One of the good (and occasionally bad) things about living in strata is you see the best and worst of people. More to the point, you see it up close.

Living in a house, you have no idea whether or not your neighbours recycle their garbage, and neither should you. 

There are only two people that should legitimately go through a stranger’s bins – police looking for a clue to a serious crime and streeties looking intercept cans and bottles that they can recycle for cash before they get to the council.

In our block we have, our committee tells us, one of the most-used recycling systems in the council area. We have six types of bins: about 30 wheelies for paper and glass, two huge skips for cardboard, three small bins for food waste, and another three giant dumpsters for all the stuff that won’t go into the previous receptacles.

We also have a couple of wheelies for garden waste and one for plastic bags (the ones that aren’t supposed to go in the recycling because they clog up the garbage masher).

In the days before the garbos come around, these bins are packed to the gunwales. Apparently, we have used up our full allocation of wheelie bins and the council won’t give us more, which feels like a punishment for doing precisely what they want us to do – recycle everything that’s recyclable.

But then there are the people who just can’t or, I suspect,  won’t do it. Don’t put plastic bags in the recycling, the notices say. Please flatten your boxes before you put them in the cardboard skip. Food scrap bins are for food scraps.

OK, it’s not as bad as these people who put broken concrete slabs in their wheelie bin, but one day you are dumping your ever-diminishing bundle of old newspapers, or your Coles or Woolies paper shopping bag full of odds and ends of cardboard, paper and the occasional wine bottle. Or two. And there’s a problem.

There’s no room in the bin because someone has dumped a cardboard box in it.  Even worse, it contains a plastic bag full of a mixture of paper, cans, food scraps and bubble wrap.

Now, iit wouldn’t be hard to track down the culprits. Because these residents are clearly not overendowed with brain cells, there would surely be a discarded letter with their address on it, as you’d discover if you were prepared to free it from the custard and coffee capsule gunk congealing around it.

My faults might be many and great, but I’ do my bit when it comes to recycling. I even carry a little knife that I use to cut the tape so that I can properly flatten my cardboard boxes.

So the idiots who can’t be bothered to separate their garbage, drive me nuts. No, it’s worse than that: it’s those who seem to take pleasure in disrupting the system, presumably because they think recycling doesn’t help, there is no climate change and the earth is flat.

If it were up to me, I’d have the bin room surveilled by static and moving cameras, to catch every plastic bag dumper, box unflattener and food waste dumper on tape. And I would play this tape at the next AGM (which probably explains why they won’t let me on the committee).

Obsessive, I know. But until Coles and Woolies paper bags start killing dolphins, I will be a psycho for recycling.

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