LOST – presumed stolen!

One green, 4ft high, plastic wheelie bin used for garden rubbish.

Answers to the name of ‘Bin’.

Bin was last seen yesterday lunchtime when left outside to be emptied by the local council garden refuse collection wagon. Usually Bin is quite happy sitting in the sunshine until being wheeled back into the garden.

Yesterday, however, after two hours Bin was gone, nowhere to be seen.

Neighbouring drives and gardens have been searched in a frantic effort to recover Bin, but to no avail. We therefore fear the worst. Wor ‘Bin’s’ bin nicked!

Ports, railway stations and bus depots have been alerted and people have been urged to be extra vigilant in the forlorn hope Bin is spotted. Reports that Bin is being held to ransom or merely gone away on holiday cannot be substantiated or ruled out.

Beggars belief that someone would actually steal it but they have, I kid you not. There doesn’t appear to be any other explanation.

PS – A phone call made to the council earlier today brought a promise of a new Bin which should be delivered and fully operational within the next 7 to 10 days. So feet up, no more gardening for a while!

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A sloppy business and baring all at the checkouts!

Are you a conscientious recycler or someone doing it under imposition from your local council and because you feel you have no option? Do you have a slop bucket for food waste (sorry I should have said, ‘a domestic organic waste caddy’) and put it out for collection each week in the believe that your left-overs are going towards generating power, reducing greenhouse emissions or being converted into compost and that by doing so that you are saving the planet and helping to stave off global warming? Would you be surprised to learn that your actions don’t quite match with what it says on the tin?

I am not against recycling at all; just a little cynical as to whether this drive towards ‘green’ and ‘recycling’ is as beneficial and advantageous as we are lead to believe in terms of both cost and resources.

Under present Government policy a fifth of all homes in England and Wales have buckets solely for food waste with the intention this is extended countrywide by 2016. However, the state’s recycling advice body Waste and Resources Action Programme, ( WRAP), has some way to go before it comes up smelling of roses. There are only 46 plants or ‘anaerobic digesters’ for food recycling in Britain which can convert the food waste into bio-gas and ‘digestate’. Evidently part of the problem is that the food waste is there but the market for its disposal isn’t. And the cost of collection, transportation and disposal for some councils probably outweighs any efficiency savings or improvement to the carbon footprint.

The power produced is a mere 60 megawatts, sufficient to power a town of say 40,000 homes. The digestate, a form of compost, can be used as an enriched fertiliser but the problem is where! It can’t be sold to the public as it doesn’t conform to industry standards. They are hoping to sponsor experiments to use it to fertilise golf courses, sports pitches, farmers’ fields, in landscaping and regeneration schemes, to build up the public’s confidence and acceptance in recycled food waste.

Whilst on the subject of ‘recycling’ it would help matters if there was less recyclable material produced in the first place. For example, look at all the packaging that comes with the purchase of some food items. I wonder how quickly supermarkets would react and put pressure on producers to change their ways if housewives (and male shoppers) started baring all at the checkouts by leaving excess packaging and wrappings behind.

Mmm, food for thought!

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