4 Easy Ways To Save Money With Your Brown ‘Organic’ Bin

Recycling is one of the most positive ways for us to have an impact on the world in which we live. 

We read the papers and watch the news where we witness the well-documented consequences on the global ecosystem as the world’s population grows and produces increasing amounts of waste.  Indeed, we have seen unusual weather patterns ourselves over the past months and years.

In today’s world of bin collection, the smart choice to use the brown and green bins to their fullest will determine the impact not just on the environment but on personal finance.  The main cost to your bin collection is based on the weight of your black general waste bin, therefore keeping the use of this bin to a minimum keeps your prices down. Saving money with your brown bin is not just about the food waste that goes into the bin, it’s about the good habits and routines you built around using them.

Here are 4 Easy Ways to Save Money with Your Brown ‘Organic’ Bin:

• Think inside out: Use three bins inside your house to match the ones outside.  Make recycling easy and general waste hard.  Most waste is generated in the kitchen so put the recycling bins close by and leave the general waste bin a bit further away.  Harder to get to means less use!  For example, try to have your two recycling bins close to the sink and put your waste bin at the back door!

• Labels: Placing labels on your bins empowers you to make the right choices at the right times. You don’t have to be worried if you’re a little sleepy in the morning when emptying the peelings of your kiwi or when you are throwing out the empty cereal box. The signs will guide you. A great idea is to put pictures on the labels.

• Responsibility: Have one person in charge of bringing the bins from the inside bins to the wheelie bins outside and putting the bins out on your bin collection day. They can check and correct any contamination found while carrying out the chore and also pinpoint any patterns that may arise to other users. This brings a sense of ownership and pride to the recycling process.

• Measure Your Recycling Success:  As the old saying goes, “if you measure it then you will improve it”.  Make your recycling results visible by posting them on the fridge or on the wall above the bins. Everyone can see the fruits of their efforts.  The City Bin Co’s, “Bindex” is your monthly recycling report showing you all your recycling stats over the previous months. The month on month comparison chart should keep you on your toes!

The 5 Ts: Can Rugby Teach You About Customer Service?

Rugby demands many things, some of which prove costly (teeth, crooked noses and fancy boots for example), but discipline and dedication are among its more admirable traits. In this respect, rugby reflects successful business, and discipline and dedication are crucial to both the oval ball and world-class customer service alike.

Here are our five Ts comprising the star qualities common to both; be it headgear or headset.

Training is integral to establishing a robust workplace structure and inspiring customer confidence. Customers finance the business, they’re important. They shouldn’t be passed about like a pig’s bladder from one person to the next. Adequate training (and ongoing development) gets everybody up to speed and able to tackle whatever comes their way.

Teamwork is a no-brainer. Whether it’s rookies getting up to speed learning from experienced colleagues, or interaction between management and staff, teamwork promotes support and strength.

Trust Good operations stand and fall on their ability to depend on systems and the people entrusted to make them work. Trust your team to catch the ball, bank on them tackling their player, and slap each other on the back for a job well done. Likewise, the customer has to trust the product, depend on the service, and presume it will continue without a hiccup.

Tenacity, because let’s face it, there’ll be hurdles, there’ll be glitches, and contingency will conspire against you. Tenacity empowers you to dust yourself off, take on water and get straight back into the action. How a business bounces back from adversity says as much for its history as its future. A business which has ignored or avoided problems in the past rather than acknowledging and fixing them immediately is one fast running out of a future altogether.

Talk The Wright Brothers didn’t invent the stealth bomber and Thomas Edison can’t claim floodlights, but each had a hand in the finished product. Take stock and test your products, discuss your theories and don’t be afraid to tweak them. Even the very good, can probably get better.

BlogPost Rugby

And The Bank Mistakenly Put €18,000 Into A Bin Bag…

They say there’s money in rubbish! Well, there certainly was on a Friday back in July 2004.

While collecting from Galway’s commercial sector, The City Bin Co. crew picked up from an anonymous bank a little earlier than usual. Shortly after they clocked off for the day the phone rang and the bank said some money had been thrown out by accident. It transpired the bank had mistakenly put €18,000 into a bin bag which had already been collected. Within no time The City Bin Co.’s crew began a frantic four-hour search rooting through the rubbish before they found the large sum of money neatly tied into cash bundles.

Their efforts finally paid off, and the money was found and returned to the bank. To this day the finer points remain a mystery. The nameless bank remained tight-lipped about the embarrassing slip, and the branch manager claimed “human error”. Conspiracy theories abounded, however!

It was not the first time The City Bin Co. had to mount an emergency operation to recover valuable goods. Three years earlier a precious set of Claddagh rings especially commissioned and worth €6,000 was saved several minutes before they were to be compacted.

Twitter could have communicated the news of the missing rings faster to the company then the string of phone calls, headaches and panic attacks. In both cases, there was a positive result and both stories became news items.

Although each story made headlines, I believe there would have been completely different reactions if they happened today. Twitter would have equipped each story with legs and they’d have snowballed within a quarter of an hour. The ring saga would have gone viral and created a good news buzz for all affected parties. Social media has moved the power from the journalist to the public and from the companies to the customers. Today’s stories are tweeted in real-time and the public decides what’s worth tweeting and reposting.  The bank involved in the missing money drama would have been better served owning the story from the outset, tweeting the “human error” element, and likely avoiding any conspiracy theories altogether.

Patryk & The Visor Project

Patryk Sosinski joined The City Bin Co. 5 years ago this year. He first joined the company as a member of our waste collection crew in Galway and following an illness in 2017/8, Patryk returned to work in our Recycling Centre in Oranmore where he continues to assist customers on a day-to-day basis. To paraphrase Patryk he set about building his first 3D printer ‘out of boredom’ while he was at home recovering and during this time he designed and produced replica City Bin Co. model trucks amongst other things.

At the start of the Covid-19 crisis, The City Bin Co. identified a need for face visors to keep our crews safe but we also experienced the huge difficulty in purchasing them on the market. So Patryk suggested the idea of 3D-printing visors, and he immediately set about designing and building one in red – complete with The City Bin Co. logo. We also recognised the opportunity to supply some PPE to those who needed them, so we contacted a number of our customers and arranged to get them some of the visors free of charge.

So far, Patryk, alongside his production team consisting of his wife Monika (who has just given birth to baby number two) and their five-year-old daughter Sophia, has produced a number of masks that were delivered to two of our customers – Elmgreen Nursing Home and The Brabazon Trust in Dublin.

Jeff Abbott of our Dublin Sales Team was on hand to deliver the valuable cargo and the recipients had this to say about the donation…

Rodolpho Aguirre – Senior Nurse Manager, Elmgreen Nursing Home. “Thank you so much for the donation of the face guards to our nursing home, we love the design and we intend to give these out to our GPs who visit us and also the physiotherapists. We love that they can also be reusable because of the material. Also thank you to Patryk Sosinski for his kindness”.

Ken Davis – Facilities Director, The Brabazon Trust. “On behalf of the Brabazon Trust, I would like to thank you and The City Bin Co. for your kind contribution of face visors which will help to prevent the spread of COVID 19. I also want to especially thank your work colleague Patryk Sosinski for his innovation and motivation in this regard. We will ensure that these visors are put to good use and it is our intention to give them to the visiting relatives and friends of our residents”.

The idea that The City Bin Co. can play our part in keeping our customers, and their customers, safe during this pandemic is a fantastic outcome for everyone in the company – but especially Patryk, who we’ll leave the last word to…
“Monika and Sophia have been fantastic, while I am at work they follow my exact instructions and at precise times throughout the day they move the components along the printer”.

Dziękuję Patryk!