PART OF everyday Tameside life is before immortalised in a new calendar.
And there is nothing rubbish about the brough’ bins raking the spotlight.
The humble contraption left out by people and emptied is September’s pin-up in Stuart Atkinson’s latest ‘dull’ production – Wheelie Bins of Greater Manchester.
Each of the 10 boroughs that make up the region gets its moment in the limelight.
Following on from Pylons and Views of the M60, it is the latest calendar the photographer is releasing.
Stuart said: “We started two years ago with the mind-numbingly dull idea of a calendar of electricity pylons.
“I drive a lot for work and see a lot of infrastructure and some of us were talking about what the bits on a pylon did.
“I asked if they thought someone would buy a calendar and we all thought, ‘Yes.’ 2024 was the first calendar and it did quite well.
“We also got Calendar Club, the largest retailer of its type in the UK, on board and they’ve stocked our calendars every year.
“In 2025, we upped our level of dullness to five publications, including Pylons, Views of the M60 and Retro Computers, which was done for the brilliant North West Computer Museum to raise funds in the gift shop.
“2026 has Pylons – that was our original, so we’ll always do that one, – Views of the M60 Part II – you can only fit so many junctions in one calendar, Wheelie Bins of Greater Manchester and a couple of others.
We picked bins as it’s such a good fit – having 10 boroughs means it writes itself really – that’s 10 months already set up.”
Each month features a picture of a bin, while there is also ‘binformation’ – which includes the colours, volume, total capacity, total annual capacity, frequency of collection and a metric of value based on council tax.
There is also a diorama page for June, asking people to spot various things going on.
And yes, they will be all the issues associated with bins, such as one not being collected or having the wrong waste in it, someone putting waste in their neighbour’s bin, people arguing over who’s bin is who’s, a council naughty sticker applied to a bin with reason for not collecting, someone putting inappropriate waste in bin and a huge pile of unsorted waste attracting rats.
December is the final ‘BINalysis’ of all the stats, looking at things like how many of each bin colour there are, how many councils use the same colours and how many councils have the exact same colours for the same waste
*IF YOU want to buy Wheelie Bins of Greater Manchester, or any other of Stuart’s calendars, you can click www.taketheaframe.co.uk.
They cost £12.99 plus postage.