Q. Last week, we put our city garbage bin outside our home on the curb in Hawai'i Kai, in pretty much the same spot we put it each week. Then we noticed a city supervisor putting stickers on some bins on the street that weren't being dumped into the rubbish truck. We got out in time to make sure our bin was picked up. But the supervisor said it had been too close to a lamp post and could have been missed because of it. Is there a change in city policy on the garbage rules? Some kind of rubbish crackdown? I'm sure the neighbors who found their garbage waiting at home also wonder what happened.

A. City officials say the policy remains the same, only the stickers are new.

Environmental Services Department spokesman Ken Kawahara said the city instructed residents from the start of the automated garbage pickup years ago that the bins need to be placed at least 5 feet away "from any fixed object."

He said "this has been an ongoing policy ever since those bins were distributed." But since the city got some new stickers and some people missed their garbage pickup, let's review the rules.