Josh Sandiford
BBC News, West Midlands

Steven Reeves is one of the Birmingham residents who has resorted to driving his rubbish to the tip.

When we caught up with him at the weekend, he was also taking the waste from elderly neighbours and told us there were "rats everywhere" in his area.

Reeves said he deserved a council tax refund and added: "I don't think they are taking it seriously enough.

"Every single day that goes by it's just getting worse and worse."

The council has made it clear that paying council tax is a legal responsibility and that it is used to fund a range of services, not just bin collection.

It added: "The current situation is the result of industrial action taken by Unite the Union, not due to the council’s actions."

The council's advice during these bin strikes is to put your household waste bin out as normal on collection day and it will be picked up as soon as possible, which could mean weekend collections.

But it asks people not to put out their recycling or green waste, because that will not be collected and people who have paid for the green waste service will automatically be refunded.

Bulky waste collections have also stopped, but neatly bundled waste can be put out in black bags alongside the household waste.

The council has asked people to take their recycling to their nearest recycling centre and it is ok to put "a reasonable amount of side waste, including recyclables" in those black bin bags beside your household waste bin.

It has urged people to do what they can to stop pests getting in these black bags though.

The council says it will focus its efforts on removing waste from housing blocks and houses of multiple occupation.

Assisted collections and clinical waste collections will also be a priority.

Image source, Christina Weldon

Christina Weldon, from the Four Oaks area of Sutton Coldfield, hasn't had her recycling collected since December because of the industrial action.

She says she and her partner had been taking it to a recycling centre and more recently to friends and family living outside the affected area, to put it in their bins.

But not everyone is doing that and she says the waste was "piled up in certain areas".

At the moment, her general waste is still being collected, but she worries "it's only going to get worse".

She also says she "can't get hold of anyone to speak to" and has given up reporting the uncollected rubbish.

People have started disposing of their waste in areas neighbouring Birmingham and this is worrying those local authorities.

Peter Whittaker a member of Bromsgrove District Council, says: "Householders have a legal duty to get rid of their rubbish responsibly and I'm very concerned this could escalate in areas that are adjoining Birmingham."

Image source, Walsall Council

But Gary Perry, the leader of Walsall Council, appears less concerned.

He says: "We are currently checking all vehicles for proof of residency and turning away as required.

"Obviously we have sympathy for Birmingham residents. We're not seeing many."

Katie Thompson
Senior journalist, BBC News

I’ve been to many a scene where police are in attendance managing an incident of some sort, but never to one involving bins.

When I arrived at Anderton Park Road in Moseley it was like some sort of "binmageddon" - people rushing down the streets to the wagon carrying multiple bags and others running down the middle of the road with their wheelie bins desperate to unload them.

Cars loaded with rubbish parked here, there and everywhere. Police yelling at people not to dump their rubbish on the street. It got heated at times as tempers flared when police called the collection off early and residents were faced with bags dumped outside their houses.

But what happened next showed a community working together in times of crisis. A wagon helped clear the mountain of dumped rubbish that was left on the street and residents, councillors and police all mucked in and helped with the clean-up operation.

Well done Moseley.

A rubbish collection lorry was swarmed by so many people as it attempted to travel along Anderton Park Road, in Moseley, that a local councillor decided to call police.

It was meant to clear some of the rubbish off the streets, but residents complained that people were driving over and bringing their rubbish with them.

Hafeeza, who lives on Anderton Park Road, said: "People who aren't residents are parking up and leaving rubbish outside of my house.

"It was very noisy with people honking, it wouldn't be a problem if they were doing it in a decent way but the people who came here didn't care."

Josh Sandiford
BBC News, West Midlands

We caught up with Katrina Devlin at the Lifford Lane recycling centre.

She's one of dozens of residents queuing there in their cars to get rid of their rubbish.

"Just pay them what they want to be paid," she urges the council.

"It's having a knock on effect on everyone. They need to come to a compromise."

Birmingham City Council has said the changes being made to waste collection are "part of the much-needed transformation of the service".

It said the current structure was agreed following the 2017 bin strikes and it needs to save money after effectively declaring itself bankrupt in 2023.

The council has said the planned changes were a "crucial part of our need to become financially sustainable".

The council is also saying the impact of the changes is far smaller than Unite has claimed and council leader John Cotton has said: "Everybody is in a position where they wouldn't need to lose pay or they could have an alternative role or take voluntary redundancy."

The authority said 80% of the workforce had accepted alternative offers, including promotion to driver roles, voluntary redundancy or moving to street cleaning teams, but 41 workers had not come forward to accept an alternative.

It said the maximum amount anyone would lose would be £6,000 and only 17 of those 41 workers could lose as much as that.

Trade union Unite balloted its members for industrial action because of a change in the pay structure for bin workers.

Its issue is with the removal of a higher pay grade for about 150 refuse workers who are responsible for health and safety during bin collections.

It said those workers affected would lose an average of £8,000 a year - a figure disputed by the council.

The union also said the Waste Recycling and Collection Officer role was "safety-critical" and that the post brought safety expertise to an "often dirty and dangerous job".

The current industrial action, including an overtime ban, involves more than 350 workers and it began in January with an indefinite all-out strike starting on 11 March.

The industrial action started in January with a series of on-off strikes by refuse workers, but ramped up last week when members of the Unite union moved to all-out strikes.

That decision has quickly seen rubbish bags pile up on many streets across the city and it is now almost impossible to tell fly-tipping from people's rubbish, put out in the hope it will be picked up.

Andy Giddings
BBC News

We are now just over a week into the all-out strikes by bin workers in Birmingham.

Today, we'll be seeing how the city is coping and what chance there is of a solution in the coming weeks.