Wait until next year

Bin Day. Ah, you lucky people. A post about bins.

We have a rather complicated bin system. There is a small green bin for paper and cardboard recycling, but not all types of paper and cardboard are eligible for recycling. There is a small purple bin for plastics and metals, although not all plastics and metals. There is a small black bin for glass. This is, at least, relatively straightforward. It is also a good means of telling which households contain functional and/or non-functional alcoholics. There is a large brown bin for kitchen and garden waste. And a large green bin for everything else, although this is only collected every other week.

Many households have personalised their bin in some sort of rudimentary way, to make clear where the bin lives. Some people seem to have just painted their door number on. Others have used a template and spray paint. There are a few with stickered numbers from DIY stores, sometimes plain, sometimes with pictures of flowers within the numbers. I noticed one house had huge, bespoke stickers with their door number and road name in a tasteful font, plus matching bird insignia above.

I guess there is a fair amount of bin theft. Or maybe people see our neighbours personalise their bins and think they ought to do it too. A really low-rent keeping up with the Jones’.

I do know that when the wind picks up the various bins end up all over the place. One day I came home from work to find what felt like half the road’s bins in front of my house. The labelling of the bins made returning them to their rightful owners a little easier. We don’t personalise our bins, so I just kept the bins that were left and didn’t have any numbering. I’m not that precious when it comes to our bins. I’m pretty sure they were ours.

This probably wasn’t the most interesting walk to the station I’ll ever have.