I may have occasionally griped about delayed garbage collection, but I do acknowledge that our scheme is a pretty good one when I compare it to some of other locations.

But the award for most complicated and unsanitary scheme probably goes to Cambridge, England, as noted by Paul Woods at the Adam Smith Institute.

My local city council’s explanation of its new refuse collection system is remarkably complicated. We have a black bin (or white bags), a black box, a green bin (or brown sacks) and a blue box involved. Not only are we expected to remember what type of rubbish goes in which bin or bag, but also which two sit on the street together and whether it’s week one for the first combination or week two.

Living in a house with three people easily creates more than three normal kitchen bin bags full of rubbish each week. Because of my council’s new system, this means that the day before collection, I’m looking at six bags of rubbish in my back yard, three of which have been there for more than a week. It’s unhygienic and it’s ugly. I’m fortunate enough to have a large back yard which holds the bags easily, but many people on my street do not. Their back yards will be fully occupied with bin bags the day before collection. And that’s without thinking of space in which to store bottles, paper and plastics.

I would hate to have to keep stuff for up to two weeks.  Not only is there a logistics problem of where to keep the stuff, it can be unsanitary and unsightly.  Will the town council reimburse them for their extra extermination and rodent-killing costs? 

I wonder why they had to make it so hard?  Or, conversely, how can Allied Waste handle collecting our garbage twice a week and separating our mixed recyclables for $8.91 per month?