Lazy recycling

Right – I’ve carefully separated the different types of plastics, bagged them up, put them in the car and deliberately driven to the recycling bank, for I am a concerned citizen, eager to do my bit for the planet and conscientious by nature. OR AM I? *evil cackle*

I live in a nice village in South Cumbria. So Southerly is my nice little village, that it’s very nearly in North Lancashire, where they do things very, very differently. Not just that business with the sheep - that includes the recycling. In fact, just about every county in the country seems to do things differently. I’m starting to think it’s some cunning plot to prevent migration.

Bins of different colours, boxes of many hues, bags of varying shade (and strength) with no standards for what you can put in them that are the same from one randomly selected local authority-bounded area to another.

I’d like to put... erm... a yoghurt pot in, please?

Oxfordshire: Sure, pop it in the orange bag!

Cumbria: No way! Drive to a recycling bank – what are you, some kind of weirdo?!

Cambridgeshire: The Red box! The. Red. BOX. How many times! Gah!

Porthmanockshire:  Recycling? We don’t even exist sonny!

See? Tricky, isn’t it? Anyway, once again I seem to have digressed ever so slightly. I wonder why that keeps happening... My English teacher at school said I needed to concentrate more. Ooo – look! A bird on the seed feeder!

Doing the right thing recycling-wise can be bewilderingly complicated, in much the same way that understanding exactly what Kate Bush is actually on about on any of her albums can be. Yes – that tricky.

But here’s the part that I really don’t get. On visits to my local recycling bank I regularly see bags of stuff dumped by the skips, even though they aren’t full. True, sometimes they are bags of glass bottles, when you can recycle those at home (at least in my patch, anyway). Quite why you would think the chap that comes with the lorry to remove the cardboard or plastics skips will have a glass one that isn’t quite full enough, but would just be neatly topped off by your bag of empties, is hard to figure out, but I’ll let that pass.

No, the ones that really have me apoplectic  by the ‘no carrier bags’ sign are the people who bring a bag of nicely washed, properly sorted plastic bottles, neatly bagged up... and then just dump them by the side. Couldn’t you reach or something? Oh no, hang on – you must have arms; you drove here. Did you think that the recycling fairies would do it for you (in-between trying to make an interesting sculpture out a dozen empty Budweiser bottles that someone thoughtfully left by the cardboard bank)?

Did you feel that, having done all the tedious washing, sorting, bagging and driving, that the last bit was just too much to do to save the planet? Or maybe it was a change of heart. Maybe you’re just toying with the planet, pretending to be ‘green’ whilst secretly harbouring a Bond-villainesque plan that involves making people THINK you’re recycling, when in fact you’re building a gigantic space cannon out of empty washing up liquid bottles, to destroy the moon and send it crashing into Skegness? (They do squirt a damn long way, after all). Hmmm?! Well, I’m on to you pal!!! Although, to be fair, Skegness is a bit dull.

Or could it just be that you’re lazy, and couldn’t be bothered to take the stuff out of the bag and put it in? Who cares if it blows around and winds up in the fields and hedgerows.  I’m sure the chap with the allotment next door, filled with random bits of carrier bag and other waste, doesn’t mind at all. And the wildlife that mistakenly eats some bit of your tat will probably forgive you, right before it dies. And I really don’t mind my village looking like a tip because you couldn’t be bothered.

I was joking. I do mind.

Shame on you.


This blog post appeared earlier today as an entry in the North West Evening Mail's "Big Blogger" competition. Do me a favour - click on this link to view it on their website, please? That way, I register a hit, and stand a chance of getting through to the main competition. You're ever so nice!

(Mellowness is occuring, courtesy of The Best Of The Eagles. Mmmmmm....)