your rant of the day
Aug. 20th, 2010 12:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kat_lairI'm in an irritable mood this morning. Observe the recycling fail across the board:
1. When I move in I ask my landlord about recycling. He own the house and deals with the normal bins, surely he should know? He says there was no recycling (WRONG INFORMATION) and proceeded to rant about how it's a waste of time anyway and he hated dealing with the extra bins (ANTIPATHY).
2. Fine. I check the council website, see there's a recycling bin collection for my address and ring council to ask for bins. Individual bins are then delivered. (WRONG DECISION BASED ON NOT CHECKING PROPERLY).
3. A couple of weeks later the brown bin (glass, plastic bottles, tins) is not collected. I ring and complain. Council's environmental services takes my details and assures me it will collected. (YET ANOTHER FAILURE TO PROPERLY CHECK INFORMATION).
4. The next day the brown bin still isn't collected. I ring again. Same thing happens as above. (INABILITY TO CHECK DETAILS AND INFORM ME APPROPRIATELY CONTINUES) Finally the bin is collected the following day.
5. A week later by blue bin isn't collected. I ring and complain. I'm told that actually I'm not supposed to have individual bins, because there's a communal recycling site. 'No there isn't' I say. We play the game of 'Oh, yes there is!' 'Oh, no there isn't!' for a while. The site where the communal recycling is supposed to be, has no recycling bins. They should have been there since December when the 'street voted to have communal recycling'. I've lived here for a month and haven't seen any. So even assuming that the bins where there in the first place and disappeared the night before I moved in, there are two massive points of failure here: 1) COUNCIL EMPLOYEES DOING THE COLLECTION FAILING TO NOTICE/CARE/REPLACE THE BINS. 2) PEOPLE LIVING HERE FAILING TO NOTICE/CARE/NOTIFY THE COUNCIL.
6. End result: Council is taking away my individual bins and bringing in 'new' communal ones. By Tuesday. I'm willing to bet a lot that by Wednesday morning I'll be on the phone to them again about this.
On further note: I really hate generalisations and I know there are a lot of environmentally conscious people here who care and make the effort etc. but there are days when I just want to scream and shout at everyone in Britain for BEING SUCH APATHETIC, LAZY, SELFISH ASSHOLES. The 'can't be bothered' attitude some people have to things like recycling or anything remotely like being environmentally conscious really pisses me off. I don't consider myself even particularly gung-ho about the issue; I just do little things, like try to use environmentally friendly products, avoid packaging, recycle, buy produce that's in season/locally sourced/fairtrade when I can, turn off electric appliances when I don't use them etc.. And you know what, I know for a fact that there are people who either sneer at me and think I'm crazy or who look at me patronisingly and think 'aww isn't she a cute little eco-warrior'. I don't even know which is worse but I kind of want to punch both groups in the kidneys some days. Because you know what? In Finland all that is the fucking norm, it's what I grew up with. The informal social control about things like recycling is very tight in Finland. Or maybe I should say that it exists there. Here... not so much. The last place I lived in, probably less than 20% of people in the street actually used the communal recycling. At my current place no one clearly was too bothered when the recycling bins vanished (if they were delivered in the first place). My mum was visiting last week, and when I mentioned how little people recycle around here (my area), she was horrified and called it 'uncivilised'. When walking around town, around here, even Heaton Park, she repeatedly expressed disgust at the amount of litter on the ground and the attitude that portrays (dirty, selfish, uncaring, no pride in surroundings). She's gone home now and when people ask what she thought of Manchester/England, she'll stay 'great place, but so much litter, and imagine: not everyone recycles!' This is the picture of Britain that's being passed on. It might not be objectively true or even fair, but it is the impression one can very easily get. I've seen parents toss away empty drinks bottles in the middle of the street with their kids watching (social learning, look it up fuckwits). Once, I saw someone cleaning the inside of their car where it was parked just outside their front door. Instead of gathering the rubbish and taking it to the house (the distance of at least three steps), they unceremoniously dumped it onto the street and left it there. And these are not extraordinary occurrences, but everyday behaviour. I just... it frustrates me so much. Literally to tears sometime. THINK ABOUT SOMETHING ELSE BESIDES YOUR OWN ASS SOMETIMES PEOPLE.
Sigh. Just needed to get that out of my system. Rant over for now.
1. When I move in I ask my landlord about recycling. He own the house and deals with the normal bins, surely he should know? He says there was no recycling (WRONG INFORMATION) and proceeded to rant about how it's a waste of time anyway and he hated dealing with the extra bins (ANTIPATHY).
2. Fine. I check the council website, see there's a recycling bin collection for my address and ring council to ask for bins. Individual bins are then delivered. (WRONG DECISION BASED ON NOT CHECKING PROPERLY).
3. A couple of weeks later the brown bin (glass, plastic bottles, tins) is not collected. I ring and complain. Council's environmental services takes my details and assures me it will collected. (YET ANOTHER FAILURE TO PROPERLY CHECK INFORMATION).
4. The next day the brown bin still isn't collected. I ring again. Same thing happens as above. (INABILITY TO CHECK DETAILS AND INFORM ME APPROPRIATELY CONTINUES) Finally the bin is collected the following day.
5. A week later by blue bin isn't collected. I ring and complain. I'm told that actually I'm not supposed to have individual bins, because there's a communal recycling site. 'No there isn't' I say. We play the game of 'Oh, yes there is!' 'Oh, no there isn't!' for a while. The site where the communal recycling is supposed to be, has no recycling bins. They should have been there since December when the 'street voted to have communal recycling'. I've lived here for a month and haven't seen any. So even assuming that the bins where there in the first place and disappeared the night before I moved in, there are two massive points of failure here: 1) COUNCIL EMPLOYEES DOING THE COLLECTION FAILING TO NOTICE/CARE/REPLACE THE BINS. 2) PEOPLE LIVING HERE FAILING TO NOTICE/CARE/NOTIFY THE COUNCIL.
6. End result: Council is taking away my individual bins and bringing in 'new' communal ones. By Tuesday. I'm willing to bet a lot that by Wednesday morning I'll be on the phone to them again about this.
On further note: I really hate generalisations and I know there are a lot of environmentally conscious people here who care and make the effort etc. but there are days when I just want to scream and shout at everyone in Britain for BEING SUCH APATHETIC, LAZY, SELFISH ASSHOLES. The 'can't be bothered' attitude some people have to things like recycling or anything remotely like being environmentally conscious really pisses me off. I don't consider myself even particularly gung-ho about the issue; I just do little things, like try to use environmentally friendly products, avoid packaging, recycle, buy produce that's in season/locally sourced/fairtrade when I can, turn off electric appliances when I don't use them etc.. And you know what, I know for a fact that there are people who either sneer at me and think I'm crazy or who look at me patronisingly and think 'aww isn't she a cute little eco-warrior'. I don't even know which is worse but I kind of want to punch both groups in the kidneys some days. Because you know what? In Finland all that is the fucking norm, it's what I grew up with. The informal social control about things like recycling is very tight in Finland. Or maybe I should say that it exists there. Here... not so much. The last place I lived in, probably less than 20% of people in the street actually used the communal recycling. At my current place no one clearly was too bothered when the recycling bins vanished (if they were delivered in the first place). My mum was visiting last week, and when I mentioned how little people recycle around here (my area), she was horrified and called it 'uncivilised'. When walking around town, around here, even Heaton Park, she repeatedly expressed disgust at the amount of litter on the ground and the attitude that portrays (dirty, selfish, uncaring, no pride in surroundings). She's gone home now and when people ask what she thought of Manchester/England, she'll stay 'great place, but so much litter, and imagine: not everyone recycles!' This is the picture of Britain that's being passed on. It might not be objectively true or even fair, but it is the impression one can very easily get. I've seen parents toss away empty drinks bottles in the middle of the street with their kids watching (social learning, look it up fuckwits). Once, I saw someone cleaning the inside of their car where it was parked just outside their front door. Instead of gathering the rubbish and taking it to the house (the distance of at least three steps), they unceremoniously dumped it onto the street and left it there. And these are not extraordinary occurrences, but everyday behaviour. I just... it frustrates me so much. Literally to tears sometime. THINK ABOUT SOMETHING ELSE BESIDES YOUR OWN ASS SOMETIMES PEOPLE.
Sigh. Just needed to get that out of my system. Rant over for now.