Hooptedoodle #414 - All Change in the World of Rubbish

 Back in 2015, I did a post on the new waste collection and recycling regs here and, perhaps predictably, I was rather less than wholehearted in my enthusiasm.

The new regime at that time involved 5 separate waste bins for each household: a small grey one for food waste, which was collected every Thursday; a fullsize wheelie with a red top for plastics, glass and metal, collected every 2nd Thursday; another wheelie with a blue top for paper and cardboard, also collected every 2nd Thursday; a green wheelie for general (landfill) waste, collected every 2nd Friday, and a brown wheelie for garden waste, which I think was supposed to be collected once a month, but in fact collection was so irregular that we usually missed it, and I can't remember what the official regime was [garden waste here mostly goes to my personal dump in the woods behind my house].

It worked. As usual, of course, it worked because the council-tax-paying residents put in enough personal effort to make it work, but I have become comfortable with the system, being reconciled to the fact that all this industry is aimed at saving the planet (which I can't fault as an objective) and at reducing the proportion of Council employees who actually do the work, as opposed to managing things.

I was occasionally horrified by the speed with which we could fill the plastics bin, but this has a lot to do with Tesco's commitment to wrapping everything in several layers of clear plastic. [I've never understood this - if I buy a pack of dry pasta, I don't really need to see what macaroni looks like - I've seen it before.] It also had a lot to do with our son's fondness for microwavable curries, but, since he has now gone away to college, we might expect this to reduce a bit. Whatever, our waste collection system became a sequence of known activity days, and the size of the bins seemed fine.

I became aware that the bigger villages around here did not have the red and blue-topped wheelie bins - waste collection day in those places involved some rather silly little tubs with elasticated tops, which were liable to blow about on windy mornings. In fact a couple of friends of mine who live in such villages were interested to see that we had our bins, which they regarded as old-fashioned and a little quaint.

OK - this year we were told there would be a change out here in the sticks. We would come into line with the bigger villages, would lose our red and blue-topped bins, and would be issued with the tubs (black for glass, blue for paper and card) and a weighted white bag for plastics. There will be a single fortnightly collection of "Recycling" - the tubs and the white bag. This requires us to alter our definitions of what-goes-in-where, but seems fine. We will now have 6 bins, with a different timetable. I can handle that.

Not so fast.

(1) the new arrangements were supposed to start back in September or thereabout - the idea was that there would be a final collection of the old bins (which would be emptied for the last time by the special bin-tipping truck, and taken away by a separate wagon accompanying the collecting truck on this final round), and after that we would just have to get used to putting the glass in a new container, plus some other minor adjustments to the list of permissable rubbish items, and the new regime would be running.

(2) there is no way that I propose to keep outdoor bins anywhere in the house, so we have to have a set of indoor containers which map on to the outdoor ones - this is simple enough: we just need a new indoor tub for glass.

(3) the first bad news was that there was some unexplained delay in the issue of the new tubs, so we carried on with the blue and red-tops until we received the new kit. At this point the Council stopped issuing meaningful timetables - the guys with the recycling truck did a best-endeavours run whenever they could to clear up in these fringe areas. It worked better than you might expect, but my wife is an enthusiastic reader of the Council's website. The delay was apparently something to do with obtaining supplies of the new tubs - this may have been associated with Covid, or the involvement of Bastard Foreigners - possibly both.

 

The New Tubs have arrived

(4) whatever, our new tubs arrived a few days ago. There was, fleetingly, mention of a special final run on Sunday (the Sabbath!) this week, but it didn't happen, so we put our old bins out again for the Monday run, and that didn't happen either.

(5) hmmm.

(6) it now seems very likely that there is no plan for the old bins, that the Council has already disposed of the special bin-tipping truck, and we await instructions. Since life must continue in the meantime, I guess that we start putting out recycling according to the new regs as from next Monday (or possibly the one after).

 

Our Old Recycling Bins (which are full) are bravely making their Last Stand, though I believe the Real World could not care less

(7) alas, the old bins are full, and the new tubs have about one fifth of their capacity, and the definition of what is allowed has changed. I am confident that nothing will ever happen to cover the changeover - I will have to sort the contents of our old bins into plastic bags, removing glass and putting it in a separate bag. Then I will have to take it to the Council Dump, which has slightly different definitions, since it uses different contractors.

(8) when and if anyone ever collects the old bins, and whether they warn us when they are coming, depends very much on whether they still have any grown-ups involved at the Waste Disposal department. It remains to be seen.

 

Our new timetable. Going back to September, there is a sequence of blue rectangles which did not apply to us, since we did not have the new tubs at these dates. As an aside, I am surprised that someone at the Council decided that a red pentangle was a good icon to represent a green dustbin. I confess I wouldn't have thought of that one

Not a serious matter, in the overall scale of things, but again I am left to wonder why as a society we are no longer able to organise anything. I mean anything. Too much communication, devoid of useful content; too many people at pains to avoid blame at all costs. Probably, also, too many entitled citizens (like me?) prepared to whinge about change, but it does feel as though I am running pretty hard on the spot to cover the cracks in the system.

I am warned that there is a pile of additional rules - we must have our bins out by 7am on collection day or we will miss the boat, and the green and brown bins must have the handles facing outwards, or else. For a crazy moment I wondered if someone might suggest that the emptied bins should be left somewhere other than the middle of the residents' gates, but I realised that this is unreasonable, and laughed at myself.

We are, of course, lucky to have rubbish at all - I understand this. Perhaps if Boris had fewer pals in the packaging industry things would be easier?