Use it again, Sam

I have to keep telling myself, "It's for the children." And I find myself repeating it more and more as a mantra these days, as I bang my head in the cubbyhole under the stairs, or knock my temples against the cupboard in the kitchen. "It's for the... ouch! Children."

I wouldn't mind if it were just paper, or just tins, or just bottles, but these days it seems, it's just about everything. Great Britain has gone recycling crazy and it's only going to get worse.

I was looking at our recycling leaflet this morning, trying to work out whether we should be putting out household refuse with paper, or cardboard, or charity appeals. Actually, I needn't have bothered because we missed the binmen altogether and therefore they'll have our marinated refuse to greet them next week. But I did see that the council was gleefully announcing a new "plastics collection" in the same way that GAP, for instance, would announce its new "Autumn Collection". So now, instead of chucking away your empty milk containers or your fast food packs, you can stick them in another bag and then try and find space in your house for the blasted thing until it's time for you to miss the refuse collection operatives on their weekly round.

At this point in time I have a cardboard collection in the living room. Outside the back door I have a box for tins and bottles. In the kitchen cupboard I have sacks for plastics and newspaper. Polythene and plastic bags go in a separate bag, so too would batteries, tin foil, engine oil and uranium (that goes into the lead-filled container under the stairs). Currently, polystyrene, bubble wrap and naval fluff are not recycled and may be thrown into a waste bin. The point is that we don't live in a mansion and I tell you, it's a nuisance trying to find space for all this blasted rubbish. I really do feel half inclined at times to dump it all into our brown (garden waste) bin and cover it over with six inches of grass cuttings and just hope that the bin men are looking the other way when it's tipped noisily into the dust cart.

I recall, a few years ago when I was clearing my house in England, that I took a load of stuff to the local tip and then had to fanny around in the rain putting this junk in one skip, and that junk in another one. Chastened, I returned home, booked a skip to turn up on my drive and then emptied absolutely everything into it: cardboard, paper, plastics, bottles, iron, an old sofa set... You name it, the skip ate it; and it was a curious quirk of fate that it was completely legal - if a little expensive - to do that.

And if you think I sound like an irresponsible old whinger, well just try unpacking a shirt and then disposing of anything that isn't a shirt. The plastic cover goes into the plastic bags' bag, whilst the plastic clips and that clear plastic bit under the collar go into the "new plastics' collection" bag. The cardboard backing goes into the cardboard collection box in my living room, and the tissue paper goes into the paper sack - by way of a bumped head - in the kitchen cupboard. As for the pins, I'm saving those to jab into the eyeballs of Chelmsford Borough Council's Recycling Manager when he calls round to complain about household refuse being dumped into his garden refuse bin.

"It's for the children...
Breathe...
It's for the children...
And, relax."