Rhyl family’s weeks-long wait for bin collection finally over

Jess Hymus-Gant, her husband and five children, who live in West Rhyl, were one of many families to have had their bin collections missed in recent months.

On June 3, Denbighshire County Council introduced changes to recycling and waste collections, which included the scrapping of the blue wheelie bin.

Jess' daughter pushing the waste down to create more space. (Image: Jess Hymus-Gant)

The county’s residents are now required to separate their dry recycling using a new three-tier Trolibocs system.

However, this was not the issue for the Hymus-Gant family – rather, their non-recyclable regular waste bin and green waste bin.

The family’s Trolibocs bins were collected on time with “no problem at all”, but the green waste bin was not collected since the start of April, with an almost eight-week wait for the black bin collection.

The wait included three missed bin notifications and resulted in them writing to their local councillor.

With no more space in the bins, some of their children had to stamp down on the bins to create more space.

“The main issue is our non-recyclable stuff, it was due to be collected that first week of June but because it coincided with the roll out, they sent a letter to our street saying they'd put in an extra collection on the 10th but if that didn't get collected, put it out on 17th,” Mrs Hymus-Gant told the Journal.

“On the website it was saying 24th, so we all put our non-recycling stuff out on the 10th as instructed and only half the street got their non-recycling and green bins taken.

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“I reported a missed bin, as did two of my neighbours.”

Being a family of seven, and despite aiming to recycle “everything”, they understandably create “a lot” of non-recyclable waste too.

These bins were finally collected on June 4, after waiting 16-and-a-half weeks for the green bin to be emptied and seven-and-a-half weeks for the black bin to be emptied.

Jess added: “We're a family of seven, so despite recycling everything, we still have a lot of non-recyclable stuff despite our best efforts.

“I feel for the bin men as their job has increased hugely so no blame there whatsoever.

“It feels like missed bin submissions are just going into the ether - I've now inadvertently got a compost bin the green stuff has been there that long.

“Interestingly, they put all the non-recyclable waste and green waste in one lorry.”

A Denbighshire County Council spokesperson said of the county’s missed collections: "We again apologise to any households affected by missed collections.

"We understand that this is very inconvenient and upsetting for residents, but we are doing everything we can to catch up.

"The number of missed collections has fluctuated daily depending on the areas that we are collecting.

"We are continuing to closely monitor this situation every day and expect that temporary measures we have put in place will resolve these issues."