I know it isn’t politically correct to complain about this, but I’m going to anyway. I’ve been given another bin by the local council. To the large green bin, the large brown bin and a ridiculous plastic blue box with which the council deemed fit to clutter my garden, they have added a large blue bin.

The new bin came with a manual. (A manual!) The manual gives instructions about how to throw away rubbish.

The new bin came with stickers which are to be put under the lid of each bin. They consist of prohibitions: ‘This bin is for GARDEN WASTE only!’ etc. There are penalties for wrong use of any given bin. I know, because I once received a letter explaining that my brown bin hadn’t been collected that week because its contents were ‘contaminated’. I rang to remonstrate that it couldn’t have been my bin which was contaminated as I had never used the brown bin. I received, not an apology, but a lecture on brown-bin use. So you see, the responsibility of sticking the stickers on the bins weighs very, very heavy. I shall not be sticking just for myself - these stickers are also for the many generations of would-be recyclers to come.

The new bin came with a revised collection schedule. I haven’t got to grips with the original schedule yet. I (and I suspect, most others nearby) depend on the folk in the pensioners’ block at the end of the road. If they put out green bins, so do I. When their bins are brown, so are mine. I don’t do blue boxes.

I don’t do blue boxes for two reasons. First, I can’t work out what they’re for. I know you’re supposed put plastic bottles in them, because, when it’s windy on blue-box day, plastic bottles take off and fly around like large insects, and this is my second reason for not using the blue box. My plastic bottles, as well as those which, when the wind drops, land in my garden, go into the bin that is (or, perhaps, used to be) for unnamed rubbish, which is (or maybe, was) green.

I haver over the colour of the bin for non-specific rubbish, because a brief glance at the manual reveals that one bin has changed its purpose. Since I missed the collection this week (or perhaps last week), for this bin (the brown one), it is currently almost full, because the outcome of the lecture mentioned above, was that I finally learnt how to dispose of lawn cuttings and hedge trimmings. I wonder what I’m supposed to do with my almost, but incorrectly full bin. Up-end it and reclassify the contents? No, I’ll revert to the one-bin system I used before I learnt about brown bins: everything will go in the green bin, but undercover in black bin-bags.