It’s a universal truth that as you get older your interests change. Childish flights of fancy give way to teenage angst and passions. In your 20s, it might be all music and clubs and partying, before moving into more settled times of families, hobbies and not being sure what a “Brat summer” is. With the slowing down comes an interest in walking just for the sake of it and a diet that now must take into account the regularity of one’s bathroom cycle.
I recently found myself in peak early 40s mode when I visited a friend’s house, sitting down in my usual chair in the kitchen for our customary gossip. However, the first question out of my mouth was not, “Did you see so-and-so on Instagram called their baby Shroom” or “Did I tell you I saw Richard Boyd Barrett having a cig on Fade Street?”. Instead, my brain reached for, “Have you started your Christmas bin planning yet?”
I live in an apartment complex with serviced, hulking enormo-bins in the basement. They exist in a terrifying room at the end of a long, narrow corridor lit by a flickering fluorescent tube. You know the scene in Home Alone when the demonic furnace springs into life to mock and terrify the abandoned kid, Kevin? Every time I visit the enormo-bins I envisage one of the black monstrosities opening its gaping maw to spit plastic trays dripping in raw chicken juice at me.
All this to say, worrying about matching the increased festive waste with the refuse collection schedule doesn’t even impact me. The fact that I do find myself genuinely interested in another household’s plans for hacking the green and black bins so they’re not left with mountains of cardboard come December 25th should alarm me.
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I should be more concerned with scoring My Bloody Valentine tickets and stocking up on my psyllium husk. But no, I am not only engaged with but concerned about the next few weeks of bin collections.
Luckily, my friend has already been somewhat on the ball. With a clatter of small children and it being so close to Christmas, you’d have to be. Anyone who’s in any way serious about their waste collection strategy has been Jenga-ing cardboard into the green bin like their life depends on it since at least late October. If you’re reading this on December 6th and have an overflowing green lad waiting to be picked up and mountains of stuff already waiting to go in, you may be beyond help. You could be left to the mercies of the waste collection no man’s land that blights late December and early January.
Take my friend’s street. Going by her collection service calendar – and yes, I have consulted her calendar – she has one more Tuesday black and brown bin collection before the big day and then nothing until New Year’s Eve. If that didn’t elicit a gasp from you then I advise that you check your pulse because that is scary stuff. If she’s lucky, she’ll get two green bin pick-ups before the 25th and that’s only because she has Tuesday pick-ups. I’m telling you, there should be a big-budget Hollywood suspense thriller made about these logistics. I see Mark Ruffalo in a starring role. Ruffalo and Cillian Murphy as a journalist couple living in Fairview, determined to find out who’s illicitly placing cardboard in their green bin the week before Christmas, thus throwing their festive waste strategy completely out of whack.
When I was younger, I remember my dad’s militancy around picking up wrapping paper as soon as it was discarded on Christmas morning and ferreting it off to the bins outside. Now it all makes sense. He was executing the festive waste management plan. He was calculating how much more old greenie could take and how his pal was going to manage over the coming days with the non-recyclables.
These days, the volume of waste we produce, not just at Christmas but year-round, can feel overwhelming even if you’re trying your best to limit it. Convenience is just so intoxicating and with convenience comes the disposable. Boxes and boxes of online deliveries and acres of plastic and packaging.
Another worthwhile middle-age (and any age) habit is attempting to reduce your waste footprint. It’s fun and satisfying to hack the Christmas bin schedule but the image of it all heading to landfill and treatment plants isn’t very merry and bright. There will have to be a message about reducing global waste in the Ruffalo/Murphy film. Working title: Jingle Bin Rock.