My photo.
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“I want to throw my rubbish out. I don’t want to file it.” – Jack Dee, philosopher and comedian.
I truly empathise with that. The trouble is I’m in two minds about it. I too would prefer to throw my rubbish out without having to make decisions on whether the flier is card, paper or cardboard and whether the pizza box goes with the cardboard or with the general rubbish because it’s greasy and if so what counts as greasy, one drop or a sea of oil?
However I feel guilty about recycling and as with most people it’s really the only positive thing I can do about climate catastrophe and ecological breakdown. The other things are a litany of don’ts: don’t drive, don’t fly, don’t eat meat, don’t buy cheap fun clothes etcetera, ad infinitum. I know people who live the lives of a 12th century hermit and I know people with an SUV who belligerently claim that they recycle. I do my best, but I’m weak.
So I try to comply with Cornwall Council’s increasingly byzantine demands. I’d got used to rubbish collection every week, recycling every two weeks.
Then the whole rhythm changed a few months ago. No longer weekly, different rubbish is collected bi-weekly. So one week is general waste and the food waste canister. And the next week is recyclables and food waste canister. We separate paper, cardboard, plastic, glass and tins. Every two weeks we have a little row of colourful and rugged plastic bags, more or less full with paper, plastic etc
Some people have boxes full of glass bottles. We have bags full of newspapers. It’s not terrible except... Two things.
There’s the issue of the rubbish containers. Most people have a nice gull-proof black wheelie-bin which they wheel to the pavement the day before the binmen come and wheel back again after they’ve gone.
However if you’re cheeky enough to have more than two steps up to your front door or front gate, you don’t get a gull-proof wheelie bin. You get a large plastic rubbish bag, black, with white handles. This item is far from being gull-proof, it’s gull-friendly or perhaps gull-loving since their beaks can go through the gull-proof bag in a couple of pecks. And do.
I tried protesting about having the lower-class black bags but it was a fair cop, guv, I have nine steps up to the gate and I got nowhere.
The food waste caddies are also getting on my wick. I have a compost bin in my garden which I’m very proud of, full of red worms, woodlice and insects. I put the easy garden waste – peelings and teabag-insides mostly – into a brown paper bag lined with egg-boxes and toilet rolls to stop it getting slimy and when full it goes into the compost heap where the invertebrates have a party.
In the official grey caddy, lined with an official green composting bag, I put difficult things like banana skins, mouldy bread and chicken bones crunched by the guest-cat. I’m allowed to do this, it’s all in the perky instructions. Then once a week I have to decant the bag of pre-compost into a larger green caddy and put it by the gate so the binmen can empty it.
This is fine in winter or indeed in normal Cornish summers. However, the minute the sun comes out, bad things start to happen. The caddy is full of condensation, mould is joyously growing on the banana and avocado skins, fruit flies are multiplying like... well... flies, and it stinks.
Also the expensive official green compost bags (made of potato starch) tend to dissolve in the hostile environment that is both the caddies, so there are holes in the bags and nameless fluids drip out and it’s disgusting.
I have a pretty strong stomach but I draw the line somewhere. Would you like to have a kitchen ponging of rotten banana skins when you’re doing your best to file your rubbish?
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