Householders in my Dad’s home town have been told by their local council that they will no longer be issued with a printed calendar to remind them of their rubbish bin collection days.
Fife householders have four different rubbish bins, with different rotations of collection. For my Dad, his bins are emptied on a Thursday, with a complex four week cycle.
The Bin Collection Cycle
Week One – Green bin for cans and plastic
Week Two – Blue bin landfill waste, and Brown bin for garden and food waste
Week Three – Grey bin for paper and cardboard
Week Four – Blue bin for landfill waste, and Brown Bin for garden and food waste
Remembering this cycle is a challenge for everyone, never mind seniors, or anyone living with memory-impairment, so the council had been issuing a paper calendar to every household, with their specific collection details.
Service withdrawn
However, in an effort to save money, the council are withdrawing the individual printed calendars, in favour of an online version. Ironically, Convener for the Environment, Protective Services & Community Safety Committee Cllr Ross Vettraino, said:
“Fife Council have a very good reputation for recycling, and are reducing our impact on the environment and saving precious resources by asking people, wherever possible, to access their bin calendar online… …now is the perfect time to print off a copy…”.
The onus is now on every householder to access their personalised bin collection calendar – which is a big assumption that every household has an internet-connected computer, and a householder who is tech-savvy enough to be able to find the Fife Council website, then find the relevant page on the website (here).
For my father, who is does not own a computer (or a tablet or smart-phone), is not tech-savvy, lives alone, and after several small strokes does not have a great memory, remembering “bin day” is a big problem.
Mindings to the rescue!
(1) Using the connected Google Calendar feature, I created four recurring calendar entries on the Wednesday evening, to remind Dad to put the bin out.
(2) I created a series of reminder images that I can send on a Thursday morning, to serve as a further reminder, importantly, with a picture to re-inforce the message. I’ve set three scheduled, repeating reminders on a smartphone App (called Due) to remind me on Thursday mornings to send the appropriate picture via the Mindings Sender App. The Sender App has a feature that enables me to make the image a Temporary Picture, so that it auto-deletes at the end off the day, so I don’t have to manually delete it.
Future Feature
As a future feature, we would like to enable the scheduling of posts, so I don’t have to manually upload a weekly image, and we’d also like to extend the Flexible Notes feature to enable continuous and repeating scheduled Flexible Notes posting.
If you would like some help setting up these features, get in touch here.
Comments