Wednesday 14 August 2019

Rubbish collection

is an  issue in our street. 
Our street is short and narrow and, leading off it, is an even shorter public roadway into "the Court" - a group of single storey "units". The rubbish compactors don't go into the Court. Those who live there have to wheel their bins out into our street.
And some of them don't. They simply dump their rubbish in other people's bins.
Rubbish collection was earlier than usual yesterday. I went out to discover our general waste bin had been emptied - and then filled again. It was about half full - of someone else's rubbish.
There is a move afoot to fine people for putting the wrong rubbish in the wrong bin. (There are three bins here, one for general waste, one for things which can be recycled, and one for garden cuttings and the like.) I have no problem with getting people to put their rubbish in the right bin. I do have a problem with being fined because someone else does the wrong thing. How they are going to avoid that I have no idea. Will I be expected to sit there, paws tucked neatly in front and tail curled out of the way waiting  until the compactor arrives?
I can remember that, as children, we used to go and watch the "rubbish men" as they went down the street my grandparents lived in. There would be three men. One of them was the driver and the other two were the "runners". They would run to a bin, grab it and sling the contents into the "big bin" before running it back into place. Then they would swing themselves on to a platform at the back and go on to the next lot. We thought it was amazing that they were allowed to do this. It seemed very dangerous to us - and yes, it probably was.
I remember those bins were metal, not heavy duty plastic. Now I also remember the size of those bins. They were small, much smaller than the general waste bin we have now. And people don't have just one bin. They have three. General waste goes out each week. The other two go out on alternate weeks.
There are weeks when we don't put our bins out simply because there is little, sometimes nothing, in them. One of our neighbours is much the same.
We were discussing the new proposal to fine people. We agree it won't work fairly if people get fined for others who dump waste.
But we also wanted to know, 
     "Where does all the rubbish come from?"

3 comments:

jeanfromcornwall said...

I can tell you where a lot of the rubbish comes from - it is given out free in shops, wrapped around a lot of the things we buy.

Anonymous said...

It is not free - we pay for it, and then pay again to get rid of it, and pay again with a spoiled planet.

LMcC

jeanfromcornwall said...

You are right there - it is far from free.