WHAT A LOAD OF RUBBISH

I read in the papers that England is having a spot of bother with their rubbish collection and that certain councils are being 'secretive' about the fact that the ratepayers will only get their rubbish collected once in every two weeks. I must say I find it amazing that England still has house to house collections.

House to house collections disappeared in France many years ago. Instead a large container is installed at stratigic intervals, you pop your refuse bag in and the dustbin men come once or twice a week, depending where you live, and empty it. The same system applies in Switzerland and in Spain, and probably in quite a few other countries.

Even when I lived in the middle of nowhere in the 'Grand Sud' of France the 'hameau' where I lived which consisted of two houses, mine and my neighbour, we had an enormous bin on wheels that was emptied every week and twice a week in the hot summer months. My neighbour and I used to take it in turns during the summer to give the bin a quick clean with a splash of Brobat and water, as although both of us recycled as much as possible the bin did tend to get smelly and maggoty during the summer.

Here in the village we have very posh log cabins for dumping the rubbish sacks! All they lack are windows to transform them into a charming little pied-à-terre! Next to the main logs cabins are bins for the recycling of glass, paper and plastic. In the supermarkets there are bins for recycling milk cartons. I have a wheelie bin in the garden into which I put my rubbish bags and twice a week I load up the car and drive to the cabins to dump and recycle - the nearest one is about 200m from my house.

I can hear people say 'Oh, well that's because it's Switzerland and they are terribly organised and their country is squeaky clean' ... not true, France and Spain manage it too!

I am amazed when I go back to England to see that on nights when people put out their bins, they are systemmatically ripped to pieces by mangy urban foxes; it's terrible to see and must be awful for the dustbin men to collect plus the waste of time shovelling up the split bags. If England is or has introduced fortnightly collections, it seems essential that these large wheelie bins are installed as quickly as possible to fight the vermin which must surely increase.

See the following BBC article

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6584497.stm