The bin lunacy that’s turned my home into a SHANTY TOWN
With residents in Bristol now forced to separate their recycling in up to NINE containers and waste only collected once a fortnight...
TO THE other people in the park, I must have looked quite peculiar. Sunglasses and hat by way of disguise, expression grim, pushing a baby’s pram filled not with a bundle of joy but a bundle of rubbish.
through my neighbourhood park I trudged, on a covert mission: to stick a few bags of household waste into a large public bin.
As I squished in the last bag, my hands covered in coffee grounds and some hard-to-identify smelly fluid, I prayed no one I knew would catch me in the act.
It was not my finest hour, I know, but m’lud, fortnightly bin collections had pushed me to it.
At the time, a few years ago, we had three small, un-potty-trained children whose nappies and associated products alone filled a couple of bin bags a week.
We recycled as best we could, but still the rubbish threatened to drown us, or at least bring a plague of rats to our door.
these days (with four children) it’s not much better. My husband spends an unseemly amount of time at the local waste and recycling centre.
‘Five days ’til bin day . . .’ he will mutter defeatedly as he lobs black sacks into the car boot. From the expression on his face, I don’t think he envisaged that his main hobby in life would be making endless trips to the dump.
every week he is there, disposing of our overflow cardboard and black bags, hoping the waste police don’t cotton on to the fact he frequents the place almost as much as the seagulls.
I know what you’re thinking: consume less! But with four young children that’s easier said than done. We don’t generate an unreasonable amount of waste: in a developed country like the UK, should it really be this much work to dispose of it?
DON’T even get me started on the recycling. In my home city of Bristol, the streets are regularly an obstacle course of receptacles.
the Labour-run council has a refuse system involving several bins per household.
I’ve heard stories that Bristol residents are forced to have 13 separate bins, bags and boxes, but that’s a slight exaggeration: on a normal bin day, you’ll need five or six, though if you’re planning to recycle clothes, shredded paper or small electricals like kettles, that rises to nine separate containers.
outside our house you will find: a black wheelie bin for general refuse; a green one for garden waste; a brown caddy for food scraps; a large blue bag for cardboard; a black box for glass and newspapers; and a green crate for plastic and tins.
the result of all this is that parts of Bristol regularly have a shantytown air — railings festooned with blue and black bags, caddies and boxes spilling on to the street.
After stormy nights, the scattering of pizza boxes and plastic detritus is a familiar sight. I can’t help but wonder whether the ‘ healthy’ urban fox population might be down to the rich pickings to be had from the knocked-over food caddies. More than once I have had to clear up a pile of rotting food left over from a foxes’ feast outside our house.
Perhaps all this would be less irritating if our recycling ‘allowance’ was generous enough for a family, but that’s far from the case.
on my street, neighbours regularly message each other, begging for a bit of space in someone else’s cardboard or plastic bin when theirs inevitably has reached its limit before collection day.
And don’t even dare try sticking a couple of empty plastic bottles in the wrong box; make such an error and, in my experience, the whole box will be left there containing not just the offending items but everything else, too. off to the tip my husband has to go.
Still, at least we Bristol residents aren’t financially punished — yet — for failing to recycle in the right way. In other parts of the UK, councils are fining householders for disposing of their waste in an incorrect fashion.
earlier this month, a woman in Brighton who runs a fragrance store was fined £400 for putting a bit of cardboard in the wrong bin.
one essex man was fined an extraordinary £1,000 for putting rubbish bags, including items for recycling, in the communal bins.
Judging by the level of punishment, it seems some councils have updated the ten Commandments: thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not put a yoghurt pot in with your cardboard recycling.
A strange world, this, where you’re fined less for driving above the speed limit, in a potentially dangerous way, than you are for sticking rubbish in the wrong bin.
What is the motivation for these heavy fines? Local authorities might argue they are dishing out punishments to encourage strict adherence to the rules, but I smell a (bin-dwelling) rat.
Call me cynical, but I can’t help but wonder whether cash-strapped councils see householders as an easy target for top-up funds.
the Department for environment, Food & Rural Affairs might state
that ‘fines should never be used as a means to raise revenue’, but with so many authorities riddled with financial black holes, wouldn’t it be tempting for them to tap householders as well as motorists?
I have some sympathy with councils in dire financial straits. It’s not all down to poor management and paying fat-cat salaries. they do have increasing expenses due to things beyond their control, not least the cost of social care due to our ageing population.
But slapping fines on people for minor recycling offences is not the right thing to do. It only plays into the image of council staff as powerhungry bureaucrats — and makes illicit waste disposal more tempting. the more difficult you make it for people to dispose of their rubbish easily, the more likely it is that fly-tipping will increase.
this is not to say that we as a nation should do nothing about waste, but let’s face it — the current approach isn’t working.
A recent report found that seven of the ten largest councils in the UK have actually increased the amount they send to landfill since 2020 rather than reduced it.
SIX of them had reduced the amount of dry recycling they undertook, which can only make us diligent waste- sorters wonder where our old plastic and cardboard really ends up: actually recycled, dumped in landfill or sent abroad to be burned?
here’s an idea: instead of making recycling harder, why not make it easier, with capacious public bins for unsorted waste? And instead of fining and punishing households, how about putting the onus on supermarkets and other retailers who create so much wasteful packaging in the first place?
one thing’s for sure: the jobsworth approach to waste is hardly likely to win hearts and minds — nor increase recycling rates. With local elections around the corner, the more officious councils might want to chuck their current strategy where it belongs — in the bin.