Dreary and wet again today, no inspiration to get out in the garden – other than to move the wheelie bin back into position after the collectors left it on the pavement. What a curse wheelie bins are…yes, they are bigger and maybe the green bins for garden refuse are a plus (though never big enough for any household with a regular gardening habit): but overall they’re an eyesore. We are lucky in having space to put our three wheelies, although the newly-replanted front garden could do without them, however discreetly they’re positioned to one side in the shade of a large apple tree. I have considered constructing a screen or shelter, but tend to think that would actually just draw attention to them, and prove cumbersome with the filling, moving, emptying cycle.
But the poor households who have a small old-fashioned terraced front garden, maybe only a couple of yards square, end up with wheelie-bins and nothing else more or less. And this goes on for house after house after house, yet another nail in the coffin of the integrity of classic late-Victorian terraced housing (along with the delights of UPVC double-glazing, the odd outbreak of cladding, and hard standing for off-street car parking).
All that said, I do not have a sensible alternative in my head, other than massive reduction in the use of packaging. I remember seeing, not that long ago, on television a family who filled only one bin’s worth of non-recyclable rubbish each year – I find that utterly incredible.