Second-hand September

Way back when, hand-me-down jumpers and second-hand shoes from your brothers, sisters or cousins were completely normal! I recall on one occasion growing up, saving up and buying a new pair of Nike runners. I was so excited about my new kicks, however, being the same shoe size as my brother and father, it was a race to the shoes every morning.

Some harsh facts about the throwaway fashion industry we have gotten accustomed to:

• 35% of materials in garment supply chains are wasted.
• In Ireland, 225 tonnes of textile are dumped every year.
• In Ireland, half a tonne of clothing is dumped into a landfill every minute. That amount produces over 12 tonnes of carbon emissions – the same as driving 65,000 kilometres in a car.
• Buying just one white cotton shirt produces the same amount of emissions as driving 35 miles in a car.

Throwaway fashion is putting increasing pressure on our planet and its people – and it’s not sustainable. By changing our shopping habits, together we can help tackle the growing issue of fast fashion. Some great solutions are the rental and swapping fashion models, which eliminate the risk of panic buying for one occasion (for which Instagram has a lot to answer for) that feeds into the fast-fashion cycle.

Oxfam has come up with an initiative offering a solution to throwaway fashion and the devastating impact it is having on people and the planet. Oxfam’s #SecondhandSeptember urges people to rethink the month that is usually associated with Fashion week and the start of autumnal shopping and put away their credit cards to help save the planet.

Why not shop second-hand for 30 days? Firstly, you will save money. Secondly, if you shop in charity shops, you will be GIVING money to people and organisations in need. Thirdly, you will be helping save the planet. There are so many benefits in getting involved in this pledge to say NO to buying new clothes for the month. Who knows, you may even enjoy finding hidden gems and saving money so much that you decide to keep it up!

Where to shop second hand:

• Local charity shops (Oxfam have 47 shops around Ireland – find your nearest store here
• Vintage stores in your area
• Depop
• Host a clothing swap with your friends (with appropriate social distancing measures!)
• If you have an occasion coming up why not rent a piece from Borrower’s Boutique or Rent the Runway.
• Subscribe to Nu Wardrobe and join a community of swapping and borrowing clothes

Sign-up and start #SecondhandSeptember at any time here, for top tips, inspiration and more to make the pledge as easy as possible.

Best of luck!

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!

When Rubbish Becomes Art

Could you imagine relaxing in seven days of your own rubbish?

Well, that’s just what Gregg Segal’s Californian neighbours, friends and strangers did! They rested in piles of their own rubbish that they collected over a period of seven days for Gregg’s photography series entitled ‘7 Days of Garbage’. Fitting that this series of life-size portraits now adorn the walls of The City Bin Co.’s offices, both in Dublin and the HQ in Galway – as a stark reminder of the dangers of a throwaway society.

Segal’s photography makes you sit up and think because the content seems so contradictory. The small volume of waste becomes big over time – imagine a month’s worth? A year? The ugliness of the waste collected over time becomes striking in the composition. You see the unnatural materials against the natural human body. The rubbish becomes art.

The photographs are a visual index of the waste that we, as humans, produce over time. It shows our changing diet patterns and the volume of packaging we seem to need to feel good about what we purchase and consume. The images were headlined in some news outlets as shocking, but we believe they are inspiring and thought-provoking. These photos deliver real statistics with a visual impact.

A Skip Story

Many moons ago, when I finished studying Fine Art in Sligo IT, I decided to move back to Galway and live with my parents again…

There was one problem! I left home with one suitcase and came back with a van load of personal belongings which included a bicycle, guitars, a mattress, paintings and countless other items which were probably ready to be placed in a skip. I didn’t want to let go! As there was no space in the house, I decided to store my belongings in my parent’s sizeable shed at the back of the garden. I thought since nobody really uses the shed, it would be prefect to store my baggage! I opened the door to be greeted by a full shed of belongings which had been gathering dust for the best part of 20 years, except my father’s lawnmower which was used twice monthly to trim the garden. There was no space. Not an inch!

Looking for a solution, I decided to hire a skip and give my parents the gift of a clean and tidy shed, albeit one that would double up as storage unit for my belongings for a short time. When I contacted the waste management company, The City Bin Co., to hire a skip I wasn’t sure which size skip would be best for the job, but their customer centre was really informative and explained all the different skip sizes. After all, the shed was full to the brim. You have small skips, medium skips and large skips. Really, there are skips of all sizes for different uses. I decided to hire a medium size skip and if I needed to hire a second skip I could do that.

The skip itself arrived on a sunny Saturday morning and I opened the shed door and started the clear-out. There was a lot of broken furniture, old toys, empty containers, unused bikes, pieces of wood and a small sofa. It took me a good half day to fill the skip and clean out the shed. I even gave it a lick of paint. There were definitely a few upsides to hiring a skip and doing a clean-out that I didn’t expect.

• My mother always said that a tidy home is a tidy mind, and this is so true when it comes to clutter and junk. After I cleaned out the shed, you could actually park a car in it. There was so much room.
• They say exercise the body and the mind will follow. My arms were sore after all the lifting and throwing. It was a good workout and I slept like a baby that night.
• Letting go of unwanted items creates space for new hobbies. In my father’s case, his shed is used more often now as it’s where he stores his gardening tools and keeps his top-soil and pots.

It was a great idea to hire a skip and clean out the shed and to do something useful that would benefit others. However, I do remember, a year after I had hired the skip and cleared out the shed, my father asking me if I had seen the 50-year-old ‘high nelly’ bicycle he used to have.! It was my Homer Simpson moment! “D’oh!” Yes! It went into the skip.

What skip size do you need? Choose the right skip for the job.

When deciding on the skip size you need, you just need to work out how much stuff you have to dump.

Our mini skip is ideal for small domestic and garden jobs – allowing you to easily dispose of waste materials without having to take regular trips to the tip. This skip size often presents the best value for any spring clean-type job. A mini skip is large enough to hold a sofa or single bed, and will fit in a standard driveway, and occupies half a car park space. It can hold the equivalent of 25-35 bin bags. Due to their small sizes, they are unobtrusive and can be placed almost anywhere to be in perfect reach of your working area.

Our standard skip is the size to order if you’re clearing out a house for renovation or sale, or a landlord clearing out an apartment after student. This size is the most popular skip used for household and commercial clear outs. It is widely used to dispose of bulky waste and will fit in a single car parking space and it holds the equivalent of 60-75 bin bags.

Our large skip is suitable for household clear-outs /renovations, bulky waste or building projects. This skip is only suitable for light waste as the skip is made of light metal, for example; plastic, paper, timber, metal, light furniture, etc. It holds the equivalent of 100-120 Black Bags.

Don’t forget we offer 10% off skip prices for our existing customers. Once you’ve completed your project and filled the skip, our experienced team will collect and dispose of your waste materials.

Please note: Soil & rubble (as well as other items mentioned here) – are prohibited. And please remember not to overfill the skip!

Find A Way, Not An Excuse

Brendan Doyle is a great example of somebody who is determined and resourceful. During the Covid-19 lockdown, he used what was around him to replicate his local gym while training for a competition in a sport called Skeleton. This is a very interesting sport where Brendan races down an ice track head first and hitting speeds of over 145kph. Brendan has competed at World Championships and European Championships and is focused on qualifying for the 2022 Winter Olympics. Brendan came across my radar when he shared a tweet with an image showing how he was using his wheelie bins from The City Bin Co. as a support prop while weight lifting.

A tweet showing Brendan training outside his home using the bins!

I reached out to Brendan to find out about the sport and what are the things that keep him focused.

Brendan shared three tips with me that can be applied to any task, dream, or situation.

1. The one mantra that Brendan sticks to in his training and in his life is: Find a way, not an excuse.
2. He focuses only on what he has to do today. There is dreaming and doing. He is doing with passion what needs to be done in the moment.
3. Whatever you are doing, own it. Do it because you love it and believe you can do it. That outlook will see you get to the end goal.

Brendan said he always focused on what he has to do today. He has his big picture goal. He knows what he needs to do to achieve it and focuses only on the present moment.  When his gym closed he had to get creative and use what he could. So, he uses everything from wheelie bins, the wall, and the car to mimic movements he would practice in the gym.

Another World Champion is The City Bin Co.’s own Gary Manogue. Gary is a two-time Super Welterweight Kickboxing Champion, and he shares a similar outlook to Brendan. He focuses on the task at hand, one which can change the results for the better. Gary prepared for his World Championship fights with a fitness regime that involved an eight kilometre run every morning, a work-out in the gym every evening, and in between, he was working for The City Bin Co. He said this gave him an edge over his competitors as working on the bin truck is a very physical job, from pulling and pushing bins to lifting bags and throwing them in the back of the bin lorry.

Flyer showing Gary Manogue’s route to success!

As with Brendan, Gary turned his dream into reality by hard work, determination, and being in the present to get the task done. When I asked Gary for a takeaway tip for winning, he replied, ‘It’s all about showing up every day. Show up and do everything you can to win’.

Working From Home, Part 2: Every Impression Counts On A Video Conference Meeting

A video meeting is such a simple communication tool. However, I have seen shared images and short clips of video calls that have gone wrong, from people taking the laptop to the bathroom thinking the camera was switched off to family members wandering in the background in their pyjamas (or less).

WFH3

Most people over the past few months have used video conferencing tools in their workplace. It may be that you have used Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meetup, WhatsApp, or Facebook’s Video Rooms. I must admit, when we started back in March doing our sales team video meetings via Microsoft Teams it was a little uncomfortable, not because it was anything negative, but simply because it was new. The software itself was easy to use and very intuitive. The awkward thing at the beginning was being on camera all of the time. At first, when we had our meetings there was a real mix of visuals with some colleagues choosing not to switch on their camera, some with their camera focused on the side of their faces and others where we could only see the top or bottom half of their head. Some had poor lighting quality and others were very far away. In early May, The City Bin Co. Sales Team and department managers participated in a video training course for best practices in video calls presented by Kim Slade from Touch Video Academy. Kim shared some simple skills and tips for having more professional video etiquette and increasing confidence while attending online video meetings. The difference in our video meetings before and after the session with Kim was striking. It was worlds apart. For me, there were three noticeable changes:

Camera positioning: Everybody now has their camera on and has it positioned at eye level. I bought an adjustable laptop stand on Amazon that raised my laptop to the appropriate height. Some people used a stack of books to get the camera where it needed to be. A secondary plus in having the screen and camera at eye level was that I was sitting up correctly in my chair giving me a more supportive sitting position. Now when the team is attending an online meeting, we are all at eye level and it feels more natural. We all look like we could host the Evening News!

Good Lighting: Another learning is lighting. Before, I used to sit with a window behind me. This created a very dark image on the screen for others. Now I sit in front of a window which gives great natural light. One of my colleagues uses a lamp that gives the same effect. When you have good lighting on your face you can be seen clearly.

Microphones Manners: I use a Jabra Evolve 65 headset as it has noise cancelling technology built-in. This is very handy as my wife and children are going about their daily lives too. At the end of the day, the kids must be able to play and I have to make sure that the customers have a great experience. Also, using the microphone mute button is so important to everybody on the call when somebody else is speaking.

The one thing that does give me a laugh on video meetings is the numerous times a day I hear ‘You’re on mute!’ or “Sorry, go ahead, no, you go ahead!”

Although there were some online moments posted around the world of meetings with people caught in embarrassing situations while attending their work meetings, personally and thankfully, I haven’t experienced them. Simple guidelines such as the above can help to keep both the communication and the video professional.

To summarise, keep the camera at eye level, get the lighting right so people can see you, and use the mute and unmute button. Also, I suggest you find a quiet space to sit, shut the door, and make sure you have an uncluttered plain background. You want the other person on the call focused on you and what you’re saying and not distracted by all of the things that you have in the background. You have to think of a video meeting as you would a professional face-to-face meeting and conduct yourself as you would if you were present with the people in the same room. The same first impression counts and, on video, every impression counts, particularly when it can be recorded and shared.