Maggot Madness

I was more than usually bemused by this report on the Cambridge Evening News website.

“Horrified pensioner Anne Flack, of Chartfield Road, Cherry Hinton, felt revolted when she found maggots crawling in the bottom of her black bin after it was emptied this week.”

“Another city resident, Joscelyn Carroll, of Sleaford Street, who has previously found maggots in his black bin, said: ‘I find it ridiculous that with ever increasing council tax they cannot provide a weekly rubbish collection in this heat.’ ”

[My emphasis].

Whilst I very much agree with the sentiment that the bins should be emptied weekly – I’ve even said as much en passant to my local Cambridge Councillor – the issue is (or should be) the green bins. We have black boxes for papers, newspapers and cans; blue boxes for plastic bottles; collection points for batteries; charity shops for old clothes and crockery; procedures for dealing with fridges (even if these would fit in a black bag! [obliquely referencing Doug’s recent anecdote]) and other electrical goods; green bins for garden and kitchen waste as well as cardboard – that is, for those with no biology qualifications, practically everything that could support the typical maggot lifestyle; and black bins for everything else, which should be eff all.

So, the Cambridge Evening News reader might well wonder, why aren’t Anne Flack, of Chartfield Road, Cherry Hinton and Joscelyn Carroll, of Sleaford Street following the instructions of the Cambridge Soviet to the letter? Aren’t they putting their food waste in the green bins? As well as compostables (including “all kinds of cardboard”), I dutifully separate out bottles (glass and plastic), paper, tins and even batteries. There’s absolutely nothing in my black bin to support a maggot-dominated ecosystem. It contains little but inert packaging, much of it the same plastics as in the recycled bottles (not forgetting shiny Christmas wrapping paper – future civilisations millennia hence will wonder at the purpose of this least degradable of all human artefacts). Incidentally, guess why they only recycle plastic bottles? Because the sorting machine can only deal with rolly things! (Pointing out the absurdity of this was the substance of my letter to the Councillor).

Of course, no-one knows (as they say) what happens to the waste in the green bin. One suspects the answer is that it goes somewhere similar to the contents of the black bin – landfill, incineration or a layby on the A14. I find the idea that the waste from everyone’s green bins is pure enough to grow food in to be rather implausible.

Here’s what the Council has to say by way of “clarification”:

” ‘Despite rumours, there is no public health risk associated with putting food waste in green bins in Cambridge and it is completely safe for people to do so.’ ”

Que?, as Manuel would say. Rumours? What rumours? Can you catch swine flu or something from this “food waste”? The green bins are intended for food waste, not just garden waste (hey, wouldn’t it be better if those with gardens maintained their own compost heaps, anyway?). At least that’s what Cambridge Council have been telling me for the last 5 years.

“The council’s advice is to get a kitchen caddy – which is free for Cambridge residents – to collect food waste in the kitchen. Wrap all food waste in paper, rinse off food packaging, and keep wheelie bin lids closed.” [NSS* on the last bit!].

Thanks for letting me know before. But what exactly is a “kitchen caddy”? I use an old plastic food container – the kind the Council won’t recycle. It seems to do the job.

And here’s the screamer:

“Residents are also encouraged to put food waste in their black bin one week, and green the next, to get a weekly collection of food waste.”

Unbelievable. What are we saying now? After all this, it doesn’t really matter what goes in what bin?

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Maybe this is a good time to mention that the whole national recycling strategy is, of course, entirely misconceived. Government should simply take steps to create a market for recyclables (e.g. by acting as the buyer of last resort) so that suppliers to recycling companies buy the stuff off us (maybe via enterprising school-kids). Every newspaper, bottle, tin, potato peeling and so on that is recycled saves the landfill or other disposal cost so recycling could even be subsidised, though I’m convinced that, once established, the recycling industry would be profitable. And what’s more, you might find people clearing the bottles, cans and other trash from Parker’s Piece for nothing!

Give people clear incentives to do the right thing and we don’t need to try to run our lives on the basis of contradictory local council diktats.

*NSS = No Sh**, Sherlock! – of course!