Do binmen stick to the same type of collection? And is there a favourite, or one no one wants?

3 comments

1. My mate works for the waste disposal for a council. Normally for the fortnightly domestic bin run, the crew are the same and don’t change much, and they do both all the rotations (domestic waste, recycling, etc). He’s flicked around different roles where the work’s needed, like emptying the dog bins, doing the street bins, on the fly-tipping team. Sometimes they’ll be loaned out to other departments to do like de-weeding or leaf cleaning in the autumn when there’s a need for it. Apparently the guys with the dust carts on foot have a great job, because they stay in their specific area for most of the job and get to know people around and get to be outdoors moving around.

   Mostly from what I’ve heard, people don’t really care the area or job they’re doing on waste, and it all gets a bit gross at times but they’re paid decently and aren’t working in an office, and only work 4 or 3 days a week, so that’s what matters to them

2. It would depend really on who you work for. The ones i’ve done you are stuck on the same rounds every week, but you alternate between general waste one week and recycling the next. One of the reasons is that where I worked you had certain jobs where you would have to collect the bin from the back of the house instead of just grabbing the one roadside so you wanted loaders who knew when this needed doing. As a driver it’s the most boring job I’ve ever had. The loaders used to be entitled to new boots every 6 weeks to give you an idea of how much foot work they did. Food waste is nasty and in summer you’ll have maggots everywhere. Easiest one was garden waste.

3. Depends on the council – they’re all run differently. In my local area, they’re split into two teams: garden waste team and recycling/household waste team. The garden waste do garden waste all day, everyday. The other team does household waste (usually one load) until break time and then they go out and do a load of recycling.