Why Britain's refuse-collection system is rubbish

LAST year it started when the residue of a half-eaten McDonald’s big-belly burger, or something equally obnoxious. was jammed between the balustrades on my garden wall.

The Britterbugs were back to declare their annual war on overseas territories – and the streets of the Costas were about to be adorned with the summer trappings and wrappings of the chip-butty brigade. The very same chip-butty brigade who litter Britain's streets an countryside with everything from chewing gum and cigarette ends to beer cans, coke bottles and of course fast-food waste.

Informed observers reckon Britain is the dirtiest country in western Europe – and I have no doubt that observation is correct. Whenever go back there seems to be more litter on the streets than in the dustbins. But how can local councils expect their citizens to keep Britain tidy when they allow the locality to be littered with smelly bins that are emptied a couple of times a month at most? Black, brown, blue, green – my family in north Manchester are so confused that they invariably put the wrong waste in the wrong bin. And that means a curt note left on the unemptied bin when collection time eventually arrives.

If UK authorities weren't so stupidly blind to the ideas of Johnny Foreigner, they'd switch to the Spanish refuse collection system tomorrow. Here's why.

UNITED KINGDOM - Method: Individual wheelie bins for recyclable rubbish, non-recyclable waste, cans/bottles and garden refuse; daytime collections once a fortnight at best. Problems: Pile-up of household waste because of insufficient collections; traffic disruption during collections, particularly in side streets and cul de sacs.

SPAIN - Method: Large communal bins for various types of waste within easy walking distance; collections every evening. Advantage: No unsightly bins outside houses; no interference with traffic; no pile-up of waste. Problems: None as far as I can see.

As for cleaning up the mess that's already there, we have a ready-made workforce in our prisons. A close friend was talking recently to a man who had just completed a three-month jail sentence for assaulting a man who had abused his daughter. The released man said it was the easiest three months of his life.

Never mind digging into the Treasury coffers. It's time to get those chain gangs working to clean up Britain, American style. With proven litterbugs and pooper-nonscoopers sweating alongside.

What is also needed is for us all to take the Jeremy Paxman approach to litter louts – and reprimand the perpetrators. Easier said than done, you might say, bearing in mind that the 6ft 3in former Newsnight inquisitor is as physically intimidating a he is with interviewees.

Paxman says: “I have found when you confront people and say 'excuse me, you just dropped this', nine times out of 10, you might be unlucky on the 10th one, but nine times out of 10 they will say 'oh, sorry' and will take it away," he says.

“It's a beautiful country and I just don't understand why people want to make it full of sh**."

Maybe he should ask the mucky pups responsible for making it virtually impossible to tread the pavements of El Raso without kicking up a stink.

Compared to Spain, Britain's binmen wheelie are a load of rubbish

My dispute with the guys who collect the household refuse at my home in the UK is not so much a game of cat and mouse. It’s more like prat and house.

Bury Borough Council is not the only local authority that refuses to take bags which protrude above the lid of the grey wheelie bin provided for every household. But what a petty rule it is!

Believe me, when it comes to rubbish collection, the guys who empty the bins around my Costa Blanca villa are in a different league. I’ll tell you why in a minute.

The fact is some households generate more rubbish than others – particularly if hordes of children either live in the house or descend upon it almost incessantly. Such is my home in the Bury area of Lancashire – courtesy of the fact that my five grandkids all live within 200 yards of my pad.

And while I can accept the local council placing some limit on what they will collect, it takes a true jobsworth to remove and dump any bag that happens to protrude above lid level of the wheelie bin.

Bury Council’s official website requests householders to ‘‘make sure your bin lids are fully closed’’ on collection day. But why? Will the bin attack a neighbour or something if the lid is raised just a teeny bit above horizontal?

It beats me that the binmen bother to enforce the ‘empty closed wheelies only’ policy because moving a piled-high bin onto the ramp to be tipped automatically into the bowels of their wagon is surely quicker than having to remove the excess rubbish first.

You’d think the £178-per-month I pay in council tax would entitle me to have ALL my genuine household waste taken away each week. Instead, I often have to wait three weeks for my separate recycling and garden-waste wheelie bins to be emptied.

It’s all so inferior to the quiet, efficient way refuse is collected in the Costa Blanca, which has become my home of choice over the last few years.

To start with, the Spanish binmen come in the evening, when the roads are quiet – so there’s minimum disruption to traffic. It’s so much better than the chaos British bin lorries cause during the day as they back up into side streets and cul de sacs.

In Spain, household refuse is also collected EVERY DAY, not just once a week. In the winter, as well as summer. And rather than stopping at every house, the binmen remove the rubbish from large communal containers placed a couple of hundred yards apart.

Garden refuse is collected once a week from the same point, while recycling containers are dotted conveniently around the urbanisation for people to use at their convenience.

It’s anything but inconvenient for householders – even the laziest of individuals should be able to walk 100 yards to dispose of their household waste. Oh, and last year the council tax on my three-bedroom villa amounted to just 386.08 euros (equal to £333.78 as I write). That’s roughly 20 per cent of what I pay to Bury Council.

It’s one of my old chestnuts, but Britain is being held back by the old colonialist attitude that still lingers in decision-making areas. Namely that if we didn’t think it up, then it can’t be any good.

That sort of thinking is a massive load of rubbish! And no, Bury Council, I don’t want your bolshy binmen to come and dump it all on my drive in Prestwich.

Put the lid on it, boys. This jobsworth behaviour wheelie is too much.