Waste not, breathe not

So the local council have changed the waste collection days to once a fortnight – green bin for general waste one week, blue bin for recycling the next.  They say “We need to make savings, lower our impact on the environment & improve recycling rates”.

They haven’t gone so far as providing composting bins, not that I have a garden big enough to need that much compost, but what am I meant to do with food waste – fat trimmed off meat, fruit and vegetable peelings, leftovers that I can’t eat because everything comes in family size packs and I have only one stomach?  What do I do with cat litter and cat food pouches?  Do I leave them to rot for a fortnight in the green bin, stinking up the back street?

I can see this leading to a lot more black bags being used.  People will double- and triple-bag to keep the stink down.  How does that reduce environmental impact?  Well, I suppose it will look tidier when everything is black and shiny instead of spilling out everywhere.

It seems to me they’re going about this backwards if the environment excuse is to be believed.  You need to make some major changes elsewhere first.  We need manufacturers to use less packaging, produce smaller sizes, and do more of the controlled disposal before things hit the shelves.  We need better alternative means to remove whatever waste we can’t reduce.  You can’t suddenly decide that you won’t handle waste and expect it not to pile up somewhere else instead.

Instead of landfill, we’ll have fly tipping and rats.  That’s a great way to improve the environment.  I don’t mind the odd rat scurrying about on the railway embankment.  They’re quite cute and as rodents go are very intelligent and interesting to watch.  What I do mind is the population increasing and the disease that they (inadvertently) spread by rooting round in rotting waste.  Perhaps I could catch them in humane traps when they start spreading and take a few down to council headquarters for a visit.  I don’t want to kill them – they have as much right to be alive as anyone else – but I can see exterminators having an up-turn in business.  Rats might be nicer neighbours than some of the people a few streets over.  Perhaps if we evict the vermin and move the rats in, we’ll have a waste disposal team of the most natural kind on our doorstep.

The plan should increase recycling, apparently.  Well, I already recycle everything for which they provide the facility to do so.  Most of us around here do.  You should hear the crash of bottles and cans going into the blue bins the night before collection day.  So how does reducing the frequency of collections for the waste they don’t allow me to recycle help?  It doesn’t.  What it might do is make people use the recycling bins for general waste as well as tins, bottles, paper, card and oh, no, that’s all they let us recycle.

So thinking about it, I really have to conclude that their statement should really be simply “We need to make savings”.  They’ve had their budget cut by the government, as has everyone else, so instead of spending less money on think tanks to come up with public health disasters like this, they’re cutting the number of people that collect our bins.  What they’ve done is cut two thirds of the team so only one third is left to get round all the streets and remove all the waste.  What next?  Close two thirds of the roads on a rota basis to prevent wear and tear?

I might be over-reacting but it seems only five minutes since the ‘newsletter’ told us triumphantly that the people had not been willing to cut waste management services so they were leaving it alone.  I give it a very short time before it becomes a problem.  People are people and the majority want to have their cake and eat it (then throw the wrapper away).  I don’t create enough rubbish to complain about an overflowing bin, but my neighbours do.  My food rots, just like everyone else’s.  We’ll all be keeping our windows shut this summer.  Even if we get used to the smell of rotting rubbish, we don’t want the flies in.  I’m off to practise not breathing so that as the miasma builds up, I’ll be able to cope.