Talking rubbish
Jan. 21st, 2010 10:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustOur rubbish was collected today (and our recycling too) for the first time -
- well, certainly for the first time this year. The schedule is that rubbish is collected every Thursday, and recycling every other Thursday: in fact it would suit me better if that were the other way round. We don't generate much rubbish - this may be because neither of us is good at throwing things away, but for whatever reason, our wheelie bin is almost never full, so I wouldn't necessarily notice if it hadn't been emptied. Rubbish and recycling were both collected on December 10th, and there was no recycling collection on the 17th - but was the rubbish collected then? Don't know: that was the day the snow began to fall and to settle, but we went out to the Sage to see Thea Gilmore, with no real travel problems, and drove to London the next day (ditto, though we were lucky). At some point in the following week, I noticed that the wheelie bin was very full of black bags, and was surprised, as term had ended more than a week earlier (in this part of town end of term is marked by a general clearing out, and I'd sooner surplus black bags were dumped in our bin than in the back lane, from which the refuse collectors will not remove them - but that's another story); at the time I assumed that someone had been late clearing out for Christmas, but now I think maybe we had already missed one collection at this point.
There was no collection, rubbish or recycling, on Christmas Eve. I'm trying to remember how bad the weather was, by now: I posted on the 28th that the snow was gradually thawing, and that it was occasionally icy overnight. Too bad for the big vans to come out and collect, apparently, and too bad for the council to put round any sort of information leaflet. By the time we realised that there was going to be no collection (that is, that it was not simply delayed because there was a backlog of waste to collect) it was too late to do anything but drag the recycling box indoors again, and try to find somewhere to put the bottle mountain (not to mention the cardboard mountain and the plastic mountain).
It wasn't a surprise that there was no collection on New Year's Eve. By now the snow was lying quite thickly, and the roads were genuinely difficult. (We cried off going out to dinner). But by the time people returned to work the following week, we were beginning to wonder whether the council had any plan for collecting rubbish, other than waiting for the thaw.
Indisputably, they had a problem. The heavy refuse lorries were hard to handle on ice, and one manager told us hair-raising talesof skidding vehicles, one which knocked over a lamppost and left a street in darkness and one that went into the back of someone's home, so that they had to be temporarily rehoused. It's been a long time since we had a winter like this one (and yes, as I write this, I'm aware that this winter is not over), and drivers aren't accustomed to driving on ice, people don't have snow chains for their tyres, the council was taken by surprise.
I understand all that, and how it happened that we missed a couple of weeks' service while they worked out what to do. But by January 4th the council was still issuing statements like the one quoted in my local councillor's blog: "In particular today’s (Monday 4 Jan) refuse and recycling collections have been called off for safety reasons and will be resumed a day late tomorrow." By now our street had had no collection for several weeks, and we were not alone; but the council was talking as if a single day had been lost; what's more, snow and ice were still deep (as in the picture here) on the ungritted roads, and it was obvious that anywhere that was inaccessible one day was not miraculously going to become accessible the next. We were assured that staff were working their socks off to keep things going - and for all I know that's true, but there was no evidence of it here. We were talking this morning at the farmers' market to someone who lives on a farm up a particularly tricky hill - but who had had her rubbish collected on Boxing Day. Perhaps it's a matter of what the weather is like on the day your collection is due?
For all the talk of catch-up, that's what seems to have happened.
Today, at last, our due day rolled round again, and by now the snow is reduced to a few grubby heaps. And the dustbin has been emptied and a small mountain of recycling removed. As I said - and this will teach me to make jokes about Durham County Council - they've solved the problem of collecting in bad weather by waiting for the thaw.
- well, certainly for the first time this year. The schedule is that rubbish is collected every Thursday, and recycling every other Thursday: in fact it would suit me better if that were the other way round. We don't generate much rubbish - this may be because neither of us is good at throwing things away, but for whatever reason, our wheelie bin is almost never full, so I wouldn't necessarily notice if it hadn't been emptied. Rubbish and recycling were both collected on December 10th, and there was no recycling collection on the 17th - but was the rubbish collected then? Don't know: that was the day the snow began to fall and to settle, but we went out to the Sage to see Thea Gilmore, with no real travel problems, and drove to London the next day (ditto, though we were lucky). At some point in the following week, I noticed that the wheelie bin was very full of black bags, and was surprised, as term had ended more than a week earlier (in this part of town end of term is marked by a general clearing out, and I'd sooner surplus black bags were dumped in our bin than in the back lane, from which the refuse collectors will not remove them - but that's another story); at the time I assumed that someone had been late clearing out for Christmas, but now I think maybe we had already missed one collection at this point.
There was no collection, rubbish or recycling, on Christmas Eve. I'm trying to remember how bad the weather was, by now: I posted on the 28th that the snow was gradually thawing, and that it was occasionally icy overnight. Too bad for the big vans to come out and collect, apparently, and too bad for the council to put round any sort of information leaflet. By the time we realised that there was going to be no collection (that is, that it was not simply delayed because there was a backlog of waste to collect) it was too late to do anything but drag the recycling box indoors again, and try to find somewhere to put the bottle mountain (not to mention the cardboard mountain and the plastic mountain).
It wasn't a surprise that there was no collection on New Year's Eve. By now the snow was lying quite thickly, and the roads were genuinely difficult. (We cried off going out to dinner). But by the time people returned to work the following week, we were beginning to wonder whether the council had any plan for collecting rubbish, other than waiting for the thaw.
Indisputably, they had a problem. The heavy refuse lorries were hard to handle on ice, and one manager told us hair-raising talesof skidding vehicles, one which knocked over a lamppost and left a street in darkness and one that went into the back of someone's home, so that they had to be temporarily rehoused. It's been a long time since we had a winter like this one (and yes, as I write this, I'm aware that this winter is not over), and drivers aren't accustomed to driving on ice, people don't have snow chains for their tyres, the council was taken by surprise.
I understand all that, and how it happened that we missed a couple of weeks' service while they worked out what to do. But by January 4th the council was still issuing statements like the one quoted in my local councillor's blog: "In particular today’s (Monday 4 Jan) refuse and recycling collections have been called off for safety reasons and will be resumed a day late tomorrow." By now our street had had no collection for several weeks, and we were not alone; but the council was talking as if a single day had been lost; what's more, snow and ice were still deep (as in the picture here) on the ungritted roads, and it was obvious that anywhere that was inaccessible one day was not miraculously going to become accessible the next. We were assured that staff were working their socks off to keep things going - and for all I know that's true, but there was no evidence of it here. We were talking this morning at the farmers' market to someone who lives on a farm up a particularly tricky hill - but who had had her rubbish collected on Boxing Day. Perhaps it's a matter of what the weather is like on the day your collection is due?
For all the talk of catch-up, that's what seems to have happened.
Today, at last, our due day rolled round again, and by now the snow is reduced to a few grubby heaps. And the dustbin has been emptied and a small mountain of recycling removed. As I said - and this will teach me to make jokes about Durham County Council - they've solved the problem of collecting in bad weather by waiting for the thaw.
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no subject
Date: 2010-01-22 04:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-22 11:05 am (UTC)Well, we've started already...
no subject
Date: 2010-01-22 09:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-22 11:07 am (UTC)