Dialogue: Council lays waste to wasteful ways

By SANDY BURGHAM

Discussing a column I wrote a couple of weeks ago about our cavalier attitude to throwing things out, an acquaintance confessed to a disposability indiscretion involving him and a TV.

It was a story he obviously needed to get off his chest and it began when he bought the TV as part of a job-lot at auction.

While its performance expectations were set low, even he was surprised when it died after allowing him to watch just the one programme.

But he responded as most typical consumers would - he simply tossed it into the green wheelie bin then went out the same day and bought another one.

Who among us hasn't in the past committed green-wheelie wastage crime, sweating it out until the rumblings of the rubbish truck disappear up the road?

Once when we had to get rid of some toxic fibrolite we were advised by a builder to feed our green bin with a few pieces each week, in a sort of Sweeney Todd fashion.

But the council is blowing the whistle on the garbage habits of its citizens and ratepayers. It's asking them to stop talking about saving the planet and start doing something about it.

By changing the bin system we have all grown used to, we will be encouraged to recycle more and waste less.

Details of the changes seem scanty and varied. The council is keeping certain information regarding some sort of coupon redemption scheme close to its chest.

Rumours abound of covert council operations to catch those who dare to allow their organic waste to mix with the other kind. MI5-style hidden cameras, warning letters, instant fines and the like are being whispered about.

Meanwhile, the I-pay-my-rates brigade have pens poised, ready to complain about what they predict will be a backlash of waste issues. Their main fear is an increase of rubbish dumping in the dead of night. Indeed, suburban terrorism extends already to killing nearby trees for better views or poisoning neighbours' pets.

These are sad, twisted acts committed by shallow and insular weirdos who need to get out of the suburbs and live a little.

My acquaintance, the TV-dumper, reveals to me his and his neighbours' plight. It seems they habitually have to fend off the rubbish invaders from the North Shore who, after crossing the bridge, kerb-crawl along Shelley Beach Rd and toss their garbage surpluses into the not-full-enough bins of Herne Bay.

Someone dumped an old table on our property once. I wonder what they were thinking - that while they found no use for a two-legged table, us random recipients would welcome it with open arms?

We turfed it back, and it took all our restraint not to attach a note saying, "Thanks for the loan of your table. You can have it back now."

The second fear that comes with change is that we will, of course, be required to do more work.

My brother-in-law is concerned he will be required to make more trips to the kerb. He already has to walk from the carport to the roadside twice a week, three times if he's recycling newspapers.

In neighbouring Manukau, a city notoriously slow off the recycling mark, my friend complains about the new recycling bin system.

She tells me she had to wash out the bottles upstairs then walk all the way to the garage, downstairs, to put them in the recycling bin. (Gee, life must be tough).

Feeling fed up and a little devil-may-care, she has now reverted to plonking the entire bin into the middle of the kitchen floor, and doesn't care how it may look. (Well, I guess, what the hell!)

Anticipating the unwelcome arrival of the small red-lidded bins, many feel that surely the council will accept their household as being the one exception to the rule, since they seem to have so much rubbish.

It's ironic that back in the days when sections and families were bigger we had less rubbish. Maybe it was because of those awkward two-handled tin bins we used that had the lids that never quite fitted. They seemed to make us think a bit more about what we were chucking out.

That's the trouble with the big green wheelie. Convenient and capacious, with a no-questions-asked slam of the lid, they automatically delete recycling sins from our memory.

As we roll our bins down our driveways with ease, our household rubbish becomes someone else's problem.

Our short-term, out-of-sight-out-of-mind green wheelie bin attitude was always going to catch up on us.

And, alas, the time has come.