A 'Parade' of Dustbins

Sometimes it is the mundane or ordinary that catches your eye.  As I popped out this morning it was the regimented lines of the wheelie bins that took my eye.  I wish I'd been there after the waste was collected.  It would have been impossible to walk down the footpath without having to weave between the discarded bins.

One of the many things that have changed in my lifetime, the proliferation of bins (and by association waste), stands out to my mind.  In my early years there would be one metal bin, as ash from the open fire was often the most likely thing to be deposited for collection.  There would be very little plastic indeed, which gives you an indication of the growth in the use of plastic over the last 50 years.  Nearly every village had a tip where the ash was turned into after collection.  I didn't realise this at the time, but came across it in my work on contaminated land investigation as our records showed the location of each of the tips.  

As the development of outlying areas of a village took place these sites were often excavated during the ground works and you could pick through the ash to find various items that had been put on the fires as a means of disposal.