Bin Night, The Big Issue, 16 January 2006
16 January, 2006
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A faint falling mist disperses the glow of streetlights and the rows of bins cast gentle shadows. Drizzle coats my hand as I raise it up to acknowledge James across the road. We’ve both remembered, rather late on this night, that it is bin night.
Looking towards the factory at the end of the street, the bins all stand erect: two of them at the top of each driveway. There is the green bin for general rubbish, and the larger blue bin for recyclables. They appear to be standing to attention, deserving some greater acknowledgment. But none of us really give our rubbish a second thought.
My parents live in a municipality that has instituted a three-bin system. Their bins are all the same familiar ‘wheelie bin’ green, but have see-through panels in the sides and different coloured lids: yellow for recycling, blue for general waste and red for green waste and organic materials.
The environmentalists among my peers are very jealous of such a politically correct waste disposal system.
I remember a time in the not-too-distant past when bins didn’t have wheels. The bins were squat and silver and little more than half the size of the wheelies we have today. I know they didn’t have wheels because if they did, bin night would not have been the epic battle between my brothers and I about who would take out the bin. Our driveway was an up and down affair, less than 100 metres, but more than you’d like to travel with unforgiving steel handles biting into your hands on a cold winter night.
Then, we were more aware of what we threw away. While we didn’t divide it and sort it for the benefits of new green industries, our family of six would fill one squat silver bin a week.
As kids, we toured the local footy and cricket grounds as the Saturday afternoon shadows lengthened, filling up plastic bags with aluminium cans. We’d take them home and spend a few hours squashing them and weighing them on our bathroom scales. As we tried to work out how much we’d earned that day, we would wonder if indeed it had been worth the jeers and wry smiles from spectators, warmly pissed and provocative.
These days, we don’t take our cans to Alcoa Cash-A-Can centres. They go in the designated recycle bin. And some communities have eschewed the backyard compost heap: their councils are providing bins for their green waste.
We don’t like to get our hands dirty. In Margaret Simons’ book on composting, Resurrection in a Bucket, she reflects on our lack of connection with the dirty world – one of worms and decomposition. She beautifully articulates the connection between a dying breed of composters and their garbage:
“One does not make compost with an elevated, snobbish or intellectual attitude. In the end we are talking about muck, and it doesn’t do to get above ourselves. But nor should we forget that from muck we sprang, and to muck we shall return. Muck is the stuff of life.”
An appreciation of refuse brings a deeper understanding of the way systems govern our lives. Those who reflect on not what they throw out, but how they will reuse their waste, have taken the greatest step outside the encircling system of consumption.
And when I think environmental, I don’t think of people chaining themselves to trees. I recall my grandfather’s compost heap in a backyard in Reservoir, positioned cleverly next to the budgie cage for that extra shovel-full of nitrogen rich poo. I imagine the taste of Christmas-table vegies picked and washed that morning to feed his nine children, their partners and hoards of grandkids.
My parents’ three bins contain more than six times the amount that once fitted into the metallic bin of my childhood. Our society has given us license to increase our waste disposal: bigger bins, more packaging and a recycling mantra to salve our environmental conscience.
The weight of our garbage bins has grown alongside our hearty embrace of consumerism. Our increased consumption has necessitated new ways of dealing with the extra waste we produce. And Australian society has simultaneously increased its capacity to dispose, while detaching itself from the disposal process.
We like to believe that because we understand our milk cartons and cans go in one bin, and our plastic wrappers go in another, that we think more about our rubbish. But we don’t.
Bin night is a hygienic affair. Waste is carefully sorted and bins are lined up neatly. There are anti-bacterial sprays and strongly scented chemicals we can add to our bins to remove any suggestion that they are, in fact, vessels for refuse.
On collection night, James and I both force our bin lids down: a requirement of the new bin collection service. We wave to each other and duck inside before it starts to seriously rain. And that is it.
Gone are the days of small bins that dogs can sniff out, tip over and rummage through for someone’s chicken scraps. We’ve designed a waste system that suits our stainless-steel fridge mentality. Our appreciation of our garbage and waste systems has turned sterile.
The word ‘garbologist’ has almost vanished from the vernacular, because he doesn’t exist as he once did. With the automation of our garbage trucks, there is no longer a need for the gritty men in blue singlets and Blundstones. No longer do they run behind the truck, picking up our waste and adding it to the visible pile of dross. The smell of the garbage truck hovering for hours after the truck has departed is no longer present.
Just like the dunny man before him, who reminded us so clearly that we all had to shit, the garbo is bordering on extinction. And no-one is reminding us that our garbage all ends up mixed and mashed together. We miss out on the equalising concept that no matter what your income, your waste belongs with the masses.
Today, garbos are just truck drivers. They sit up high in an air-conditioned cabin, while an electronic arm neatly hides the rubbish away in an enclosed and invisible tray. Now, the smells are contained. And the earthy men with their flannels waving in the morning breeze are ghosts at a tip site frequented by few, and picked over by even fewer.
Many tips have banned the pursuit of hunting for treasure amid plastic bags and swarms of seagulls. One man’s waste is now every man’s waste. We don’t want to be told we’ve thrown away potential treasures. Or, perhaps we don’t want to be reminded of just how disgustingly affluent we really are.
Recently, The Australia Institute’s catchy research put the situation remarkably well, when they released a study on our disposable culture. The discussion paper, Wasteful Consumption in Australia, highlighted just how much stuff we throw away. Clive Hamilton’s grab line was a beauty: "Perhaps we should build railway lines directly from shopping centres to landfill sites and cut out the middle man," he said.
We have a lot of room for our rubbish in this country. A terra nullius of space for all the junk and crap that we no longer need because we’ve replaced it with stuff that we’re sure we really do need.
But when it comes to saving the planet, it might just be the size of the bin we use, and not what goes into it, that counts.
Daniel Donahoo is a fellow at OzProspect, a non-partisan, public policy think tank.
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