanton Harcourt? What happens to it once it is composted? Can we buy it back? More questions than answers!

Mon 12 Feb 2018, 14:21

After collection, your garden waste is delivered to a composting site near Chipping Norton.

Mon 12 Feb 2018, 13:35

This is all interesting - maybe questions for the Sustainable Charlbury meeting with the County & District waste officers on 1st March at 8pm in the Corner House. The Council don't have to collect green waste - so it's a service we've all got accustomed to and now see as a right. It's right that we pay for these services - we make choices to have gardens which produce all our needs in compost and more besides. But when I pay for a service I expect a known service - how will I know how many bins I need unless I have a fixed level of service? When the council provide the service they see it as using spare capacity in their contractor's vehicles and workforce, until weather conditions force them to stop that service. So it is not a charge they are making for a service it is just an addition to the Council Tax. Perhaps that's a better way of seeing it. We know it's forced on them by years of capping so we're sympathetic and agree to pay. Green waste needs composting not expensive processing. 1,500 houses in Charlbury at £30 a bin - £45,000 per annum. Further income from re-sale of compost produced. 43,000 properties in West Oxfordshire average of 1 bin per property annual income £1,290,000. I think Worton Farm Oxford was the farm that used to compost the green waste from Oxford and then re-sell it to me at £2 a bag (that was 15 years ago). They could compost it faster than us because they had so much it got very hot. What happens to our green waste now? I shall ask.

Sat 10 Feb 2018, 13:12

Helen, you did say that, sorry - and thanks for your offer. We have enough already. :)

Sat 10 Feb 2018, 13:08

Rosemary, as I said in my first post, there is far too much to compost. We do compost enough for our needs, but the rest needs to be taken away. You are welcome to come and collect our surplus!

Sat 10 Feb 2018, 12:15

Helen, would it be possible for you to compost your fallen leaves - no waste, no transport, and a free load of nutritious leaf mould for the garden? I think it takes a while to break down, but that's nature for you!

Sat 10 Feb 2018, 10:53

We have signed up to the service, but agree that it is not satisfactory. We dragged a heavy bin down to the bottom of our drive for the last garden waste collection before Christmas - only to have it cancelled due to snow and to be informed it would not now be collected until 8th January - so the bin had to sit there looking unsightly for nearly 4 weeks as it was too heavy for me to drag back up the drive. It is actually easier to load the car and drive to the tip, but since Dean Pit was closed I agree that Stanton Harcourt takes too long and is too far away. We do end up going there in the autumn anyway when we have a huge amount of leaf litter to get rid of - far more than we can get into the bin or compost down. We still need some sort of replacement for Dean - there was once talk of something at Greystones, Chipping Norton - are there any plans for that?

Sat 10 Feb 2018, 10:20

I can see your point Alice, which is fair enough if you are depending on a private company to do the job. If the waste disposal was purely a business transaction I believe that it would be expensive and probably beyond anything that we would want to be charged.
I think that the council has a massive undertaking to keep up with the latest legislation and commitments to residents. They only get a percentage of the funding that's collected through local taxation (I'm hazarding a guess on this) which means that they are not being obliged to pay dividends to shareholders, am I right?
If they are trying their best within limited budget to run a service, and we know that they have to sub-contract the work out, then I'm happy to go along with it as it stands. We know how tight the budgets are across the board, by the state of the roads around here, so to have my garden waste taken away without having to bag it up and take it somewhere, is well worth it to me. :)

Fri 9 Feb 2018, 21:14

I've assumed that £30 a bin for 24 collections a year is about cost. Maybe I'm completely wrong. I can't think of any other service that I agree to pay for up front where I do not know what level of service I will receive and the provider reserves the right not to supply the service and not to refund the money. I wondered genuinely if there was a business case for an enterprising person. In Oxford I used to drive my green waste to the tip and buy the compost back from the council on the way out of the tip.

Fri 9 Feb 2018, 20:36

I agree Rosemary, to get to Stanton Harcourt is about a 30mile round trip for me. And also having the yucky bags of garden waste in my car and the petrol and time it involves.

Fri 9 Feb 2018, 19:53

Alice, it's not just the collection, but the further transport to the tip/recycling plant, emptying, return to base, etc, the wages and all the costs involved with employing staff, maintenance of huge vehicles, road tax, etc. £30 for a whole year seems very reasonable to me, equivalent to one tank of petrol, which would take me to the tip and back about twice.

Fri 9 Feb 2018, 15:34

I'm just applying on-line for my new licence. I see they now clearly state that the payment doesn't guarantee a specific number of collections and they reserve the right to cancel them if they need the service to do other things. Is there someone out there who would be prepared to offer a reliable service for £30 a property. Say 43,000 properties at £30 a bin. Or are they just going to admit they need to hand out brown sacks for any weeks when no collection is made as they did this year to those that asked.