Bin There Done That

You do realise that at some point in the next few years the most obviously seen of your council services - refuse collection - will no longer be part of your council tax - the council will subsidise it but you will have to pay whatever private company collects rubbish to take away anything that isn't recyclable or can't be composted.

Many people might think this is a good thing; a way of encouraging people to be more conscientious about their waste disposal. But the reality is that in many places, there are occupants who don't understand, will not be educated or simply don't give a shit.

The entire business of waste disposal is ludicrous; it should be something the council should always supply; it should attempt to educate people, but it should also be about providing the most direct service that council tax payers see for their money. To charge people, like they do in the USA, is actually a very good way of causing massive unnecessary conflict.

Take this scenario: your black bin - the one that contains all the stuff that can't be recycled or composted - is weighed every time it is collected; at the end of a 3, 6 or 12 month period, you receive a bill. It will have averaged out your waste across a period of time and this will be the tariff you pay for the following year - although black bins will still be weighed. The poor, the devious, the scoundrels, the ignorant will be faced with huge bills and many of them will know this and they will resort to a number of ways of 'cutting their bills'. They will surreptitiously put their own rubbish in the bins of others; they will fly tip; they will cram rubbish into the bottoms of brown or green bins, in the hope they can fake the bin men; but if you contaminate recycling bins with non-recycling goods, the entire bin becomes rubbish.

Short of issuing everyone with padlocks for their bins, which have to be opened the day or collection; or getting each bin men to empty the contents of each bin into the back of the wagon before it's crushed, so they can sift through it - which won't happen because of HSE rules; them logistics of doing this is ridiculous. It will cause fights between neighbours, breakdown communities, lead to witch hunts and ostracism and causing more money to be directed to stem the flow of antisocial problems as a result.

I see enough ignorance and thoughtless retaliation to know that rubbish is a contentious issue and even the most slovenly and unhygienic of people still want some of their rubbish to be taken away. Remember the human conditions people on those Life of Grime programs lived in? That will grow; people won't throw things away because they won't be able to afford to or because they're scared to open their bins because every one else will use them too.

I've also noticed in some places; not Northampton as such, that public bins are not being replaced and in some cases not being put in to new parks and community areas. Dog bins, yes, but litter bins - no. We can take our rubbish home with us. we can move it all around rather than actually dispose of it. Out in the far reaches of the region there is a plan to build a big incinerator which will dispose of 60% of the rubbish and generate not only 15% of the electricity, but about 300 new jobs. The locals are opposed to it; not because it is a pollution threat, but because it will be an eyesore... Nimby-ism strikes again, but do you see the point? Most people are nimbys and rubbish is a real nimby issue.