Little boxes, just the same

Round here I guess it's like a lot of places, sometimes you think why bother to leave your garbage all over the street when we pay to have our dustmen, sorry operatives, do it for us. And they love to leave the emptied boxes in unlikely places.

But it's not their fault we now have four boxes per household - green waste, paper, plastic bottles and cans, and yer authentic garbage. If it helps recycle, it's obviously desirable. Except the lids blow off the paper box and the bottle box is lidless. Stuff gets blown around the place, accumulating in corners, blocking the drain covers and making life just a bit too easy for the rat population.

We had a note through the door some days ago from one neighbour asking if anyone had their green bin. Someone else went without their paper box for a bit, another found their bottle box gone. All excellent stimuli for neighbourly interaction.

Sounds like a job for a retired painter. On behalf of us all, my next door neighbour got all the boxes together and painted the numbers on. I had to have a quiet word about getting number six and number nine the right way up, but otherwise everyone now knows whose is whose. Not that we're afraid of putting stuff in each others' if there's space and the need arises, I'm glad to say.

Comments

[Michael Wood-Lewis]

In the past couple weeks, four different neighborhood forums (hosted by Front Porch Forum http://frontporchforum.com have touched on the same subject... curbside recycling bins (A) causing litter and (B) missing in action. One neighborhood in Burlington, Vermont's Old North End went on for about 20 postings from residents about the folks who dig through the bins in search of beverage bottles that they can redeem for a nickel.

Glad to see that we're not the only community grappling with the mundane, everyday issues! Cheers. -Michael

[Wendy Shillam]

Surely the solution to the problem of waste is not to generate it in the first place. My Waitrose has a bin so that all the waste from packaging can be dumped there. I recommend people to do this. If we all did it then supermarkets would get the message. My local farmers market uses recycleable glass containers if the food is perishable, and you just take it back next week. Are you old enough to remember the penny on the returnable bottle? Why don't we do this again?