The guys who collect our recycling come by some time during the night. I find it difficult to make sure that they see the envelope which has their Christmas tip in it. Yet again this year they have left it, even though I’ve tied it to the handle of the “bac” with a large Christmas bow.
Anyone else have the same predicament and found a solution?
Check with your Marie whether they are authorised. In some places only the pompiers can ask, and all the others are forbidden. Or just pop down to the déchèterie with a big box of chocolates.
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The only tip I would give Sictom who operate waste mismanagement in the Dordogne is to stand back and see what a rip off they are.
Wouldn’t give them a button.
On the other hand our post lady is a gem and like each year we gave her a generous seasonal gratuity.
We’ve got ours well -trained 
The envelopes (tied to the bin with a festive bow) are duly appropriated… The only bémol is that there is more than one team, so we can only hope that they take it in turns to do our round. As for the postie…sadly, we went from a gem of a postlady to various temps, no thanks to the re-organisation of La Poste. The service is very hit-and-miss now, so don’t feel that a tip is appropriate.
Different team(s) The guys who empty the grey bac are different from the guys for the yellow bac who are not the same as the decheterie guys.
How the whole system is managed is not the fault of the blokes on the front line who year after year go out in all weathers to empty our bins. They are worth every penny. And in fact by recognising that we believe we get better service.
The guys who empty the grey bacs during the day certainly took their “tip” - in fact they took the Christmas bow as well. 
We certainly give to both teams: the guys who work at night (yellow bac) and those who come during the day (grey bac). Whether of course there are multiple teams for each we don’t know because our bins are 200 metres up the farm track behind us and we only see them from a distance. We hope they do share.
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In that case we should be tipping ourselves!
No door to door collection, it is us who braves all weathers to take our waste to a communal bin where a one man operated lorry system collects without even touching the rubbish.
You are lucky to have retained a door to door service.
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Ah! That’s different. Interestingly, when we arrived 16 years ago there were no “bacs” and I thought it was a horrid idea when they were introduced - all the little side streets in our local town having to put their bins out each week, completely spoiling the look of the street and nowhere to keep the bins except in the hallway. Certainly for us in the countryside it’s a great system. I fear though as we are being “audited” this winter to “encourage” people to reduce their usage - no doubt the cost will only go in one direction. 
As I understand it, our commune (part of Val de Garonne Agglo) will retain both black (ordures ménagères) and yellow recycling bins and collections. The only difference will be in the frequency of putting the black bin out as each collection will be payable on top of the annual charge. As JohnBoy says, we’re very lucky to keep a door (or chemin )-to-door service. Especially with the hard-working, conscientious chaps we’re blessed with. I wonder whether VdGA put off making a decision until they’d seen how the various other schemes worked, or didn’t…
We lost our bins this year, and worse they decided to put the communal moluks on the outskirts of tge village on the road to the small town 5 km away - which we rarely go to. So an extra journey for us as we can’t drop it off in passing. Not sure how some of the elderly who have no car manage as from our end of the village it’s over a 2km walk.
Also a pain explaining to gîte clients and we have had several “sorry no time to drop off the rubbish” before they left with a week’s worth of rubbish and bottles and recycling for us to take away.
We used to have separate recycling bins for paper. Now it all goes in together with the plastic packaging, bottles and tins, getting dirty and stained. I don’t see the point.
Which is a good reason to rinse out your tins & bottles before putting them in the yellow sack.
Even if the recycling centres don’t mind that things get dirty & smelly you don’t want unwashed pet food tins honking the place out.
All our recycling goes together as well. We were instructed to please not wash any items before putting them in the recycling bin. We just have a small container in the buanderie that gets emptied frequently.
Go take a trip to your local recycling plant to see how they sort waste and maybe it will make sense then.
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How much good quality drinking water is wasted by doing that?
Seems to me that we still have to pay the recycling companies for tasks they expect us to do.
With the best will in the world we try to do our bit but get really p__sed off when driving 2 kilometres to deposit our waste at the nearest bin only to see bags piled up outside and not inside the bin.
Why?
Because a personal card is required to open the bin which non locals/visitors don’t have so simply dump their rubbish close by for the local vermin to feast on.
A profit driven waste management system that isn’t fit for purpose.
Water wasted by rinsing
Fuel wasted by every individual travelling to waste points.
The saving from the abolition of tax habitation on principle residents is gradually being eroded by other charges ie. Waste mismanagement.
No doubt other charges will follow yet to be announced.
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I did this a couple of years ago and learned a great deal - including the fact that they would prefer it if we do not wash tins etc before disposing of them.
Please share - like how do they separate all the different plastics (by hand/eye?), sort ferrous and non ferrous metals (magnets?), get paper labels off tins, jars, how much water and energy is involved etc? How labour intensive or is it mainly automated? Interested to know.
This is a description of the one at Paris, ours was similar
Why? Given that we have a resourceful ex-street mutt not to mention feral cats around there is no way I’m putting dirty tins etc in our recycling.
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Very little if you use the grey water after you’ve done all the proper washing up.
I’m genuinely interested to know the reason for this….?
Because they can wash them far more efficiently using water that they filter and recycle. The biowaste trapped by the filters is then processed into, for example, compost or biofuel.