Is it rubbish?

[Admiral]

Hiya folks,

Just saw Brian's note on the latest newsletter about rubbish collections.

We took delivery of two new wheelie bins with an incredibly boring leaflet a couple of months ago.

What concerns me is this:

The bins look ridiculously small compared to the ones we have in England.  What on earth can you get in them?

Someone told us the bins are microchipped and actually weigh your rubbish.

Yet another kind soul told us the weekly collection is now down to once a fortnight.

Is any of this right?  And if so, what is the point of weighing rubbish per household?  And why has the collection time doubled?

Pip pip,

Admiral

[Brian]

Ah, the bins!

They have several sizes available depending on the number of people in the household. With just two of us, we qualified for the smallest ones!

The nice man at the depot said that the new system involved a standing charge, plus an additional charge for each time the black bin is emptied. This charge increases with weight.

I didn't ask specifically, but the implication was that there was no charge for the recycling bin, as long as the waste has been sorted correctly.

A bonus for me is that the bin will be collected from my house rather than the bottom of the chemin 1km away. Whether it reduces (!) my charges or not, I'll have to wait and see...

[Brian]

And just to add...

You're right to think that collection will now be every two weeks. I imagine that the only reason is to save money. Although I'm sure there is a corporate mission statement along the lines of "we will encourage our service users to operationalise their non-required material generation propensity by reducing the maximal ordural volume to be collected each solar passage."

Apologies, but my French is not sufficient for generating the local version...

[Admiral]

Many thanks Brian,

I think the two week collection gap is a crude money saving exercise.  But I do like your version of modern day speak where companies try to "optimise" everything for our own good.

To my jaded and cynical mind, smaller bins and longer waits between collection is going to lead to a rather un-lovely spate of fly-tipping as people run out of bin space come the end of week one.

No wonder that SIMER have already removed the large communal dumpsters around us in Lathus.  Heaven forbid people started putting their rubbish in them and creating more work for the already "overstretched" street hygiene cleaning operatives.

As for the bills   only time will tell.  My guess is they will go up as we are told this is all part of  the countries strange obsession with "going green"

[Brian]

going to lead to a rather un-lovely spate of fly-tipping

Indeed! The man at the depot told me to make sure my bins were stored somewhere where "neighbours would not find it easy to put their waste in your bin" so this is clearly something SIMER is already considering!

[tersu]

We have had our future costs in a letter and it is 196.51€ p.a and 2.55€ each time for any extra lifts
However. We haven’t had any buns delivered yet as we are apparently having lockable ones that will be left up on the main road (we are down a steep incline) as we told them we cannot physically push loaded bins uphill due to medical conditions and our ages and they won’t walk down to collect it. Currently we can carry our bags up to the road which we can manage, but full bins with two weeks of rubbish are a no no.
Not impressed with the idea of the new system, lots of money and will it work or lead to fly tipping !

[Brian]

Ouch! That's more than I paid last year!

[Brian]

I've now received that letter with the same costs.
So the new metered, charge-as-used system will actually be more expensive for this two-person household who last year had 6 black bags of rubbish and 3 yellow bags. Hmph.

I wonder if the executives at SIMER are planning to upgrade their company cars soon? I hear Bugattis are very nice...

[Admiral]

A chum living full time in France tells me this scheme was given a trial run in Normandy last year.

It was dumped after six months as unworkable because people weren't sticking to the rules and fly-tipping was rife.

I can't find any reference to this anywhere on the interweb but our chum has lived n France for 17 years and is usually reliable when it comes to all things francais.

Let's see how things pan out in the Vienne.  

PS:  I agree Brian, a Bugatti is a thing of loveliness.

[Brian]

This new scheme doesn't seem to be working well so far.

Our first collection happened on schedule but two weeks later there was no sign of a collection in our hameau. I sent Simer an email to find out what was going on but I have yet to receive a reply.
Has anyone else experienced late- or non-collections?

It seems that the discontent is fairly widespread - at least, according to this article in Centre-Presse.