Biffa Boys targeting the confused over recycling

Imagine, if you will, an elderly widow, frail of body but strong of mind. She is, perhaps, a little nervous of authority so she dutifully sorts her rubbish; recyclables into one bin, landfill material in the other.

She feels she is doing her bit for the environment. Come collection day, a Biffa recycle policeman opens the lid of her green bin and – uh oh! – spots some refuse which shouldn’t be there.

He refuses to empty the bin until the offending articles have been removed. How many illegal items are there? How far down the bin might others lurk? What is our little old lady to do? Surely she could not be expected to empty out the bin in the street or in her garden, reclassifying each item as she replaces it in the appropriate receptacle...

I have sought guidance as to which items are acceptable for recycling. Broadly speaking, the divisions are clear but there are dodgy areas. It was only after reading that the Biffa Boys would be checking bins for inappropriate material that I discovered that broken window glass, for one example, should not go along with glass bottles and that black plastic food trays belong in the general, household rubbish bin while their translucent cousins would be welcomed by recyclers with open arms.

Cardboard cartons are apparently not cardboard if they have been waxed in order to hold liquids and shredded paper has fibres too short for further use.

Every official knows as an act of faith that members of the public are stupid verging on the sub-human.

So those of us who fall into that category need plain, simple, accessible and absolute guidelines as to what materials belong in which bins. So far, the guidance, particularly for my imagined lady has been inadequate.

Certainly, booklets have been issued, but I found mine woefully short of definitive information at the ‘lower end’ of the scale. In order to qualfy as a recycling whizz kid, I looked on the internet where, admittedly more comprehensive information is available.

But our little old lady is suspicious of the internet; it opens up a world alien to her view of things.

She probably doesn’t have a computer anyway and is far too sensible to allow herself to be enslaved by the mind-fungus that is the portable telephone.

‘Broadly speaking, the divisions are clear but there are dodgy areas’