Recycling Madness—U.K. Version

This year my wife and I switched from our municipal waste pickup service with its separate garbage and recycling bins to a private company which practices "single bin recycling." Basically, we get to dump all our household detritus into one can and the company hauls it away to a materials recycling facility to be separated and sold. Our garbage ends up at van der linde Recycling. It costs the same as the municipal service without the hassle. This seems like a modern consumer-friendly cost-effective solution to waste disposal.

Things are apparently different across the pond in Britain. The Daily Mail reports:

Residents in Newcastle-under-Lyme are already being forced to follow the strict new recycling regime – with households juggling nine separate bins.

The containers include a silver slopbucket for food waste, which is then tipped into a green outdoor bin for kerb-side collections, a pink bag for plastic bottles, a green bag for cardboard, and a white bag for clothing and textiles.

See below and weep.

Most telling is that the private waste haulers and van der Linde Recyling are profitable while our municipal waste agency continues to lose money.

But single bin recycling is not loved by everyone. As our excellent local weekly The Hook reported:

After fending off a former employee-turned-extortionist, a $20 million government-filed RICO lawsuit, and dozens of bogus complaints filed with the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, recycling entrepreneur Peter Van der Linde thought the "waste war" was over. But a Memorial Day weekend attack has sabotaged his entire fleet of trucks and tractors– and taken that war to a new level.

"This wasn't a shot across the bow; they were trying to take us out," says Van der Linde, noting that not a single vehicle was left operable.

According to the silver-haired entrepreneur, who discovered the damage when he came to work on Monday morning, May 30, all 26 company vehicles on site had been disabled with holes gouged in radiators, gas tanks, and hydraulic lines.

"This was pretty hardcore," says Van der Linde, describing the attack as demonstrating "SWAT-like precision."

The perpetrators have yet to be caught.

Kudos to John Roskam at Australia's Institute for Public Affairs.