Charity calendar showcases town's bins

A man who has the unusual hobby of cataloguing bins in his hometown has created a charity calendar.

Andy Bailey, from Congleton, Cheshire, began photographing bins at the start of the year and his Instagram account has attracted nearly 2,000 followers.

Mr Bailey said he now had 130 photographs of bins located in his local area.

Some of the bins have been given names which Mr Bailey felt suit their characteristics, “the cover star, Binnie the Pooh, is September - surrounded by leaves," he said.

“Jeremy Cor-bin is one of the bins, the month of July. It’s red, it leans to the left.”

“You want the images to tie in with the different times of the year.”

Mr Bailey said £3 from the sale of each calendar would go to the Congleton-based charity Visyon.

“It kind of slips under the radar a bit.

“They do an awful lot of work with young people and their mental health, but it’s probably one of those charities that doesn’t get an awful lot in terms of exposure.”

Mr Bailey said he had sold about 50 calendars so far, and was hoping to sell at least 100.

He added there was synergy between the bin project and the charity, as going out to take photos had also been beneficial to his own mental health.

“I must’ve walked every square inch of Congleton and the surrounding areas – the green spaces, the rows of shops, the canal that runs around the town as well."

People can buy the calendars by messaging Mr Bailey on Instagram, and he also hopes to persuade some local shops to stock it.

“We’ve got 12 really good photos,” he said. “The bins themselves have been selected by followers of the Instagram page, so it’s 12 very different bins.”

He added: “It was important that we had different-looking bins, different styles of bins, in different parts of the town.”

The bins featured in the calendar are all publicly accessible, and people who buy the calendar could go and visit all of them, Mr Bailey said.

They are all located within a few miles of Congleton town centre.

The unusual calendar has even attracted the attention of those down under.

“It’s made the news in Australia now – it proper has gone global," Mr Bailey said.

“The thought that somebody could be staring at Congleton bins somewhere in Brisbane, there’s something quite appealing about that.”

He advised potential customers that if they only wrote on the calendar in pencil, they could be re-used in 2031, 2042 and 2053 as the dates match up.

“Good value, I’d say.”

Follow BBC Stoke & Staffordshire on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.