I quite like wheelie bins. They hold a lot more than the sacks — which we had to pay for with our own money — ever did, and they can take more awkward shapes. Large pieces of cardboard will fit.
We already had a wheelie bin for garden waste— which we had to pay for with our own money — but we didn't have to pay for the new, bag-replacement bins. Other parts of the country have had wheelie bins for years, but Colchester's residents put up a stiff resistance to them on assorted grounds that were all flimsy covers for "they're not what we're used to". Anyone who has a genuine problem with wheelie bins (say, being too infirm to use them) can receive special treatment and stick with using bin bags.
Some parts of the country have a wide variety of wheelie bins, with different colours for different uses. Glass in one coloured bin, paper in another, plastics in a third, food waste in a fourth, unrecyclable stuff in a fifth, garden waste in a sixth, and probably more, too. Colchester has small crates for glass, and kerbside caddies for food (with a fox-proof, if not teenager-proof, lid on them). The garden waste bins we had to pay for with our own money are brown. The new bins are both black, but one has a green lid.
The green-lidded one is for "dry recyclables", which is the council's way of saying you shouldn't put stuff you just washed or should have just washed in them. They're for paper, cardboard, plastics and metals. The black-lidded one is for everything not covered by some other bin or crate. We put them out on alternate weeks, because that saves on collections (i.e. refuse collectors). The recyclables bin probably holds more like a month's worth of recyclables at the rate we produce them, so I'm not complaining. Sometimes, in the old, clear-bag days, I would skip a fortnight for plastics because the bag had so little in it that it would have blown away in the wind.
As both the new bins are both black, just with different-coloured lids, this means that people who don't keep track of which week is for household waste and which is for recyclables can't just look outside to see rubbish everyone else has put out: they'll have to get closer to check the lid colour.
Our first pick-up was this week and went well. We obeyed the instructions to put household waste in bags before dumping the bags in the wheelie bin "to keep it clean inside", but not using bags for reyclables "so the bin holds more". These edicts are almost certainly to do with how the bins' contents are processed, rather than the convenience of citizens.
Here's a photo of the van that was actually delivering the bins. I'm a roving reporter!
No dismembered body parts were put in any of the bins this time round, but give it time.