Litter Bins: The Push Lid 70 Litre Model

Litter and rubbish bins are a practical and important part of keeping the world clean. We couldn’t live without them and one is probably sat no more than a few feet from you as you read this, but very few of us pay the humble rubbish bin any attention.

However, there are a few people who have found not only novel uses for some bins but also there are some weird and wacky bins out there.

Wheelie bin urinal

Perhaps the most bizzare bin in the world - this bin has an inbuilt urinal

Whoever thought of this must have been on the way home from the pub at the time. The idea is to prevent people from urinating in public but surely wouldn’t a toilet be a better solution?

Novelty Bins

There are bins representing almost every possible comic book and cartoon character out there. This is perhaps my favourite:

Feel the Force - a Novelty Star Wars Bin

The R2D2 bin is a great homage to the Star Wars film and a great way of helping to clean up the Empire.

Novel uses of bins

With a growing number of abandoned puppies being dumped on the German streets – the obvious solution – a puppy bin. But don’t worry, any abandoned puppy left in the puppy bin will be re-homed – lets just home they don’t find a litter of them in there!

The practical Bin

All these bins provide a fun approach to dealing with our litter. However, while novelty bins may brighten our day they are unlikely to provide a practical solution to preventing rubbish and litter. Rubbish bins are an important aspect to keeping the environment clean and choosing the right bin is important in preventing littering or other hygiene problems.

In providing litter bins you should always ensure the bins are :

Robust

Have a tight fitting lid

Be practical to use

Large enough to cope between being emptied

Plentiful

Supplying the right type of bins is crucial for any educational establishment if they are to keep the school or college grounds clear.

School Bins

Littering is not a problem of the youth, or any other social group, it tends to occur because there is inadequate or shortage of bins. When hundreds of people are gathered anywhere, they will produce litter, so ensuring there is somewhere for them to put it is vital if you want to prevent people from discarding litter.

Not only are the number of bins and choosing the right location important, but putting some thought into what is going to be thrown into the bin will help ensure you get the right type and size of bin and in schools and colleges that often means thinking about the type of rubbish your students will be throwing away.

Typically, in most schools and colleges; crisp packets, cans of pop and other snack items make up most of the rubbish so sufficient litter bins in size and number is one way to ensure the students are not littering. But there are other things to think about to:

Free Standing Sack Holder Bin

Selecting the right location for the bins will help ensure the bins are used and not ignored. The canteen and any entrances in and out of the building should always have plenty of bins. Free standing sack holders are the easier solution for this as they are quick to empty and replace the sacks.

But there are other needs for student bins, that have to be thought about. For colleges, despite the policy of the school, smoking will certainly be going on somewhere, often outside entrances, so to prevent a build up of cigarette butts in doorways, its better to place a cigarette bin, or wall mounted ashtray.

Exterior Bin

Sanitary bins also need to be provided in female bathrooms, as they will also be needed in staff facilities and bins for paper towels will need to be in all bathroom areas.

Classroom bins tend to fill with just waste paper so regular waste baskets are good for here but in the corridors there will be more of a variety of items so having a few wall mounted bins along corridors is a good idea too.

Health and hygiene are perhaps the most important and feared words in the fast food business. Nothing will close a takeaway quicker than accusations of bad hygiene or lack of pest control. If the environmental health don’t close you down, the lack of custom surely will.

It is a constant battle in the catering business to keep on top of hygiene. Letting it slip can lead to disaster but often businesses suffer problems with hygiene through no fault of their own.

Customers who discard food near premises can often attract vermin and pests which then gets associated with the restaurant. This can often lead to problems with the authority and a bad reputation will start to drivie customers away. At the very least, discarded food litter will upset the local residents and neighbours causing trouble any business could do without.

And on other occasions, despite the best efforts of the proprietors, problems still occur, quite often unexpectedly.

However, often the culprit can be the humble rubbish bin used by restaurants, kitchens and fast food takeaways. Often the wrong bin is used and this can lead to the problems mentioned above, let me explain:

When discarding food from the kitchen its essential it goes in a bin with a good lid. Leaving food in rubbish bags out the back will just attract cats, foxes, rats and worse. Make sure all food waste is discarded in good quality exterior bins with strong lids to prevent vermin from opening them.

To prevent customers from discarding rubbish, make sure your premises has a good sized bin out the front. If there isn’t one from the council ask if you can provide one, explain how you wish to reduce litter and they will most probably agree. A good sized litter bin that is regularly emptied will discourage customers from throwing litter. At the very least it will demonstrate you have tried your best to ensure the environment is litter-free.

L:itter bins outside will help stop customers throwing litter down

Good quality kitchen bins are also a must as even small scraps of food lying about will attract mice or cockroaches, both of which will force closure of a restaurant until they are controlled. For more advice on health and hygiene speak to your local council.

Each year in the UK alone, 22.5 million tonnes of waste is thrown in rubbish bins or waste bins around the home and office. All this waste has to be managed and waste management is of vital importance to ensure we are not all knee-deep in rubbish.

Waste management is becoming increasingly more important as government’s across the globe are trying to reduce the impact of waste on the environment. But what happens to all that rubbish that ends up in our waste bins and wheelie bins?

There are only really three methods for disposing of waste that we throw into our rubbish bins:

Landfill
Recycling
Incineration

And there are advantages and disadvantages in each method of waste management.

Landfills: land fills are either holes in the ground that are naturally forged such as canyons or ravines; holes forged by former industrial processes like mines or quarries; or just mounds where rubbish we place in our waste bins piles up.

Land fills are not necessarily detrimental to the environment. While they do create greenhouse gases such as methane, this is actually offering potential benefits as not only can the methane be captured to prevent it damaging the environment but also it can be used as a method of creating energy.

And while it is true that landfills can cause pollutants to enter the water table. Land fills can be covered over once used and the land can be converted into nature parks which can offset any damage the original land fill had on the environment.

Recycling: recycling is not just done at home by separating our rubbish by using a recycling bin. Much of what ends up in our conventional waste bin is now being recycled by waste management teams. And while recycling is obviously good for the environment, there are detrimental effects too. Some of our waste is exported abroad in vast quantities to be recycled but this can have harmful effects due to the carbon costs of transportation and the damage to local environment where the rubbish ends up, as often these are developing nations that have less stringent environmental rules.

Incineration: Incineration is perhaps the most environmentally unfriendly method of getting rid of the rubbish in our waste bins. Unfortunately, there are many nations that are forced to incinerate a lot of rubbish due to constraints in land space. The only alternative is to ship the rubbish abroad which is not only financially costly but also has environmental costs too.

We are all wasteful. Each year, an average person throws out over a tonne of rubbish into our waste bins. And our rubbish bins contain everything from organic and food waste to paper, plastic and even metals.

Even though many of us now recycle and use recycling bins, most of us are aware that much of the rubbish that we throw out ends up in landfill sites, often referred to as rubbish dumps, garbage dumps or tips. But these rubbish dumps are not the scourge on the environment many of us assume and far from just being just large pits where tonnes of rubbish is piled up for all eternity, land fills are constructed after a lot of thought and consideration.

For a site to be viable for a landfill or rubbish dump it has to adhere to many requirements, which include:
Location
Type
Stability
Capacity
Environment Safeguards

Location – the location of a landfill is incredibly important. Firstly, dumps can’t be built too near to people’s homes because of smells, the effects on house prices and disapproval of local residents. But also landfills need to have good access by road or rail, be cost effective (cheap) land to buy.

Type – Rubbish dumps are built in three different guises: Pits;often using existing holes forged my mining. Canyons; using holes forged by nature; and mounds; piling rubbish above ground.

Stability – Landfills have to be on stable ground. There should be no earth quake faults, water tables, rivers, streams or flood plains.

Capacity – Any planning of a landfill requires enough capacity for the authorities that use the dump. Busy city centres where millions of rubbish bins are emptied every week will require larger capacities than smaller areas where the amount of waste discarded is less.

Environment Safeguards – land fills are built under strict guidelines to prevent as much environmental impact as possible. Soil, water systems and other effects on the environment are seriously considered before any site is allocated as a land fill. And while a former land fill site will be no good to build houses on, in fact, many land fills are often turned into nature parks once they are filled which can off-set any damage done to the environment while the landfill was in use.

We probably walk past dozens each day and not give them a second thought but the public waste bin is a crucial part of ensuring we are not wading down the high street knee-deep in discarded rubbish.

But unlike internal waste bins for our homes and offices, the public litter bin has to cope with higher demands and risks that are not a consideration external bins.

Public bins have to have a larger capacity than those we use in our homes. While we may have half-a-dozen people at home throwing rubbish and litter in it, a public waste bin will have hundreds and perhaps thousands.

They also have to be sturdy. Even the common-or-garden plastic dustbin or trash can would not last too long in a public environment. Many of the public waste receptacles are manufactured from tough polymers that are not only resistant to the rigours of the weather but can they are often fire proof, an important consideration with something that may sit on a high street amongst the general public

Sadly, bins in outdoor locations have to be resistant to vandals and thieves too. For this reason many are wall mounted of bolted to the floor. Some public bins even have a locking mechanism to prevent people from emptying the contents on the floor.

They also have to come in numerous designs for the types of locations they may be placed in and the types of waste they are likely to encounter. Hospital bins, wall mounted ashtrays, bins for schools, high streets, and parks all require different designs.

Outdoor bins need also to be plentiful. If there are not enough of them then littering will soon become a problem. Many people will use bins if they are there, but if not, they may be inclined to dispose of there rubbish on the pavement.

And the right location is just as important. Along busy while they may be unsightly, they still need to be placed along thoroughfares and be clearly visible. A litter bin tucked around the corner or hidden behind a building will be useless. They need to clearly visible and accessible otherwise they just won’t get used.