It’s the Queen’s Jubilee this year, 70 years of HM Queen Elizabeth 2 as Head of State. It’s an amazing achievement and through thick and thin, ups and downs, HM the Queen has been an outstanding and exemplary example of how to approach public office. Her commitment to her role, duty, good behaviour, integrity, and the trust she has generated from so many of us, means our reputation globally has also stood in good stead whenever she appears.
We thought we’d take a fun look at how the humble dustbin has changed through her seventy years and how our own behaviour towards our household waste has evolved over almost three-quarters of a century.
It was during the war, when Princess Elizabeth first came to a fuller public awareness that household waste was considered useful. The government tried to encourage people to recycle – with little success. We found this article has a great overview about a failed attempt at recycling during the war – and the challenges now, which you may find interesting to flick through, over a cuppa.
Dustbins themselves came about in 1875 with the Public Health Act 1875, during the Queen’s great-great-grandmother’s reign, Queen Victoria. By 1952, dustbins and dustbin men were a familiar sight up and down the length and breadth of the streets of Britain.
We found this great story about how dustbin men collected the rubbish in the 1950s. The bins were metal with lids and they were carried by the bin men, often on their shoulders and tipped into the rubbish cart. If you read the article, you’ll notice that the bin men came onto your property, ‘through the gate’ to get the bins, and they’d take them back again too. That’s a far cry from today when you have to make sure your wheelie bins are clearly on the edge of your property, with your house number painted in large figures that stand out, so that you get your own bin back. These were the days of service and community – something we hope Bin Cleaned reminds you of as well.
In the 1960s, while the world around them was changing, bins remained the same! Bins were still collected from your property by the bin men carrying them and returning them once empty. When Coronation Street started, one of its main characters, Eddie Yates, worked as a bin man and lodged with Hilda and Stan Ogden, and he became a firm favourite with Coronation Street aficionados. Between 1968-1970, ITV ran a comedy (via Granada) called The Binmen about a group of bin men and their rounds.
In the 1980s, bins started to appear as plastic containers, although the metal variety can still be found, even to this day. This story shows colour photographs from the 1980s with the bin lorries not having changed that much since the 1950s. It was a physically demanding job, out in all weathers – as well we know – and the lorries weren’t yet automated and so the bins still had to be manually lifted and tipped in by the people doing the heavy work.
Recycling household waste started to come in during the 1990s. Although the wheelie bin had been invented by Frank Rotherham Mouldings in 1968, it was really in the 1990s that vehicles were designed to accommodate their design – although there are many areas of the UK that still don’t have wheelie bins in use to this day!
If you’d like to find out more about wheelie bins, recycling and waste, we found two articles, one from Biffa and one from Brewsters, which should give you all you need to know about waste, recycling and bins.
Recycling for councils became mandatory in 2003. Households began to get a range of bins for different kinds of waste, with the householder responsible for sorting their own waste and putting it out on the right day. By the 2010s, councils were beginning to alternate collections, with householders putting out specific waste on one week and different waste the next.
One thing that hasn’t changed over 70 years is how much our bins need cleaning. Back in the 1950s, we’re fairly sure that was a chore probably done by the women of the house (probably) whereas now, people are so busy, it’s often done randomly, with a hosepipe and a mop by whoever thinks of it at the time. There is, of course, another way and Bin Cleaned is here to take the smells and physical labour of cleaning your wheelie bin away from you. We do an amazing job because we have fantastic people – and that means you’re free to put your feet up or do something less boring instead (and yes, we wonder whatever happened to Why Don’t You…? too!).
The final words go to HM the Queen. Thank you for your service ma’am, here’s to you as we wish you all the very best for your platinum jubilee with all the celebrations in your honour.
