Six things end up in household bins that should not, and one of them has started a fire in a truck.
Every crew carries a pad of tags, and the tag is a nuisance for everybody. The household has a full bin for another two days and the crew has an awkward conversation at the gate. It is worth explaining what the tags are actually for.
A lithium battery, the kind in a telephone or a power bank, is the one that frightens us. Crushed in the back of a truck it can short and catch, and it does not need much. It happened to a truck on another island two years ago and the whole load had to be tipped in the road and put out. A battery goes to the shop that sold it or to the council collection point, never into a bin.
Paint and engine oil are the next two. Both go straight through a bin bag, coat the inside of the truck, and then coat the next four households' waste on the way to the site. Cleaning the truck out takes half a day and the round does not happen that afternoon.
A gas cylinder, even one somebody is sure is empty, goes into a compactor exactly once. We do not carry them at all and we will not, however small.
Garden clearance and rubble are not dangerous, they are simply heavy and enormous, and a bin of block ends will fill a truck that should have served forty houses. That is the one where the by the load booking is genuinely cheaper for the customer than the argument.
And medical sharps, which we see about twice a year, always from a household looking after somebody at home. There is a proper route for those through the health centre and it costs nothing. Please ask us and we will find out for you rather than leaving a tag.
None of this is a rule we invented to be difficult. Every item on that list has cost this business a truck day, and one of them has cost somebody else a truck.