Wednesday 24th May 2006
Who hasn’t had this experience? You’re about to start a meeting…people are drifting in at various stages of lateness because of our execrable transport systems and suddenly, for some reason, someone mentions wheelie bins.
Forget starting the meeting on time, for it is now essential for the psychological wellbeing of all present that each person is allowed several minutes to ‘offload’ their feelings about the perils of modern day refuse disposal.
Everyone has their story – of fines for overfilling a wheelie bin; of megalomaniac fundamentalist council officials, drunk on their newfound powers, imposing overly strict sorting policies (they know that you snuck that wine bottle in amongst the plastic ones on purpose, and you will be punished); of ‘brown’ wheelies for garden rubbish that will cost £30 and will therefore be stolen by your neighbours. Not to mention the ‘bag debates’: why does the new supply of black ones never arrive before the existing supply runs out? What on earth are we really allowed to put in the white ones? (cardboard but not waxed or coated; melon seeds but not orange pips; shredded paper but only if less than 5mm in diameter; vegetable peelings but only if you used a peeler not a knife….I exaggerate but I bet this is ‘resonating’?)
Why is rubbish so controversial? For years we dreamed of systematic, local-authority-controlled, compulsory recycling. Now we have it (or are getting there), it doesn’t seem so popular. The consequent mere fortnightly collection of what my neighbour calls, ‘dirty rubbish’ has definite disadvantages (particularly in the summer, and especially if, like me, you live in a small house with little outside space). But these reasons alone do not really account for the depth of our ‘rubbish anxiety’. What’s really going on?
Here’s a clue. Have you noticed how other people’s rubbish is more ‘abject’ than your own: dirtier, smellier, and generally more disgusting? My refuse is acceptable to others only when it’s on my side of the garden fence (the private side). On the other side – the public side, it is what sociologists call, ‘matter out of place’ (that’s a posh definition of dirt). It has transgressed a boundary that it shouldn’t have. When we put our rubbish ‘out’, we are putting a bit of our private self beyond the boundaries of the private sphere. Hence the sensitivities. Refuse makes us vulnerable. It is stinking proof that ‘no person is an island’. Our attitudes towards it might just be symptomatic of our attitudes towards the ‘body politic’ as a whole.
Alison Webster is the Social Responsibility Adviser to the Diocese of Oxford.