Five years ago, I missed my recycling bin for the third week in a row and texted my partner: "Why is there not just a thing that tells you which bin to put out?"
Today, there is.
The side-project years
BinPing started as a cron job that scraped Durham County Council's website and sent me a text. I showed it to a few neighbours. They wanted it. Their neighbours wanted it. Within a month, 200 people were using a service held together with duct tape and a £5/month server.
Why it took so long
The scraping approach was fragile. Every time the council updated their website, the whole thing broke. I'd fix it on my lunch break, but that's not sustainable when people rely on you.
The breakthrough was realising we needed to work with councils, not around them. That meant proper partnerships, proper data, and proper infrastructure. It also meant quitting my job and doing this full-time.
Today
BinPing is live in Durham with 227,000 households covered. Email alerts are free. SMS alerts are 99p a month. The data comes straight from the council, refreshed nightly, with bank-holiday awareness built in.
What comes next
Darlington is next, then we're in conversations with several councils across the Midlands and North East. The goal: every council in the UK by end of 2027.
Thank you to everyone who's been part of this journey. Now please, go put your bin out.