Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Green Or Mean?

I’m very good at stern letters, me. I write them to big corporate companies all the time – Richard Branson probably has an auto ‘avoid this crazed woman’ command for when my emails come up, I’ve complained about his stinking Virginity so many times.

I like letters. We’ve got a friend who’s just gone to prison and I’m writing to him. Not in a fall-in-love-with-a-conman-and-marry-him-while-he’s-behind-bars sort of way, just in a ha ha, you knob! You’re in prison now, how’s that going? I want him to know we innocent souls on the outside, the ones who don’t ask undercover police officers if they want to party at festivals, are not going to forget about him.

Yes, I like letters. Stern ones are my favourite. When Wightlink messed up my Bestival festival tickets this summer, I wrote them ever such a stern letter. That the issue was probably my fault was neither here nor there – if I have to deal with these billion pound turnover companies, then they have to deal with me. Simple.

Thus, I wrote to South Gloucestershire county council, for they are my council and are supposed to be looking after me and my environment. And I said hey! Council! I want to put my food waste in a brown bin like what my friends in neighbouring council patch Bristol do! I want to separate my rubbish from my food stuffs, so you can feed some pigs somewhere. When will I be allowed this extra notch on my recycling bedpost?

Well, Kim Willis, they kindly replied, we think you’re right. How about we initiate the green waste collection scheme, as of December 2010?

Thank you and goodnight.

I could once again sleep at night. Another stern letter in the bag, another problem solved.
 Now, the brown bin has arrived and I’ve started chucking my tea bags, carrot peel and leftover dinner in there. Alright, less of the leftover dinner. That goes in my belly. But the carrot peel? My goodness gracious me, it takes two weeks for the bin men to collect our green waste, and in two weeks, putrid carrot peel smells begin to infest the entire flat, like a rat has died and maggots with backpacks full of rotten eggs are riding skateboards around our flat.

This is a stern, open letter. Am I missing something? Am I doing it wrong? Surely all the people I know who separate their food waste don’t just live with this smell. Perhaps I ought to invest in some kind of ghostbusters-esque suits and for the second week of the fortnight, we can just sit about in those, breathing through gas masks. Like when they thought ET was a bit of an alien and everyone got all dressed up. It is seriously that bad.

Or, dare I say it, I think the green team might be down a player. I’m not sure I’m cut from strong enough cloth to keep rotting food in my house for a fortnight. I’ll just have to fly a bit less far on my next holiday to make up for it.

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