Citizen Chris: What a load of rubbish

Nov 24 2008 By Chris Donkin

Once again the gospel of Kermit the Frog has been proved correct, it is indeed not easy being green.

It may look like being environmentally friendly has become easier than ever, you've got your green, grey, blue, cyan, purple, red, flowery, striped and itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot bins for every category of rubbish you can imagine. The problem is, they are all at home - and the average person spends more non-sleeping hours elsewhere.

Where are the separate bins for recyclables on the high streets? Does your company have specific bins for different materials? Where have all the bottle banks gone? And what about the daily deluge of free newspapers?

With the obvious exception of your weekly Informer, always a joy to read when it drops through the letterbox, these papers are usually dumped fairly swiftly. At the end of every tube line you can barely move for one behind every seat, more on the floor and the odd one trapped in the door mechanism. I assume these abandoned issues are destined to be recycled when the train reaches its depot.

The problem is, we're not told to leave them on the train and by the time you're off the tube you've already leafed through the newspaper so don't need to keep it. The end result is that it ends up in the general bin outside the station entrance.

Surely TfL should be asking people to leave them on the train or have some sort of recycling point at the station? There are a few newspaper bins littered around central London, but none on the outskirts where many of the evening papers end up.

It's not just newspapers that get sent off to landfill, if I buy a drink out and about in town it's all very well knowing the container is fully recyclable, but I refuse to carry a bag round all day so I can store my rubbish until I get to my local recycling point.

If I have an orange juice in town at 8 in the morning I'm not carrying it around until 6 in the evening. Much as I'd like to do the right thing, the bottle's going in a normal litter bin.

We all need to do our bit - but surely big companies and councils need to help us to help the environment.