I’m a binman – we will never collect rubbish from households trying one trick

A binman has revealed one trick that people always try to get away with – and it means your bins won't be taken. Regular wheelie bin collection is crucial otherwise your bins might fill up with weeks to go until they are next due to be emptied. The binman has shared exactly what people try to get away with and how people try to "trick" the rubbish collectors into taking more than they need to. Taking to social media, the man says there's one thing he often sees people doing, and it even lead to binmen making a note of your house number.

Ashley, known online as the No 1 Binman, posted a video on TikTok in which he said he constantly has people in his comments boasting that they "hide" general waste underneath their recycling in an effort to get it taken away without the binmen knowing. He revealed that he and other binmen always know when people do this and that they keep track of which houses this happens at.

The binmen will then manually check the bins before they're emptied into the back of the truck. He said: "The number of people in my comment section who go, 'I just hide everything underneath all the other recycling and they never find it'. We find it. We 100% find it - we know the houses that do it all the time. Just today I went to a bin... You can have a feel for it. You push the bin, and you're like, 'that's too dense to just be plastic and glass'.

"It had all plastic on top, I was like 'lovely, maybe I'm wrong for once'. Took it to the back of the lorry, put it up, and the top layer came off. Brought it back down - full of bags. Bags of rubbish. It got rejected. Stuck a label on it saying this bin is contaminated and we're not collecting it. And now it's up to you to sort it. And we're going to know next time we go to that bin that it's been contaminated. So don't get caught out. You think you're clever, and then you're left with the bin," reports The Mirror.

What happens when you put the wrong items in your wheelie bins?

Putting items in the wrong bin is called contamination. This most commonly occurs when general waste is put in recycling bins, as these should only ever be used for recyclable materials such as cardboard, plastic, glass, and textiles. Binmen can reject your bin if you do this, and they will leave a sticker on it explaining why it was rejected.

You must then manually remove the incorrect items before the binmen will pick up the waste on the next scheduled cycle, which may leave you with smelly rubbish piling up outside your house or in your back yard. Repeated issues of wrong disposal which create a public nuisance or health hazard could result in a fixed penalty notice of between £60 and £80. However, this is unlikely.