The embarrassment of recycling

[AlanHo]

My local town council have just issued all residents with a black recycling boxes for glass jars/bottles and a green one for paper. They are to be left outside the premises on a particular day every 2 weeks. I am astounded to see that the boxes do not have a lid - thus leaving the contents visible for all to see.

I regard this as a flagrant breach of privacy - do I really want the neighbours to see that I buy considerable quantities of cheap wine and bottled beer from Liddls and Aldi, that my jams and marmalade are Tesco Basic rather than Robertsons or Duerre, my meat paste is Morrisons budget line rather that Shippams potted paste, I buy Sainsbury's cheap beef extract rather than proper Marmite, my tomato and brown sauce are Tesco basic 19p a jar rather than Heinz at 4 times the price etc etc. Whilst I will try and hide the contents of the paper box under a copy of the Sunday Mail - the wind could easily expose the fact that I read the Daily Sport and the Sun newspaper and my Health and Efficiency magazines are well thumbed.

It is going to be bloody embarrassing to see the neighbours boxes alongside mine - their's being crammed with champagne and vintage wine bottles, Harrods food jars, Foie Gras and caviar jars, copies of the Times and Telegraph newspapers, Country Life magazine, Golf Monthly and Good Housekeeping etc etc

It's a disgrace...............................

[-pops-]

Years ago I knew someone who worked close to The Ritz, just off Piccadilly. She would raid the bins of said hotel for posh empties to load into her bin to impress the dustmen and she would invariably leave the lid off at collection day so that the neighbours would be impressed as well.

Complete waste of time as everyone around knew what she was doing.

[Belatucadrus]

Just remember that anyone passing comment will reveal themselves to be a brand shopping oik with no taste buds of their own and a tendency to trawl through bins in their no doubt inordinate quantity of spare time. Somebody whose opinion is less worthy of consideration will be hard to find.

We have several Aldi stores near us and the manager of one shows signs of being ex M&S or Waitrose, there is nothing cut price about the store or his staff. People making snooty comments simply reveal they've never actually been in and have not the slightest idea what they're talking about.

[catgate]

I seem to remember fifteenish years ago, one or two programmes on TV about organisations (councils?) who had installed huge machines, which, by means of various techniques, would separate "raw dusbin waste" into various categories and would recycle it. The word recycle was not used as far as I can recall. It even went as far as shredding plastics and sorting by floatation/Sp.Gr.The vegetable waste materials were then composted. The energy was provided by burning some of the sorted combustibles.

I have seen nothing about it since then. Presumably the current method, whereby the local authority pays companies such as Waste Recycling Group, Biffa, etc., is only acceptable if the rate payer does the sorting, so as to leave much more profit for the company fat cats, by letting them just sell/dump it without sorting.

[catgate]

with no taste buds of their own and a ........

I like that comment. There is no doubt in my mind that Aldi, Lidl and to a lesser extent Netto have quite a lot of foods that do have taste. I have always put it down to their country of origin.

Amongst other things we get some lovely cold meats from Aldi and Lidl and also German Pils..In fact the best I have had outside Germany has been a recent introduction at Lidl called Finkbrau. You can almost chew the taste....and it is very very cheap......well I am a Yorkshire man.

[Belatucadrus]

I buy Sainsbury's cheap beef extract rather than proper Marmite,

Why ? Marmite is a yeast extract, now if you bought cheap beef extract as an alternative to Bovril I could understand it.

[rong]

I buy Sainsbury's cheap beef extract rather than proper Marmite,

Why ? Marmite is a yeast extract, now if you bought cheap beef extract as an alternative to Bovril I could understand it.

Don't know why you would want to buy either, they taste awful

[andsome]

I buy Sainsbury's cheap beef extract rather than proper Marmite,

Why ? Marmite is a yeast extract, now if you bought cheap beef extract as an alternative to Bovril I could understand it.

Don't know why you would want to buy either, they taste awful

Agreed.

[AlanHo]

I've just come back onto the computer having had a delicious lunch of beef extract and marmalade sandwiches swilled down with a bottle of stinkbrau pils from Netto. I would have been here earlier but I got carried away reading yet again last Fridays Daily Sport and looking at my growing collection of page 3's ripped out of the Sun newspaper. Tonight I will have some Tesco value fish fingers and oven chips with a bottle of german white wine (that's all it says on the label) before I put out the council's recycling boxes for collection tomorrow morning.

Yor responses to my original posting have been most appreciated - I feel much more worthy now because my inferiority complex seems to have waned a little after reading your comments.

It is unfortunate that we do not have a Ritz hotel in the vicinity - otherwise I could follow up on pops's hint.