It's rubbish, just rubbish... 16.10.08
I GUESS I should warn you
folks that it’s rubbish this week. “Oh yeah,” I hear you
say, “What makes that different from any other week?”
Well, okay, I can’t actually hear you say that, but if I
were beside you when you were reading this and you were
one of those people who just said things out loud
instead of keeping them in your head…I might.
But seriously, folks…rubbish. Did you ever think it
would get so darn complicated?
There was a time when rubbish was, well, just rubbish.
You didn’t need something any more or it was used up, it
was, well rubbish. And you put that rubbish in the bin
and that was that.
Of course we never really thought about where all that
rubbish was going, or the harm it might have been doing,
but hey, so long as it was out of our kitchen and not
stinking up our back yard, who cared? |
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But then came all the
warnings about how all the landfills were filling up and
the damage all this dumping was doing to the environment
and the green revolution began.
I don’t mind recycling, I think it’s cool that stuff can
be used again instead of just dumped into a big hole in
the ground to rot, but it does make the whole rubbish
thing more complicated than ever.
For a start there’s the sorting. No more is it just a
case of throwing stuff in the bin, you have to decide if
it can be recycled first and then choose what bin it has
to go into.
And you have to wash out the bottles and cans and old
milk cartons, there’s a lot of work in putting out the
rubbish these days. That’s if you actually know what day
to put the rubbish out that is.
(I’m getting ahead of myself here a bit folks, but work
with me I’m on a roll.)
Yep, even putting the rubbish out for the bin man has
become a complicated affair now, because with more than
one bin for collection and more than one type of label
to attach to the right bin on the right day, bin day has
now become like a big game show in our household.
It’s like you’ve just reached the final and your grand
prize is that all the rubbish, even that one bag you’ve
stuffed in at the top that means the lid won’t close
properly any more, will be taken away…but only if you
guess right.
Which bin is it today…green or blue and have I the right
labels for the right bin?
To make matters more complicated, even though you are
praised for being green when you recycle, the recycling
stuff goes into the blue bin.
It really shouldn’t be as big a guessing game as it has
turned out to be, because I’m pretty sure that the
collector gave us a calendar at the start indicating
which week which bin would be collected.
But, it was just a piece of paper and I’m pretty sure
since it was cluttering up my fridge door I put it in
the bin – yes…the blue one!
Putting stuff in the bin is one thing, I’m talking that
wee kitchen one here now folks. Getting it out to take
to the wheely bin though can sometimes be something
entirely more difficult.
You see the people who make those black bin bags must
have been having a competition for years to see whose
bag can be the thinnest and will fall to pieces first
when somebody tries to lift it.
Once upon a time black bin bags were sturdy things. |
They were used for all
sorts of useful things like, well, umm, Halloween
costumes. And they didn’t fall apart when you touched
them with your finger.
Nowadays most of the bags are worse rubbish than the
rubbish they are supposed to be holding. You don’t know
that when they are rolled up together in the pack, but
once you get them home and put one in the bin you know
that, if you hadn’t forked out €3 for them you could
throw the rest in with them.
Until you’d realise…hey that would be the wrong bin.
They’re plastic they can be recycled. Told you it was
darn complicated… |
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A DROP OF
PORTER is
the weekly
column of
Inishowen
Independent
editor,
Liam Porter. |
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