Garbage bins--not necessary, IMO

Nobody in my town would just put out bags, because bears get into garbage cans on a regular basis.

Bins are required here, our rubbish is only collected once a month so bags alone wouldn't be suitable. Rats,foxes, and cats would have a field day ripping them open. People are generally really good at taking their bins in.

We are required to have bins for trash, green for trash & blue for recycling (provided by city). Otherwise, animals may get into the bags & tear them up and make a mess. Trash pickup used to be twice a week but now it’s only weekly (on Wednesday)

Several years ago, we had to stop using plastic bags for leaves & were required to use paper ones.

Fortunately about 4 years ago, our city purchased a leaf truck. Now we just have to blow/rake these to the curb and every Monday, they come along & vacuum up the leaves. It’s wonderful!

I am a bins person.  We have HOA and the rules are that bins are put away within 24 hours of pickup and out of sight.  Most people do that but there are the 5% that might take longer or don't hide them.  They supposely get fined if they don't. 

I am a bin person, because there is always someone that doesn't use a bin and it seems like their trash is unsightly.  Either just piled up willy-nilly and spilling out, or broken open.  (It is not manatory to use the bins, but 90% of us do.  They are free from the trash company or $1... lol)  

We don't have those kind of bags your are talking about.. maybe Home Depot or Lowe's has them, but no one around here has those kind.  

I think bins keep everything look 'nice'.  Roll them out, roll them in. They are almost always put back right where they are left.  Occasionally (and I mean that very very occasionally) they are put back either in the middle of the driveway or street.  Just always right back next to the curb.   

There is one house that doesn't have a bin, and he never ever ever ever has more than one small kitchen bag of trash each week. It's a whole family that lives there too.  It amazes me that he never has more trash.  Maybe he takes some to work to dispose of?  Never any recycling either. (which works the same as the trash.. one bin, empty bi-weekly) 

In the fall time for leaves, everyone has plastic bags for leaves for a couple of weeks, in addition to the bins. 

We have an amazing system where I live. Everyone has ‘bin cupboards’ near their driveway and we have General Rubbish, Paper and Green Waste bins which are each collected either once a week or every second week, each on different days.
The trucks have 5 workers - a driver, 2 who go ahead of the truck and pull the bins to the curb and 2 who follow after to buy them back in the cupboards. Nothing is left on the curb for long and all is neat.

We are required to use the bins provided to us because our city uses the trucks that pick up the bins with a mechanical arm. If you don’t use the bins, your trash is not picked up. We also live in an HOA community so there are rules about when you can and cannot put out your trash. Bins cannot be left out for days or you will get fined.

Before they changed the trash trucks, we could put out the trash in any form…plastic bags, trash cans you can buy at Home Depot, etc. The truck driver would have to physically throw the trash into the trucks. We have wild animals around, so sometimes they would get into the plastic trash bags and there would be trash all over the place. I once saw a raccoon tearing up my neighbor’s trash. I quietly walked away and left him alone. Our recycling stuff used to be placed in open plastic boxes that the city provided. We now have bins for those too.

So, yes, having no trash bins was sometimes easier, but having the trash bins is cleaner and animal proof.

This is how it has been the 20+ years we have lived here. We also have animals (skunks, raccoons, coyotes, and rarely mountain lions) so plastic bags don't cut it.

Our green waste bin is now for "organics" which includes anything compostable. We also have a mixed recycling bin and a regular trash bin. Pick up is weekly.

This is us as well.  I'm unclear how just having bags would work.  Do you just stack the filled bags all week in your house until pickup day? The backyard? Garage?  On the street? 

The big bins definitely deter animals but also limit bugs and the smell.  Recycling and yard waste goes straight into the bin with no bag whatsoever.

All in our area, yes. Where we used to live - it was a bigger apartment building - we had dumpsters for paper, green waste and 'other' in the basement, and I'm not sure who put them up for emptying - there was a platform lift to street level. 

I've never seen those brown bags used for anything but leaves here, but if they would work, and the local wildlife would not get into them, then yeah, I would prefer them over a bin.

At the house, I could see perhaps still keeping a rolling bin, and storing the filled brown bags with them as an easy way to transport them to the curb, but it's just like you say, the trash collectors dump those bins all over the place, the wind blows them away, they get broken, and so on.

(And actually, in our town, you don't have to bag leaves, either. You can just rake them to the curb, and they come along with the giant leaf vacuum and take them all away.)

Bins are required for normal pickup here. City supplies each house with 1 garbage, 1 recycle, and 1 yardy. Our pickup day is Friday for the part of town we live in.
We can have extra garbage with a sticker. and Glass needs to be separated from other recycling, in a bucket. Both of these a person will get out of the truck and manually put it in the truck, otherwise it's all machine pickup. I try to save glass for only once a month or so, so they're not getting out so often.

The neighboring town is literally switching over from bags to bins this month, and the uproar it's creating is kind of hilarious.

we have bins, but since we live out in the country it doesn't matter if they're left out, or not.  Although having lived in an HOA neighborhood for so long, we both just automatically bring it in from the street as we're pulling through the gate into the driveway.

I would think the large brown paper bags could get ruined in bad weather, too. (like right now in the StL area, we've had between 5-10 inches of rain over the last few days- those brown bags would get waterlogged and disintegrate.)

no requirements here and some people use bins, some don't, and some have a mix. We only have once/week pickup - no kerbside recycling - and yard waste is just picked up as part of the rubbish pickup not separated out. The only time it's picked up separately is post-hurricane where we have a set amount of time to get it set in the right aways and they send special grapple trucks to collect it. Otherwise you just leave branches (no more than 4ft long) by the bins and/or fill a spare bin with yard waste or leave out bags (typically black plastic).

The next county over doesn't offer pickup at all so...I really can't complain.'

I use bins - and did purchase the kind that the mechanical arm can pick up (I do have some older ones also that we use for yardwaste usually). Our trucks are a 2-man crew and they mostly load by hand unless the bins fit the arm