Someone Is Using My Recyclng Bin as a Urinal
I’ve said before that my bottle and drink can recycling bin sits on the patio outside my house.
A drunk has started using it as a urinal as he passes.
There is no comment worth making.
Paying For Plastic Bags
From tomorrow in Wales you will be charged 5p for every single use plastic bag you use. It may be worth it for some, but I use my Waitrose shopping bags as bin liners, which then go straight in the wheelie bin. I do have a collection of large bags for shopping, but they are a pain to carry empty, as they all seem to be incapable of folding small enough to go in my manbag.
So the system may work, but it could be a lot better.
Weekly Or Fortnightly Collections?
In Suffolk, I had fortnightly ones, with alternatively, rubbish and recycling. Here in Hackney, It’s weekly for both.
What is best?
I think it depends on the bin men. I’ve had good ones in both places and they could work either system. For me too, one collection a fortnight would work, as I don’t have much rubbish.
I’ve always felt that the best way to up recycling is to have a reward system, where perhaps bottle banks are weighed and a fund is shared out accordingly in the area on small projects.
The Second Hand Clothes Racket
The Times on Friday had an article obout gangs collecting second hand clothes and then selling them in Eastern Europe. But it’s not just here, that it happens! Here’s a story from Dubai of all places on a related theme.
When I get bags asking for clothing to be donated through my door, they go straight in the recycling bin. If I have any clothes to go to a good cause, I take them to the Oxfam shop on my way to the station.
Disposable Nappies
From a scientifically green point of view, in many places I’m against using disposable nappies, as they clog sewers, end up in landfill and I’ve even seen them in litter bins in parks. We used real nappies for all our three children in the seventies, washing them ourselves in a machine for the first and then using a nappy service for the last two. Here‘s Islington Council on real nappies.
As an aside to this post, I’ve been over a prison, where they had an extensive site-recycling project. It was the training scheme that prisoners wanted to work on most, as they found it satisfying and felt that it might get them a job on the outside.
So is washing real nappies and other similar schemes, the sort of work for prisoners or those on community service?
Returning to real nappies, there is also a London-wide organisation supporting them.
If you think, what right has a man to comment on nappies. Then remember that probably a third or so of the nappies changed on our three children, were changed by me! Not sure if I could still do it and wouldn’t want the responsibility!
C and I tried hard to get our son and daughter-in-law to use them on our granddaughter. Sadly we failed, despite offering to pay for the nappy service!
Simple Recycling
I have one of my new recycling boxes permanently on the front patio by my wheelie bin.
My Recycling Box and Wheelie Bin
At least it means with Coke cans that I can recycle them without walking up and down the stairs or going outside. I just open the window and drop them straight down. Is this good practice for my eyesight after the stroke?
At least, I haven’t missed yet!
But then I haven’t chanced it with glass bottles either!
Where Have All The Jobsworths Gone?
I’ve had a friend staying for the last few days and I accompanied her to Stratford to get her train back to Ipswich this morning on the North London Line. Changing from the North London Line to the main line at Stratford is particularly easy, as the platforms are virtually next to each other. And there are lifts, if you aren’t so good on your pins.
My friend had bought her tickets on the TrainLine, which is a company, I only use as a last resort, as I know the system and can often get a better deal elsewhere. Her tickets were actually to Ipswich via Colchester and I know that ticket inspectors can take non-compliance with rules seriously. So when the first train came, which was going to Colchester and then on to Ipswich, she took it. But to be fair to National Express East Anglia, the inspector on the train accepted her ticket without question.
Then when I got home, I found that my recycling had been collected. Nothing special about that, except perhaps that they’d done it an hour or so earlier than normal. But they had replaced one of my recycling bins with a brand new one, which they had clearly numbered.
So sometimes people do use a bit of initiative to do their jobs better! And of course make things more pleasant for their customers and clients.
There was slight downside this morning. A guy was cleaning the train between Stratford and Hackney Wick. In trying to remove one of the disposable newspapers, he inadvertantly touched someone. The guy mouthed him off in no uncertain terms.
My Dustmen Do Sundays
As I left this morning, a Hackney Council truck was outside with its flashers blinking. It had wire sides and seemed to be collecting junk like old sofas and other furniture bought years ago in places like MFI. The driver turned up after a few minutes and I asked him if he’d mind taking an old wooden shelf that I’d left outside my house, hoping someone would steal. But the shelf was obviously too poor to even half-hinch for firewood! But the driver said “No problem, Guv” and chucked it on the truck.
So what happeneded to the renowned jobsworths, who wouldn’t take anything unless you obeyed a set of rules that weren’t published?
This Must Not Happen Again!
On paper and in the news this trial for environmental crime looks like a good result for the Environment Agency.
But should they have acted a lot earlier to put this criminal, who used threats and intimidation to make money by dumping toxic waste in the countryside, out of business.
Who too, is going to pay for the clean-up of the site?
Littering
A new campaign is being started to stop the amount of litter, getting on the streets.
I think some of the problems are down to the way we are designed.
One of the reasons we create so much litter, is we only have two hands. I’ve just watched a mother pushing a buggy down the street to take her child to school, whilst she was smoking with one hand and texting with the other. The dog end went on the pavement. Here in Hackney we have some very clean streets, due to an excellent street team, but people should use the bins provided.
Most of the litter on the streets is discarded flyers from fast food shops, taxi companies and others, dog ends and empty beer cans. The latter strangely seem to be put in many cases in my can and bottle recycling bin, which sits on my front patio, by the wheelie bin.
On a more serious note, there were 50,000 or so blockages in the London sewers last year. One was an infamous Fatberg outside a fast food restaurant in Leicester Square, but many were caused by people putting their rubbish down the toilet rather than walking downstairs to put rubbish in their communal bins.
The Anonymous Widower 