John Wesbroom, 82, has emptied South Oxfordshire’s bins for 50 years and won’t retire

John Wesbroom, 82, has collected bins in South Oxfordshire for 50 years and has no plans to stop. He joined the waste company Biffa in the 1970s and still works 45 hours a week on a garden waste round, 16 years past the usual retirement age, the Oxford Mail reported on Thursday. The paper and the Mirror have both called him Britain’s oldest binman.

The round

Wesbroom gets up at 3:30 in the morning for a shift that starts at 5:45. By his own estimate he walks about five miles a day, and he and a colleague empty up to 1,000 bins a shift. The green waste is composted and sold to local farmers.

“I love what I do; it keeps me busy and I enjoy the banter with the people I work with and the public,” he said. “People are shocked when I tell them my age, but it keeps me fit and happy.”

He puts his fitness down to not smoking, not drinking and being in bed before 10 at night. The best part of the job, he said, is the people on his round. “I’ve had the same customers for many years and seeing them every week, you follow their lives too, it’s brilliant.”

Since the 1970s

The job has changed around him. “I’ve seen a lot of changes over the years, from the old-fashioned dust carts to the different ways we recycle today,” he said.

Bradley Short, who works the garden waste round with him, is 22. “I’m 22 and he’s 82 and we get on so well,” Short said. He called Wesbroom an “absolute legend” and added: “I hope I’ve got half his energy when I’m his age.”

At home

Wesbroom said his family think it is great that he still works and tell him to keep on going. “I can take the grandchildren to McDonald’s without worrying about money,” he said. “I even play football with them.”