Additional Wheelie Bin Questions
I have started a new section for these questions so they don’t get lost in the irrelevant, but hopefully entertaining, joust between myself and Anna on the previous article.
Points and Comments from Brian Druce:
1. Park Cottage used to be collected on a Thursday in common with the rest of the village (with a few exceptions). Now we are told that our day will be Wednesday; with Parkwood changed to Friday. No alteration permitted; it is all to do with postcodes. On how many days of the week will bin lorries be thundering up the street?
2. Previously there were up to three lorries each Thursday, i.e. Week A was brown bins/purple bags/black bags. Week B was green bottle box/clear bags/black bags.
3. Will Hill Lane have wheelie bins? Is there now a suitable vehicle to go up there? Or will the residents be exempt?
4. We are told “no dirty foil” but no aluminium foil either. This is unclear.
How are we to dispose of the new energy efficient bulbs when they wear out? What about batteries from torches, radios etc?
5. When the green bin is full, may the green glass collection box be used as well?
FOOD WASTE. The Council has provided us with containers allowing us to dispose of 20+ litres per week! We would have a job to eat that much in a fortnight. As we have compost bins, access to a bonfire and neighbours with hungry animals, we expect our use of this box to be minimal. What an astonishing indictment of our profligate Western society.
In 1960 Vance Packard published his book The Waste Makers. His thesis that business was planning for obsolescence, in a systematic attempt to make us wasteful, has come entirely true.
As so often, society tries to cure the problem by tackling the symptoms and not the cause which I believe is mainly
a. Unbridled consumerism
b. Convenience food
c. The packaging industry.
Anyone who has been faced with, for example, one six inch nail in a blister pack, or a turnip individually shrink wrapped in high grade polythene, will understand what we have to deal with. The Victorian cottager only had to dispose of ashes, broken crockery, and unwanted bottles, which went into a pit at the end of his garden. No dustcarts and binmen in those (happier?) days!
02/26/09, 3:56 PM |
Very much agree with the points you make.
In addition to the light bulbs and batteries, I also wonder about what does one do with needles or bent/rusty nails, pins (of all sorts) etc – do we bury them in the garden ? – as clearly our forebears did, judging by what can be turned up when digging ! I take it no-one could imagine it was in any sense ‘green’ for each of us to drive e.g. to Throckmorton with a tiny packet of such objects.
Our wheelie bins were delivered this morning. We opted for the smaller size of each, which is why we had not had them earlier, but even so, Richard was a trifle dismayed to see how large they are. So, I can now tell you that whereas Hill Lane black bags and the green boxes for bottles have been collected on a Wednesday (yes, that meant the bottle collection was done on two consecutive days in this little village …), our wheelie bins will be emptied on a Friday as you tell us the Parkwood ones will be, which makes it seem even more bizarre that your house, which is essentially on the corner of Hill Lane and Parkwood, will have its bins emptied on a Wednesday. Do you know when they will collect from the cottage which adjoins yours ? – presumably he is in Hill Lane ? Both Richard and I find it very hard to understand the ‘green-ness’ of coming more than once each week to this village for the same categories of waste. When I have queried the rationale for the current collection schedule over two days, the nice ladies at the desk in the Council offices have told me that the routes have all carefully been worked out as being the most efficient and I’ve no doubt we’d get exactly the same response were we to ask about this new collection schedule. But I must say it would be nice to see the details of the argument, since the perceptions of anyone in the village I’ve ever spoken to, are that it doesn’t make sense – and the perceptions of the public are important if you want to persuade them that the whole scheme is worthwhile and they should be making the best effort they can to make it work.
I am a little concerned by the prices quoted for biodegradable bin liners which are hugely more than those for the sorts of liners I currently get. Though I could afford the new sort, I fear that there will certainly be others, not least some of the older pensioners, who may find it more difficult. But perhaps when this is the only sort of liner that anyone is going to buy, manufacturers and retailers may start reducing the price. However, I seem to remember when I was working in London that I found biodegradable sacks that were nothing like as expensive – I’ll have to look around !
Like you, I do certainly do feel that it is extremely important that we all manage our waste a great deal better that we have been doing in at least the past few decades and so I want this to work and for everyone to get into a comfortable routine about what to do. I’m sure it will all settle down, but certainly as it starts up, I’m sure the ability for anyone interested to exchange views and experiences in a positive spirit of wanting to make things work is very valuable.
Mary
02/26/09, 4:40 PM |
It was interested to hear that you think the liners are expensive, you may be interested to know that the Council distributed the flyers from the bin liner companies, without charging them anything.
Why would the Council subsidize the marketing activity of these private businesses by delivering their leaflets free of charge and implicity endorsing them as preferred suppliers ?
(of course, being an old cynic I suspect that somebody, somewhere is now enjoying the contents of a nice fat brown envelope, or that a spate of digging at Companies House might reveal some poorly disguised connection between the shareholders or directors of these companies and somebody in the Council.)
I raised this point with the Council and the answer was:
“…we did ask the question in the expression of interest form. Not one of the businesses offered to make a financial contribution using their high set up costs as there (sic) excuse.”
So there we have it: Nobody “volunteered” to pay them anything, so they did it anyway for free.
Makes you wonder about the negotiating skills used to get best value for money from the suppliers they deal with !
02/27/09, 6:00 PM |
As far as I can ascertain collection days locally are as follows:
Main Street WR10 3HS )
Parkwood WR10 3HT ) FRIDAYS
Hill Lane North side WR10 3HU )
Park Cottage and WR10 3HU ) WEDNESDAYS!!
Hill Lane South side )
How bizarre!
Some mistake surely?
The young man at WDC told me that it all depends not on reason but on our postcode.