Cooncil websites are rubbish We need more tips on trash

ON THE UNBEARABLE TRIPENESS OF BINS AND THE DANGEROUS ALLURE OF NICE PLACES

EVERYTHING is rubbish. Even our bodies turn to detritus eventually, incinerated or bunged into individual plots of landfill. Everything was simpler in the past. You had a brightness button on the front of your TV (sorry, becoming a bit of an obsession, I know). And you had one bin in which to put all your detritus. Now, at least in parts of Englandshire, there’s talk of having seven bins, almost as many as there are genders.

It’s become so complicated. In a surprise development, Germans are the most efficient recyclers, primarily through spying on their neighbours. Even in Britain, stories abound of cooncil-employed “bin Karens” – nice name Karen; shame about the new association; if it’s any consolation, try being a Rab (Nesbitt; Scottish cringe etc) – inspecting folks’ bins to make sure the right rubbish is in the right container.

But, in the world of rubbish, grey areas abound: ready-meal trays, different types of paper, polythene bits on bags, different types of cardboard and glass. You can’t bung Pyrex dishes into recycling because they’ve a higher melting point than normal glass. So, what are you supposed to do with them?

How clean are plastic trays and yoghurt cartons supposed to be? Yoghurt cartons can usually be cleaned under the tap, but some food trays remain stained. Are we supposed to chuck them into landfill?

Can we assume cooncils have high-pressure washers? What do they have? What do they do with our stuff? Why don’t they tell us? Why, since the only vacancies they ever advertised for years were in IT, don’t they have better, more informative websites, instead of the usual legalistic, back-covering, round-in-circles gibberish?

Apparently (word du jour because of all the grey areas), 60% of rubbish in general waste could be recycled. But all we hear are cooncils moaning that a significant element in recycling should be in general waste. Our instinct is to try something in recycling, but they’re telling us that, if in doubt, chuck it out – to the landfill. Because, apparently, cooncils get fined by contractors for “contaminated” recycling waste.

We’re all doing oor best this side of the fence. What are they doing? I imagined people with rubber gloves sifting through the detritus but, apparently, it’s done by machines. And, apparently, the machines can’t deal with small items, such as lids. But, instead of removing these, they send the whole consignment to landfill or the incinerator.

You can’t put bigger items in any bins. I inherited a garden full of rubber tyres, and the cooncil would charge £100 to take them away. Maybe it’s different where you live. But that’s another problem: all cooncils are different.

Where I live we’ve only two bins. There’s no food caddy collection. No kerbside glass collection. Getting rid of garden waste is a two-hour round trip. On another island where I used to live I remember a Norskie (Norwegian) scowling at a local for

putting a newspaper in a bin. But we had no paper recycling. The local should have given the paper to the Nordic supremacist and told him to dispose of it when he got back to Teutonia where, as with their German cousins, recycling has become an up-themselves bragging competition.

But never mind fighting with national neighbours and the cooncil, we should all band together – against the manufacturers. Why aren’t they punished for using non-recyclable packaging or bunging in extraneous material? Most packaging tells you nothing, except occasionally in minute print: “Not yet recyclable.”

It’s typical of the Earthlings to muck up what should be a relatively simple matter. Why don’t they unify the system? Tell us all what’s what. Disprove the contentious claim by top pop band Blur that “modern life is rubbish”.

Fatal attraction

WHO in their right mind would visit an “attraction”? Attractions attract crowds, among which you run the risk of infection, fist-fights, marriage.

But, no, folk flock to attractions and, disturbingly, number one of these in Scotia Minor, once again, is

Edinburgh Castle. Typical. Anything this column rails against – rap music, bicycling, trousers that taper at the ankle – becomes exponentially popular.

You’ll recall my fulminating against Edinburgh Castle because of its outrageous admission price for something whose main, virtually only, asset is a view. But nobody listens. Cheerfully, they hand over their spondulicks, though one likes to think they conclude afterwards: “Yon big-nosed bloke in the paper was right.”

When not in my right mind, I myself visit “attractions”, and have two favourite places, each not far from yon overpriced ramparts. They have big gardens and are usually quiet. I’m not telling you where they are in case I start a stampede, but I was intrigued to see another place I’ve visited from time to time, Newhailes House and Gardens, in Musselburgh, having a three-fold increase in visitors. Worth a visit, though you won’t find me going now.

Among other attractions, I enjoy the National Museum of Scotland, in Edinburgh, and the Kelvingrove, in Glasgow, mainly because they are free. I hate to say it but, maybe if they slapped on a huge admission price, they’d get a lot more eejits coming.