I could use that subject on any given day, but today specifically is the ongoing complaints in the Daily Mail about a “slop bucket in every home”, which they have been banging on about for too long already.

Here’s the istyosty address to read the full story without counting towards DailyMail’s statistics: http://istyosty.com/6jzp but for the moment, I’d like to focus on the end of the story.

Namely, this shower of balls:

I’ll try and ignore the fact that retired teacher Sylvia lives in a terraced house, all to herself (no mention of who the man is, so I will assume him to be one of the other outraged neighbours), so would have no problem housing at least twice as many bins. And the fact that she’s retired at 59 presumably means she has plenty of free time to moan to the newspapers about bin collections.

But is that the full story, really?
Do they HAVE TO put out NINE bins? Really? They’re being “forced” to?

The far left is described as the “grey bin kept in kitchen”, so there’s one you don’t put out at all. In fact you don’t even have to use it. You could stick food waste straight in the outside food waste bin. But I guess that pisses up the “slopbucket in every home” nonsense. How much food waste is a retiree getting through on her own, anyway? Buy less food.

Side note: Just noticed that the slopbucket is described as “silver”, whereas it is later described as “grey”. Caught my attention for some reason.

One of those bins is for outside food waste, one for tin cans (and probably jars, bottles, etc. based on how Bristol do collections), fair enough.

One bin for cardboard? What? Wait – that green thing ISN’T a bin. It’s just a big bag isn’t it? You’ve got a handy bag to keep your cardboard together. But that isn’t a “bin”. It’s so small you could fit it through your letterbox, so I’m not going to believe that takes up “room”. You know, I’m starting to think this article is a load of old bullshit.

One of those “bins” is for clothes. Do you throw out clothes EVERY week? Do you? Who gets through a whole bag of clothes every week, except The Incredible Hulk? That’s only a carrier bag anyway, not a bin.

One of those bins (which is also a bag) is for plastic. You have kerbside plastic collection, so you don’t have to get off your fat arses and take it to the supermarket like everyone else? Be grateful for that, at least. Plastic is the bulk of what I have to recycle every week, so there’s one less hassle for you.

In fact of all their complaints, the only one I can see being actually justified, is that they have to house a bin for garden waste, but don’t have a garden (although lucky Sylvia has an allotment!). That’s the only flaw, if I was going to be really pedantic. And while they claim not to have a garden, there’s clearly a space at the front of the house between the house and the pavement, where those two large bins would easily fit. The rest isn’t actually a bin – just a series of bags, so takes up no room whatsoever. You can’t tell me you don’t have room for 3 carrier bags, indoors, and that’s what your paper, clothing and plastic bags consist of, until you put something in them.

As for only being collected once a fortnight – while all but my “general waste” is collected weekly – I regularly forget to put it out. My girlfriend and I throw away so little that even a fortnight’s worth of cardboard isn’t very much. We regularly don’t bother putting the general waste bin out every fortnight, and sometimes it goes 4-6 weeks without being emptied. It doesn’t smell (as there’s only non-recyclables, and non-food in it), and because we separate all the rest, it’s very rarely full, even after a month. What are they moaning about?