A Waste of Shame

I was watching the BBC News this morning and they showed a location item, up in Lincolnshire, where the local residents are up in arms because their council has implemented a new system for recycling and waste collection.

Several residents were standing outside a row of houses, wheelie bins piled to overflowing with stuff - and were chanting something appropriate whilst a guy from the council was interviewed.

Basically, their 'rubbish' is only being collected once every two weeks now instead of every week. I understand, on the other week, their council is collecting their recyclables (although notably not plastic) as this is a system many councils in the UK are implementing. Indeed my local council put this system in place over a year ago.

The rather sensible idea behind this is that people think more about recycling and composting etc. in order to reduce the amount of recyclate going in their bin. Recycling goes up and waste goes down - therefore they only collect actual waste every other week. Here, the amount of material being recycled has increased quite notably and the council has shown a certain amount of flexibility depending on circumstances - if you have a huge family etc. and I imagine each council will be doing something similar. My council also offer to come out to discuss with people how they can recycle more. Amusingly, I think the suggestion is they do this by going through your bin, which hopefully might get the point across.

It's interesting that it is by no means accepted by joe public that we cannot continue to create waste in the same and indeed greater volumes than we have been. Even disregarding the atrocious waste of resources, the UK is getting pretty full as it is. Landfilling waste is a fast diminishing option.

So how do these people expect their local council to recycle more and take more waste as well? As with many environmental issues, I think some people are just too entrenched in the 'I'm all right Jack' philosophy. And when something goes wrong that finally really impacts them, when their kids are dying of asthma or the water is lapping round their ankles, it will still be someone else's fault.