Rubbish, Recycling & Other Rural Conundrums

“Oh, no, you put that in the recycling!” said the bin man with a sad shake of his head, flanked by two of his colleagues, who adopted an equally dour expression and headshake.

“Oh,” I replied “Silly me, I thought that the organic stuff would be in recyclable bags as a matter of course…”

Dustman’s facial expression softened slightly: “You’d think so,” he conceded, however, not without leaving me with the distinct impression that a). I was silly to buy organic b). I couldn’t read labels and c). I clearly hadn’t read the local council’s explicit instructions.

The recycling bag duly received its plastic naughty bag label for containing the wrong type of plastic and was left uncollected at the side of the road.

So, off we trugged to look at the Rubbish Guidelines online and found that we had been putting out our rubbish correctly according to Cotswold District Council, but not it appears to the collectors of said detritus.

Suffice to say, we now have 3 different bins for different types of garbage in the kitchen a further 3 outside and 4 black boxes for wine and newspapers and cringe every collection day when we hear the hard-earned cache tipped out!

You see, the council may write the guidelines, but they don’t actually collect the rubbish, so the bin men win the day after the refusal that fateful day.