Managing Waste

Once, not so long ago, your local authority was obliged to weekly collect, free of charge, all your rubbish, baring just large items of furniture. Now what rubbish you can put out and when is limited, often subject to challenge and other categories of waste are not collected at all and have to be taken, by you, to your local re-cycling tip where it may not or may be accepted or is subject to a charge. 

This issue of re-cycling of our waste has somehow got itself aligned with saving our planet and the climate change agenda. Apart from, a proportionally small, discharge of methane, re-cycling has nothing to do with climate change but has to do with an entirely different issue. Landfill as the only option for getting rid of our waste will run out not too far ahead, we have to change tack. No problem. We all have to re-evaluate what we put out for disposal. No problem. With some two thirds of the world still just surviving hand to mouth and yet to benefit from our assured consumer society. The World's resources cannot furnish ever increasing demands. We have to re-cycle what we have already taken out and not just bury it away, un-useably. No problem. We, the producers of these mountains of rubbish need to be schooled in new ways of sorting it into various  materials which can be re-cycled. No problem.

Having spent time in a third world country I am only too aware of how someone there can make an existence from finding a second use from the most unlikely rubbish we discard here without a thought. Old paper cement bags, bent nails, old beans tins, nothing is discarded, in the third world there is always another secondary use. Back home I am shocked, each time I go to the 're-cycling centre', at the enormous quantity, on a daily basis, of quality rubbish we deem only fit for burying underground. Truly shocked at our profligacy.  So really I am all in favour of re-cycling. I do get the message, loud and clear. What then is my beef?

Every time I go to take my sorted waste to the re-cycle centre I feel intimidated, harassed, insecure, almost threatened by the men on guard duty. Clearly there has to be monitoring of what actually goes into the various separated wastes so the easy option of landfill is not the first choice. Not a nice task standing there all day, all weathers poking into other peoples rubbish. No surprise then that it is largely a male role for those short on academic achievement. Nor that they come to rely on a macho display to enforce their presence. They do of course have to respond to their managers and their managers have to achieve the targets set by their Councils. This is where my problem begins. My Council, but not just mine, you hear stories from around the country, where Councils, taking different tacks, are similarly antagonising their ratepayers. Councils seem to have totally lost sight of the need to encourage and re-educate. Instead their eyes gleam on the huge savings made possible by this government change in policy and the chance to generate even more money. Forgetting the basic principle you have to take your willing users along with you all the way or risk a backlash. Which is right where we are now. 


I really want to co-operate and want to be compliant. I believe in sorting my waste and get a boost when I manage to re-cycle something that previously would be buried. But I also get confused. Why is a bulk oil tin, yes regular valuable tin, with plastic removed and washed out, rejected? Why is paper separate to cardboard and why is this paper ok but not that. Do I really have to remove all the plastic envelope windows, but then what about staples and tapes? That is before we get onto the subject of all the various types and forms of plastics. Some which are, some which are not regardless of whether they are claimed to be recyclable. Why oh why is that paving slab unacceptable and either I have to pay to re-cycle it or put it in with the landfill waste. That is just not right. Then the necessary regular trips the the re-cycle centre to dispose of all that product now deemed to be non-collectable at the kerbside. All those extra car journeys willingly undertaken only to discover the Site is closed. Shut to save money. That really does engender goodwill and co-operation! Fly-tipping in the backwaters of our life is the entirely foreseeable and predictable outcome to all. Apart from those selfsame Councils who maintain the party line. Fly-tipping is routinely monitored and there is no evidence of any increase. How is that for officalise horseshit. Encouragement, information, education and listening are the only routes to succeed in reducing our landfill burden.