8. Recycled Waste

Tania is very worried on her way to work.

Tania watched the bloke next door as he set out for the classroom where he laboured all day long, apparently teaching children with special needs, and had to admit to herself that he looked the part, down to the patches someone had sewn onto the elbows of a rather smart though worn sports jacket and the sharp and smart creases in his trousers.

But it wasn’t bis appearance that made her frown but the memory of his hacking away at the garden behind his house, digging a hole far to deep to make much sense, and then filling it in next morning just in case, he explained, his mother returned from her mysterious walk and accidentally fell into it.

However, she didn’t have long to mentally explore possibilities because it was her time to go to work, and one thing she hated was being late. She worked in the huge supermarket that sold everything a person might want, including a wide range of torch batteries, garden tools and swimming costumes as well as everything you could dream of wanting to eat or drink.

She could hear Kevin still getting himself ready for work, clattering around in the bathroom upstairs when she slipped out of the front door and made her way onto the street. It was a warm day and she was dressed only in her work uniform, and even that seemed a deal too heavy to her, for such a day.

Once out of the gate she noticed that her wheelie bin, the one containing a fortnight’s recyclable rubbish, wasn’t as neatly arranged as she liked it. Maybe, she thought, some untidy wretch had fallen into it as he staggered back home from the pub late last night. It really wasn’t good enough for that kind of behaviour in what should be an enlightened age. So she pushed it back to where it had been when she’d put it out last night and grunted to herself at how heavy her unwanted recyclable stuff was.

The air was filled with the clatter of wheeled bins being emptied further down the road and she was happy that she had put hers straight before they’d got to it. The huge council receptacle for recyclable waste trundled along towards them, and she noted as she rushed past, fearing that she might be late for work, that next door had also put a green bin out ready for it to be collected.

His mother must have put that out because the useless sod would never do anything as useful as that, she thought to herself, and then she chastised herself because she was making a rather severe judgement about a person she hardly knew. So he dug deep holes for his potatoes? So what?

She was half way down the street and about to turn off for the supermarket where she worked when she was alerted by a loud shout of alarm and horror from behind her, where the bin men were lifting her own bin in preparation for emptying it into their wagon.

From the look of it and from a relatively small distance it looked as if they were unhappy about something she had put on her bin. And that almost upset her because she was always very careful to make sure that everything she put out for recycling was permitted on the council’s own lists of what could and what could not be recycled. And she knew just how environmentally important it was to follow the rules to a letter. In such a way the future was in her hands. So when she’d put the bin out last night she had peered into it and checked that she’d done the job properly when she’d discarded stuff into it. And she had: she knew that.

So why was the bin man shouting in fear and possibly anger when he peered into her bin prior to having it hoisted up and emptied automatically into his wagon?

She looked at her watch and decided she had time to go back and see what was wrong if she rushed, so she turned and half-ran back up the street.

And when she arrived back at her own gate where her own bin was being examined in a sense of absolute horror she couldn’t help shouting out,

“What’s wrong with the stuff in my bin?”

The senior bin man eyed her darkly. “Is this your bin then, miss?” he asked.

“Er… yes,” she said, “I put it out last night and it’s got the number of my house on it, so it is mine all right.”

“Then you’d best wait for the cops,” replied the scowling council worker, “We’ve sent for them and they’re on their way.”

“The cops? Police? What for? A few empty milk bottles and cleaned out baked beans cans? Is that against the law in this authoritarian age?” she demanded.

“If that’s what was in here it would be quite all right, missy, and no law that I know against it” replied the bin man, “we’ve got no quarrel with the stuff you might normally put in your bin. And we know what you’re like. We empty this bin every fortnight and I can quite easily recall how we like emptying it. It’s a right pleasure and just the job and very clean, is your bin. We tell each other how much we like it and what a joy working on it si. Until today, that is. Now you look in it and tell me what you see. When the cops arrive I’ll bet they won’t let you anywhere near it.

“Let me see then,” she demanded, and barged her way to the bin that was waiting by the mechanism at the back of the wagon that would lift it and empty it.

She lifted the green lid and peered in. Then she recoiled in shock and horror.

Because cramped into the green plastic and very, very dead was the elderly woman she thought was the smart man who lived next door’s mother.

She took a quick step backwards and trod on the man’s foot.

“How?” she asked, “when? Who?”

The bin man looked at her and shook his head. “I haven’t a clue,” he said, “but what I do know for sure is what’s in that bin ain’t recyclable. It’s a poor old soul who should be in her bed and not pushed into a bin like that. Do you know her? It’s what the cops are bound to ask you, seeing as it’s your bin she’s in.”

“She lives next door, moved in a few days ago…” stammered Tania, “and if she should be in anyone’s bin it should be that one,” she added, pointing to her neighbour’s neatly parked green wheeled bin.

© Peter Rogerson 27.05.24