[WillowTheWhisp]

Am I the only person on here who is in favour of recycling? We don't have an infinite supply of raw materials and we don't have bottomless pits to dump all our rubbish in. It makes much more sense to me to recycle as much as possible and try to leave a world worth living in for future generations.

In the olden days people recycled without knowing it because they had to, they couldn't afford to throw things away and there wasn't half so much disposable junk as there is now.

I sort out paper, glass, tins and plastic bottles. We now have a bag for plastic bottles although we haven't always had one and that niggled me. I also keep all compostable waste in a seperate little bin and periodically take it up to the allotment. Now I do realise that not everyone has a garden or allotment and not everyone has a use for compost, but equally there are people who have large gardens who go out and buy compost for them. Perhaps a "compost exchange" should be organised by our illustrious leaders where people who want to recycle compostable waste but have no use for it could pass it on to people who need it and can't get enough?

I don't keep any of my bags boxes or bins in the house, there is no way I would have rubbish in the house. I have small waste bins indoors but they are emptied regularly and mostly they contain stuff for the wheelie bin all the rest goes straight outside into its respective recepticle and no I don't have a massive back yard to keep them in. In fact I have a very small L shaped yard but it's just a case of organising the space effectively.

However, back to the subject of all that rubbish at the bottom of Meadow Street. That is disgusting. Surely it can't all have been dumped there by one family? It's all very well HBC saying they won't take extra bin bags and will only empty wheelie bins once a fortnight but what on earth do they expect people to do when they have more than a wheelie bin full of non-recyclable rubbish? Threatening a £1,000 fine quite obviously only encourages people to fly tip elsewhere which makes the problem twice as bad. If you have rubbish you have rubbish and such rubbish needs to be removed. Not everyone can get to the tip and anyway what on earth is the difference between HBC dumping it at the tip and the householder dumping it at the tip? It still ends up in the same place!

Theoretically if you have large items you can ring up the council and they will come and remove them but now apparently they will only take 3 items in one go! Where's the sense in that? If you have 9 items they are now going to be making 3 visits instead of 1 and quite possibloy you may have to ring up 3 times to get them to do so. How can that be classed as an improvement? When we demolished th old shed after it was vandalised and had the damaged contents to dispose of too they weren't even keen on us taking it to the tip ourselves because they classed it as "building waste". So they weren't prepared to come for it and grumbled when we took it up there! That was the point at which I said words to the effect of "OK we'll join the rest of the fly tippers then!"

That lot really is a health hazard and it's very irresponsible of HBC to just leave it all there like that. They should try to find out who dumped it too though. It's too easy to fine little old ladies whose wheelie bin lids won't shut down properly, much harder to trace people who dump piles of stuff like that. It wouldn't surprise me if there are rats amongst it, especially if there's any food content.