And I know this to be true, because I have a postcard from the city council’s anti-social behaviour department giving me a stern ticking off. My offence, it seems is that I have been contributing to litter in the street where I live by leaving out my bin bag on the pavement before collection day.
Which doesn’t sound all that pleasant, it’s true, but not all that heinous at the same time. Perhaps a little context would help explain. Here, then, are the facts.
- I live in a terrace house, with no rear access other than through the house itself.
- The pavement at the front of the house is not wide enough for residents to store bins (and there are no front gardens or yards here).
- Yesterday was waste collection day. But not recycling collection day
- The bin bag in question was, in fact, a clear recyclables bag, full of recyclable material.
- The council only collect these bags every fortnight.
- Not only that, but although they provided residents with bags to collect recyclables in, they did not provide us with bins or anywhere to store the bags. We bought our own bin for this.
- The house is small, and there isn’t really anywhere to set aside for the luxury of storing recycables waiting for someone to come collect them.
- The council is overly fussy about what can and can’t be put in these bags. Because they are collected then manually sorted (I assume this is why, anyway) you are not allowed to put shredded material in. Which is patently ridiculous, since I don’t really want recyclabe sorters going through any sensitive information I have, and besides, is it not the case, perhaps, just maybe, that in order to recycle paper, at some point during that process the paper is going to be mushed / pulped / whatever? Or have I got it embarrassingly wrong, and the process involves trained paper engineers painstakingly laying out individual sheets over ink-absorbent solutions to ‘clean’ the paper, producing new, crisp blank sheets?
Apparently, if I don’t comply with the instruction to NOT leave this ‘rubbish’ outside, I can be fined £75.
Funnily enough, it was only the other day that I was reading about how in the UK despite being among the higher waste producers (600kg per person, per year) across Europe, we manage to recycle the least amount, with a paltry 18% recycled or composted, which compares pretty unfavourably with The Netherlands (65%) and Austria (59%), and in fact all other nations except Greece (8%) and Portugal (a shocking 3%, but then there’s not many of them, and they each only generate two thirds of the waste that we do in the UK).
I wonder why it could be that we don’t recycle more in this country.