We are all going to hell in a dustcart

What are you supposed to do with the carcass of a roast chicken you’ve just eaten, given that the dustmen have been and won’t be back for another fortnight?

That’s what Alison McNally wanted to know when she rang her local council refuse department. After all, if she left it in the bin for two weeks it would soon stink the house down.

If she put it outside, the place would be crawling with vermin in about five minutes. Foxy-woxy would think Alison had opened a KFC especially for him. Soon the wheelie-bin would be lying on its side and there’d be bones everywhere — not to mention everything else she’d thrown out being strewn all over the shop.

It’s the kind of dilemma we’re all facing since hundreds of councils halved refuse collections to concentrate on recycling, to meet government targets laid down by the EU.

So Alison was entirely justified in seeking professional advice. She got through to ‘environmental services officer’ Paul Redmond, at Waverley Council, in Surrey.

He told her that perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea to eat fish or chicken so soon after the dustmen had called.

However, he added, helpfully: ‘If you find yourself having a roast dinner right after a collection, you can put the carcass in the freezer and move it to the bin when collection day comes around again.’

Brilliant. If we all took his advice and filled our freezers with perishable leftovers, there’d be no room for anything else.

He didn’t quite say: ‘Don’t you know we’ve got a planet to save, you stupid, selfish woman?’ But he might just as well have done.

If he had, he’d only have been articulating official policy. In our brave, new, ozone-hugging, Call Me Dave, ‘green-is-the-new-blue’ world, the Paul Redmonds of this world are environmental superheroes and rest of us are villainous polluters.

At least that’s how they see it. Alison McNally calls it ‘patronising, impractical and downright stupid’.

She’s right, of course. But that’s only half the story. Stupidity is the default setting. It’s glaringly obvious that cutting rubbish collections is not only a gross dereliction of duty but a serious threat to public health and comfort.

The refuse department used to come under ‘sanitation’ for the simple reason that leaving leftover food and assorted detritus hanging around is unsanitary and creates a breeding ground for germs and disease.

Even in a sealed plastic sack, a few days is about the optimum time it’s sensible to leave household waste before it starts to putrefy, giving off noxious smells and attracting maggots, flies and rats.

(Richard Littlejohn in The Daily Mail, September 4, 2006)
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