This week sees the last free garden waste recycling collection from Ruislip and Ruislip Manor. For collections from next week, you’ll need to have subscribed to the £70 service.
Is it three tags? Or Six?
When you subscribe to the service, you’ll be sent three tags. Unless you ask for more bags while you’re subscribing, you will just continue to use the bags you have already – with the new tags tied onto them. You’re entitled to six bags, just like before. If you’d like to be able to use more than three, you just need to ask for the extra tags. You can do that online, via this page. You’ll of course need to have subscribed first.
It works – we’ve tried it: having already subscribed
and been sent the three tags, we could order three more
What about getting new bags?
If you’ve already subscribed, you can use the same link to order new bags. So when you start a subscription, you can either ask for new bags or use the ones you’ve got, and then once you have subscribed, you can ask for another three tags.
I want my six tags!
Three come as part of your subscription. You can order three more from this page.
I paid them already and I don’t have my tags
Hillingdon say that they aim to deliver tags within 10 days, but that they have a supplier problem and it could be longer. What, the council having messed up the preparation for a new plan? Surely not! Who knows. It was all a bit rushed. Whatever: the recycling collection trucks have software in the cab that tells them who has subscribed – so in theory, they’ll still know – even without your tags.
We suspect that it would be such a bad hit to their reputation for Hillingdon to (a) ask for money, and (b) not collect where people have paid, that where there’s any doubt – especially at the start – they’d still collect. Imagine the backlash if people had done as they were told, paid up, not received their tags, and then their garden waste was not collected.
Is it really £70 per year?
Yes. The council’s ‘year’ runs from 1st April to 31st March. Paying £70 now will cover you until 31st March – with weekly collections as usual through summer and autumn, and then down to fortnightly collections over the winter. Subscribers will need to resubscribe next April.
Sure, it’s not a full year between July and April, but we’re not going to argue that point – consider the first three months as having been free: we knew that the £70 was coming since February anyway – it’s not new news (no matter what the ‘consultation’ pretended).
Will it be £70 next year?
Nobody knows. Certainly we don’t. Charges and fees go up each year, so it wouldn’t be a surprise if £70 crept up to something else. All that we know now is that it’s £70 from next week until next April.
Meh, I’m going to put my garden waste in my black bin bags
They’ve seen you coming! Hillingdon won’t collect any black bags that contain garden waste. They aren’t obliged to, so try as we might, it’s not really a battle worth fighting. Besides, the borough can’t afford to take away your garden waste in black bags: it costs them (and therefore, us) about £40 to dispose of a tonne of garden waste… but £142 to dispose of a tonne of black bag rubbish.
If you try to save the £70 by not paying for garden waste, and instead put your clippings in the landfill rubbish… you run the risk of not having your rubbish taken away at all. At best, you’ll cost the council, and your neighbours, more through landfill tax. Please don’t.
What else can I do with my garden waste?
The consultation had a range of options, and plenty of people chose them: in the 8242 responses…
- 407 people said that they’ll flytip it instead
- 1018 people said they’ll burn their garden waste
- 2100 said they’d drive it to the dump to avoid the charge, and
- 2147 that they’ll put it in general waste
None of those alternatives are ideal – some are horrific. Please don’t flytip or burn your garden waste. Hillingdon expect 30% of households to subscribe. 17% said that they would in the consultation. We’re not sure how many have done so far, but will report back if we hear.
Fine, I’ll beat the system and compost it.
Great. Honestly, that’s what Hillingdon want you to do! That way, they don’t have to take it away. And you get free compost in a couple of years. The worms will love you.
Take it to the dump, free
If you have the means of taking your garden waste to the dump, you can take it to Harefield without being charged. It’s a long way to walk or cycle from Ruislip, so it’d really mean driving: fine for people who have a car. Environmentally we’d rather that Hillingdon didn’t incentivise private car ownership or driving additional miles. Our favoured option is the one that wasn’t mentioned in the consultation, isn’t outlawed by the rules, and seems to make most sense to us…
Share with a neighbour
Why not share with a neighbour? We’ve not seen Hillingdon suggesting it, but neighbouring boroughs do. Hillingdon loves to compare itself with other boroughs, so let’s take a look:
- Harrow used to encourage it – they used to say “”Share a bin – sign up and split the cost with your neighbour.”
- Brent says “If you wish to share a garden waste bin with a neighbour, only one person needs to sign up to the garden waste service. The garden waste service will be registered at one property only.”
- Islington says you can do it, so long as you “agree with your neighbours if and how you share the use of the subscription”
- Merton is the clearest, and they say “If you would like to share your garden waste wheelie bin or sacks, that’s fine. However, the membership will be associated with one property (the one that paid the subscription fee) and the containers will have to be presented outside this property on collection day.”
We’ve read the Hillingdon terms and conditions. They don’t say that you can’t share a subscription. They do say that you can have upto six bags, and that they’ll be collected from outside your house if you have paid for a subscription.
Are they going to know if you let one of your neighbours put their grass cuttings into one of your bags, and leave it outside your house for collection? Of course not.
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