Mia Cousins, who lives in Fareham, was a little annoyed when she found that her four sacks of grass cuttings had not been taken away by the binmen and a note had been left saying they were ‘too heavy’.
Seven stone Mia had had no problem carrying them the fifty metres to the roadside collection point and so she was amazed that the four strapping fellows from the green collection run had problems.
Fareham Council responded to Mia’s complaint by saying that the crew took the decision that the sacks were too heavy to lift and exercised their discretion, adding that, on that day, the crew had lifted a total of 14.1 tons of garden waste.
Err, isn’t that their job?
The council has increased funding to employ extra binmen on its fortnightly garden waste rounds so as to try and limit the average weight lifted to five tons per person per day. This followed a health and safety review (surprise, surprise!) after dustmen complained about the amount of garden waste bags they had to lift each day.
All other rubbish and recycling goes in wheelie bins which do not have to be lifted. Yes, but they’ve been known to refuse to take those if they can’t be moved with one finger!!
It wouldn’t be quite so bad if you didn’t actually have to pay to have your rubbish not collected or to take it to the dump yourself, but you do.
‘Sorry Madame, we can’t possibly take those bags, they’ve got something in them!’