THE BIN MEN COMMETH

Like many Local Authorities ours now contracts out all its refuse collection and recycling to a private company assuring us that this will save money. While this may or may not be true what is certain is that the quality of the service heas declined drastically in recent years.

Remember when you kept you rubbish in a metal bin for the men to collect, now we are ordered to carry the bags of rubbish out to the road as “Health and Safety Regulations” prohibit the men from carrying out the bins in case thay hurt themselves! The result of this is that foxes,crows and other carrion eaters rip up the bags and drag the rubbish all over the road.

And what about the health and safety of the householder, who may be elderly, or like my husband and I, disabled. Having to carry the heavy bags up a long pathway to the road is an inceasing challenge to us and many like us.

Then there is the recycling. We have a bag for paper,a bag for metal,a bag for plastic and a bin for food. This means that a considerable amount of time must be spent outside sorting this in to the relevant recepticles which is a trial for people like us, and one that we could well do without.

Of course  believe  whole heartedly in recycling and have always done so .However when I discovered recently that although the recycle stuff is collected seperatly in a specilal vehicle it all ends up in landfill,you may imagine that I was not at all amused!

It's hard to believe,but it is all too true.

We are exhorted to go to all the efferot of seratating out our rubbish for no good reason other than to make us believe that we have a “GreenCouncil". It is we who are green for having belived their clap-trap for so long!

Then, as if to add insult to injury the collectors frequently leave the boxes and bags at the wrong houses so that there is a weekly swap shop of recycle bins(Some are smaller than others) which is a pest in bad weather. Worse than this however is their practice of throwing the heavy plastic boxex and food bins over the railings and in to the garden. Tha damage that this has done to plants and shrubs has been very costly and on one occasion a large heavy bin missed my cat by inches as she sat sunning herself on the grass!

Some where at the beginning of this blog I used the word service.....Service is exactly what we are not getting. Our collectors know that we are disabled and quite often the ramp which we use to acsess the road is out when they call. In spite of this they always,,,ALWAYS.....tleave our boxes,bags and bins ,together with those of our niegbours jammed into the gateway so that we cannot get bock through the gate without alighting from the scooter and moving everything, a difficult task when one is loaded  up with shopping and smartly dresses.

This is the price we now pay for asking the men to desist fro throwing the boxes over the gate. I don't know what it is but service it most certainly ain't!