Leave out the book, I've got one of those

[venta]

Today's rant will be on the subject of my least favourite deadly sin:

Sloth.

Now I can see a few puzzled looks at the back, there, eyeing the sofa and the DVD player. What's wrong with a good dose of sloth every now and again, you ask ? If you mean a bit of time spent lying on the sofa, doing nowt, or being similarly lazy then there's absolutely nothing wrong with that (says the Gospel according to Venta).

The BBC carried an article today about the decision of Newport council to limit households to one wheelie-bin's worth of rubbish per fortnight. Recycling is collected every week.

The article quotes the following Newport resident:

Mother-of-five Mandy Price, who fills over 20 bin bags aweek and does not recycle any rubbish, said she could not cope with the restriction. She told [the BBC]: "It's a pain really... I don't see why they just don't come once a week," adding: "You just put it in the bins, and you don't really think where it goes at all."

That's the kind of sloth I hate. Lazy, self-centered thinking which cannot even bother itself to consider wider implications. Ms Price is the reason restrictions like this have to be introduced, because people are too damned idle to actually stir themselves to care what is happening in the world around them.

Laziness can strike anyone, and I'm sure I'm guilty as much as anyone. But to be so blinkered as to be able to say something like the above, without even realising that it's such a shameful statement, makes me want to shout at Ms Price until she understands.

Which would be completely futile. It'd slide off, and she'd be left wondering who that rude girl was who was so opinionated. This new restriction is inconvenient to her - might even cause her to alter her routine a little or make some effort - and as such is unworkable. That it might be necessary simply isn't relevant. Why should she change her ways simply because the landfill sites in Wales are full ? No, no, you don't think where it all goes. It just goes.

More power to Newport council, I reckon, and I hope they fine Ms Price for every week she fails to make the brave and terrible step of putting the empty tins in the recycling box.

Incidentally: 20 bin-bags worth of rubbish per week ?

Frances and I manage to fill one bin bag a week, maximum. Admittedly, there are only two of us. If we assume the existence of a Mr Price, then this is a seven-person household. Maybe two or three of the children are still in nappies, and wear disposables (can anyone such as bateleur give me a ball-park volume-of-rubbish for that ?) I guess small children might generate other sources of rubbish unknown to me, too.

I could believe that one wheelie bin of unrecyclable rubbish might be overly restrictive for a family of seven, over the course of two weeks. Having never had a wheelie bin, I'm rather vague as to their capacity. I gather Reading has a scheme for allowing larger families an extra bin, which seems perfectly sensible.

But really... twenty bin bags ? Am I being unreasonable in assuming that the family must live entirely off packaged foods, and not even do the simplest things, like squashing the packaging ?

Comments

[wechsler.livejournal.com]

Karen and I have been emptying the house to move, and we won't manage 20 bags in three weeks!

[failmaster.livejournal.com]

Well our house of 4 generates about a bag and a half of rubbish in a week. Much of that is compostable, and if we had anywhere at all that wasn't concreted that's exactly what we'd be doing with it*, which would probably bring us sub-one-bag. Even counting all the stuff that gets recycled (a couple of boxes full per week of paper, cardboard, plastic, glass and metal) we wouldn't come close to ten... you must have to try really hard to generate that volume of refuse!

Of course, having five children (assuming they weren't quintuplets, about which she couldn't really have done a great deal) doesn't exactly single her out as a paragon of social responsibility either...

*oh the joy of Victorian terrace housing!

[venta.livejournal.com]

Actually, in this day of way too many females opting out of the whole child-rearing business, I suspect large families among those who are willing might soon become a thing to be encouraged.

Either that or pension-age really will be 85 by the time we get there.

[failmaster.livejournal.com]

They may be encouraged by national governments in the west, but they aren't needed - there are seven billion people on the planet and that number isn't going down!

Quite aside from which the sorts of people who're having large families also tend to be the sorts who don't see why they should go to the trouble of separating out the recyclable parts of their rubbish.

[venta.livejournal.com]

there are seven billion people on the planet

Well yes, dear, but most of them aren't our kind of people, are they ?

_{<removes tongue from cheek>}

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

What, Catholics?

[(Anonymous)]

"too many females..." Dear pot!

[uitlander]

My house of 1 generates between one third and half a bin bag per week. Glass, tins, plastic and cardboard are extracted and recycled. Before I was extracting plastic and card it was between half and three quarters of a bag full. You could probably get 3 or 4 full bin bags in my wheelie bin.

My neighbours with two small children do not seem to use their recycling tubs, and routinely are observed sneaking out after I have put my bin out to fill it full of their excess rubbish. Their own wheelie bin is usually overflowing, and they have this less-than-charming habit of leaving any excess bags after that on the kerbside (the bin men will not take these).

I have never spoken to them, as I reckon its likely to be a tirade about recycling, how much crap they generate and the cheek of helping themselves to any free space in any nearby bin they can find.

[smorgasbord.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I miss the bin men for a week or two and find myself with more rubbish than will fit in my wheelie bin. When this happens I do not see a problem with putting the rubbish in another persons bin that has space and has already been left out. It's better than the obvious alternatives of keeping it in the house for another week or leaving it on the kerb in the hope that the binmen will take it any way.

[uitlander]

My objection to the bahviour of my neighbours is split into three:

Part is based on the impression that they make no effort to recycle anything (which strikes me as stunningly selfish, and makes me rather annoyed given the amount that can be recycled with minimal effort by just putting glass and scrap paper in the collection cartons the council provide for each house).

Part is that this is not an occassional 'opps I forgot to put it out last week' - this happens every week without fail. It would be a basic courtesy to ask their neighbours if they could use the spare space, but this is beyond them. Instead they prefer to dump it when they think no-one is watching (a number of us have observed what can only be described as rather guilty behaviour as they check to see whether anyone is apparently about before dumping their extra rubbish).

Part is also that our local council has suggested they might introduce an additional charge for excessive rubbish producers, and a council tax discount for under-users to encourage recycling. As someone who would qualify for a discount I don't particularly want them wrecking that - although how the wretched thing would actually work in practice is anyone's guess.

[lathany.livejournal.com]

I think, at the height of the twins nappying, we were on three bin bags a week mainly due to their nappies. However we did also recycle (in Feltham this is glass, paper, cardboard and tins) and put out garden waste (which is a different collection).

However, it's dead unusual for kids to be in nappies beyond three years and the size varies with age (so to speak).

[nisaba.livejournal.com]

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Peasants like that make me want to go on a kill crazy rampage.

[davefish.livejournal.com]

I can't work out how you go about producing that much rubbish to be honest.

Wheelie bins hold about 3 bin bags worth roughly. Prior to moving I think that I managed to chuck out a few wheelie bins worth of accumulated rubbish out over the course of 5 or 6 weeks. That was a concerted effort to chuck out all my crap.

[dr-bob.livejournal.com]

Our house used to be owned by a child minder (and mother of 2 littl'uns. She got the council to give them a large sized wheelie bin (which is still out the back, albeit unused). So I'm guessing she got through a stack of rubbish, although maybe not 20 bags! That was before they brought in the recycling bins, however.

We generate 1-2 bags a week. The recycling is a little restrictive in its scope so we could potentially reduce this. And not using disposable nappies helps.

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

Perhaps 20 carrier bags of rubbish per week? That would, at least, have the effect of using up some of the world's way-too-many spare carrier bags.

[redcountess]

That's what I was thinking, but then again, we only fill about one a day, but then again we recycle as much as we can (plastic is not accepted by our council, and we hardly compost due to me not being very active due to my health), certainly disposable nappies, tins and bottles would fill up another 13 carrier bags a week. Still, argh!

[venta.livejournal.com]

Find your friendly local charity shop - they're often terribly short of carrier bags.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

That's not the point - if you frequently need to get rid of carrier bags, the solution is not to accept them in the first place. Very few shops will be offended if you say "I don't need a bag, I have one here", and if they are well then bollocks to them, they can be offended.

On the other hand, if you're going to put your rubbish out either in black binbags or in carrier bags, I can't think of a compelling reason it has to be binbags - other than that they're bigger and hence you get a better plastic:rubbish ratio.

[venta.livejournal.com]

That's not the point

Depends on the question :)

I was answering how to use up spare carrier bags you already had, not suggesting a sustainable strategy to avoid finding alternative bagging solutions in the future.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Hurrah for Newport Council ! I wish our local council would do that - instead we have voluntary recycling, which basically amounts to lathany doing unpaid work so that Mandy Price doesn't have to.

Also interesting to see they've gone for a hard cap rather than taxing landfill rubbish.

[venta.livejournal.com]

A hard cap makes more sense to me - after all, if they really are running out of landfill space, extra money isn't going to be all that helpful in creating more.

I also like the idea that even people with money are made to think, instead of being able to pay the problem to be ignored.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

I like that feature too. But what I don't like about the hard cap is that it'll be desperately harsh for some people and hopelessly slack for others.

I suspect the choice is a political one: people don't understand taxes at all and they generate disproportionate anger and resistance.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

we have voluntary recycling, which basically amounts to lathany doing unpaid work so that Mandy Price doesn't have to.

Not really. If it were compulsory, lathany would still have to do it, the difference being that Mandy Price would to.

Unless you mean that if it were compulsory you'd do half of it for your house. In which case lathany is actually doing it so that you don't have to...

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Assuming we're not just recycling for fun there is a quota which needs to be met for whatever reason. If some people do none then everyone else does more.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

No, the quota is there as a target for local governments. It doesn't "need" to be met - its purpose is to get their arses in gear providing and advertising facilities. It also doesn't describe some amount of recycling determined to be "sufficient", which is why it keeps going up. And true compulsion on domestic recycling is quite unlikely, since it's much easier and less unpopular to tackle commercial waste.

If lathany stopped recycling, Mandy Price would almost certainly not consequently have to start. So lathany isn't "doing it so that Mandy Price doesn't have to". If your local authority is close to quota and determined to meet it, I'll allow that lathany is doing it so that (in the short term, until the quota rises again) the businesses in your area don't have to.

If some people do none then everyone else does more.

Even ignoring the practicalities I describe, I'm not sure that's quite right, since people generally either do recycle or don't. With doorstep recycling, once you're filtering rubbish at all, it's isn't much extra effort to recycle whatever the council will take. So it's more like "if some people do none then everyone else is more likely to do some".

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

So it's more like "if some people do none then everyone else is more likely to do some".

Yes, indeed - I imagine it's a binary thing for any given household.

You may be right about the corporate side of things, but that's really a separate issue. Similarly if landfill actually isn't a problem then the entire business of domestic recycling and debate surrounding it is mostly pointless.

"Suppose domestic recycling is necessary..." is - for me - the premise of the debate. If this turns out not to be the case, I'm quite happy for Mandy to do as she pleases.

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

I used to recycle.

I gave up after the third recycling box got nicked...

[venta.livejournal.com]

I think we've had 2 or 3 pinched (or otherwise mysteriously vanished) in 6 years, which isn't bad going. Phoning the council to ask for a replacement seems to be fairly painless. Obviously if you're getting through them very rapidly, any benefits of recycling are probably outweighed :)

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

I was going through one a month.

[wimble.livejournal.com]

Daaamn.

I've had the same one for the past 3 (I think) years. It had the house number written on the label, in biro. And then, a couple of weeks ago, the recycling people took it away. And left me a different one, with no label.

Actually, they left me two. It was quite hard to get rid of the second one...

[broadmeadow.livejournal.com]

We have two recycling crates - one for cans and bottles, one for paper - and they are emptied every fortnight. But in two weeks there are usually more cans and bottles than fit into one crate so I really need a third to hold everything. And given the council has recycling targets you'd have thought they would be happy to provide it - but it turns out they wouldn't be.

The crates we have tend to vary from time to time. Some of the binmen take a basket to their lorry, empty it and take it back; others - and this seems far more sensible to me - save themselves some effort by taking the basket just emptied to the _next_ house and leaving it to replace the full one.

[ranalf-lj.livejournal.com]

During a news item that some of my friends and I were watching, a similarly horrible local woman was bemoaning that her CSA payments were not enough to support her and her litter of kids. "I didnt have enough money to buy frozen chips for their dinner.." she said.
Simultaneously everybody exploded with various comments along the line of "learn to peel some bleedin' potatoes then!.."

[venta.livejournal.com]

I have a nasty suspicion that yer average "value" frozen chips are cheaper than a bag of potatoes, on account of containing largely sawdust or old boots or something :)

[(Anonymous)]

If I were a mother of five, I imagine I'd be too busy running around after so many people to be fab at recycling as well. But twenty bags?! How do they get twenty bin bags of stuff into their house per week, never mind out in rubbish?

As it is, apathy and forgetfulness already causes problems for me with regards to fortnightly bin collection: I produce less than a bag a week, and never used to remember to put my wheely bin out each week, so now it's sometimes sitting there for four weeks! No problem with the volume, but it must be getting a bit skanky by then.

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

Er, that was me.

[venta.livejournal.com]

If I were a mother of five, I imagine I'd be too busy running around after so many people to be fab at recycling

Well yes - if she'd said that she couldn't cope with the restriction because she simply didn't have time to sort rubbish as well as care for five sprogs, I'd have been rather more sympathetic.

But she didn't say that.

[addedentry.livejournal.com]

I have nothing to add that hasn't been said in your post and the comments, but wish to thank you for your wheelie bin joke and encourage you to tell it again.

[inskauldrak.livejournal.com]

*grins* I think I'll suggest this to my councillors... though it might be after the local government elections before anything happens! ; )

[stegzy.livejournal.com]

People like that do my head in too...Sadly I live next door to a family like that. Three wheelie bins and they rarely put them out on collection day.

Bins and councils GRRR

[hendybear.livejournal.com]

Two weeks I was not at home on "BIN NIGHT", therefore the bin didn't get put out. Last night I was at home so I put the bin out together with the two black bin liners that wouldn't fit, tonight I come home to find my bin emptied and the two extra bags still there with a label on them from the bin men saying that anything that won't fit in the bin won't get taken.....

My house does recyle EVERYTHING that can be reclcyed, even better, items like egg boxes and carrier bags go to places where they will be reused instead of recylcled.

The stupidity however of any local authority that does not take away rubbish left for the bin men is breathtaking, I vented my splien at a college today, who laughed and said the concil had done the same with him, so he put his rubbish in the back of his car and dumped it in a layby..... I do not condone this but I can uderstand how he came to this state of mind.

People shold be encourged to recyle but failing to pick up rubbish left ot on bin days, leads to far worse.