I know it’s a taboo subject, and involves the use of four-letter words, but I’m going to talk about it anyway… Bins. There, that wasn’t so bad! More specifically, the importance of thinking about bins when you’re designing a building.
Currently, most Victorian households have 3 wheelie bins for rubbish, recyclables and garden waste. But plans are already in place, and in fact have been implemented in some councils, for a 4th bin specifically for glass waste.
And the dirty truth is that bins are… well, they’re ugly. Big. Too often you look at a house only to have a pleasant, well-designed vista ruined by the bins lined up beside the driveway, or rammed carelessly in a corner, or standing proudly in the middle of the front lawn.
The truth is, with 3 bins already and a 4th on the way, when you’re designing a house, particularly one with limited outdoor space such as a townhouse, you really do need to think about where the bins are going to be stored when they’re not lined up out the front of the property on bin collection day.
So here’s 3 things to consider.
1. Size
At first glance, this seems really simple. You measure the bins, allow a space that’s big enough to accommodate them, and you’re done. Certainly that’s step one. Which leads directly into step 2.
2. Access
It might work beautifully on your plans to have a neat little square where the bins can be lined up in a 2 x 2 square arrangement. Solved! But what happens on bin night, when it’s the bin at the back that needs to go out? Who wants to spend a whole lot of time shuffling bins around?
But it’s not just on bin night – the whole point of bins is for the householder to put stuff in them, generally on quite a regular basis. Do you really expect them to circle 3/4 of the way around the house from the back door to do that? Then get there and find the bin they need to put stuff in is tucked away at the back of the group, so it’s bin shuffling time again.
Equally, it might be really simple to just line the bins up right next to a door for ease of access both during the week and on bin night. Which leads into step 3.
3. Aesthetics
As I said at the start, bins aren’t the most decorative items to have proudly displayed by your front door for everyone to see. While you might satisfy step 2 that way, your design will have failed step 3 in a big way. You need to think about how your solution is going to look in day-to-day real life.
So what is the solution? Really, it’s a balancing act, and every design will be different. For access, being able to easily access the bins every day to throw things in them is probably a higher priority than them being close to the road for bin night. But bin night does need to be kept in mind, particularly as most weeks householders need to wheel out at least 2 bins.
The solution might also lie in disguising the location of the bins. Screening is the cheapest and easiest solution here, either with plants or some decorative material like brush fencing. Be a little generous with your spacings, though, so there is room to manouvere the bins without banging into bushes.
The bottom line is that bins are a necessary evil, so rather than forgetting about them and leaving the householder with the problem of where to put their bins, devote at least a little time to finding a solution that works both for the property and for the householder when you’re designing a new property. They’ll thank you for it!