A recycling rant!!!

Sooooo................... in June, St Ives changed to two weekly rubbish (landfill) collections & two weekly recycling collections. What an absolute shambles?!!! The town has never looked so dirty. Nor has the rat population been so brazen. Ann bought our house in 2002 and until June had only ever seen 5 rats in St Ives in the whole of that time. In the last month she has seen four!!! We'll probably have a rant about rats at a later date because she's pretty sure that there will come a time when she manages to photograph me with one.


Anyway today's rant is going to be about the recycling system. In fairness, the recycling system hasn't changed much since the new rubbish collection came into effect, but because the landfill now only gets collected every couple of weeks, Ann has been trying to do more recycling than what she has done in the past.

It's extremely hard to be a good recycling citizen when one lives in a small two bedroomed house. Just where are we supposed to keep all the recycling bags/boxes?

This is a photo of the recycling bins/bags that we currently use. They are outside at the front of our house, which doesn't exactly give a very good first impression of our house does it?

The small green bin is for food waste. The red bag is for tins/plastic/tinfoil. The box is for glass. We also have another two bags (which we don't use) – an orange bag for cardboard and brown/coloured paper. And a blue bag for magazines/newspapers/white paper and shredded paper (as long as it's in a plastic carrier bag?!) Why can't all card/paper stuff go in the same bag.

Apart from the fact that we don't have enough room at the front of our house for another two recycling bags; if card/paper is kept outside, then when it's windy the bags are just going to get blown away???!!

Cornwall Council seriously haven't thought this through properly. Unless you live in a big house with a garage or a utility room or have some other space to store 3 recycling bags, a box for glass and a box for food waste...................... how can you possibly recycle properly if the collections are only once every two weeks???

Oh and to get onto our biggest recycling rant of this Blip........................... We normally keep our glass recycling box in the communal courtyard because when it's full of all her wine bottles she doesn't have the strength to carry it downstairs. Lol!! (where all the holiday lets keep their bins, cos they don't pay council tax, so have to employ a private commercial waste disposal company). Our bottle box is clearly marked with our address and house name, and yet all summer people have been disposing bottles in it. That's annoying, but Ann has just been putting the box out for collection every couple of weeks.

On Saturday, Ann was on her way out to work when she noticed that her glass recycling box was full to overflowing with all sorts of c***......................... plastics, tins, cardboard, tinfoil containers, socks(?), and even a babies dirty nappy. Where had it all come from? Who knows? Ann didn't have time to sort it out, so when she came home from work, before I got my walk, she had to filter it all into a black bag and throw it in the communal landfill 'ressie only' bin which is only emptied every two weeks. She was not happy!!!

…...................And then today, I had my walk between 7.45-9am and, when Ann went out to work at 9.45am, someone had chucked even more things into our glass recycling bin?! 

What is it with holiday makers that make them leave their brains behind when they come on holiday? Why do they think that it is acceptable to chuck a load of stuff into a private glass recycling bin? Who do they think is going to empty it? And do they not have enough brains to realise that if they don't wash out their left over Chinese meal containers or wash out their milk cartons, or leave a bit of jam in a jar or a few beans/soup in a can............................ that the whole rat population of St Ives will be in our 'bottle recycling box' this evening????????

My human is furious.............................. She's had to clear the whole thing out again but at least this time there was no dirty nappy in the box.
She's brought our glass recycling box up our 26 outside steps and it is now right outside our front door. …...............If anyone dares to put anything in it, I will bark to alert Ann to intruders........................

OK RANT OVER!!!