Colours (of bins)

This blog is basically about rubbish bins, and why one may ask, do I need to write about rubbish bins.   Walter thinks that I must be scraping the bottom of the barrel for ideas.   

Well I have definitely scraped the bottom of the barrel, but not for ideas.  The barrel being a rubbish bin, and the occasion, when I have placed the rubbish in the wrong bin. And I have had to get it out, and put it in the correct bin.

  After two mistakes in a matter of one month, I have started to think about colours of bins, and what they mean to us.  While we were in Australia Donna put the rubbish in our grey bin (cardboard, plastic bottles, paper), instead of the green bin (rubbish), and I came back to a smelly mess, and at Aaron's (Houten, Netherlands) I put the cardboard into the grey bin (rubbish) instead of the green bin (cardboard).

Yes, I know one should read the labels on the front of the bins.   True, but there are not always labels and sometimes the labels are in other languages.

Obviously the colour of a bin informs the householders about what goes where, in that the association of colours goes with the contents of the bins.  And it raises  the question 'Who in the local  council thinks of the colours for different bins?"  No doubt there is someone in charge of bin colours, which appear to come in the shades of green, grey, brown and black.

Think about it.   Does green signify environmentally friendly rubbish, e.g. garden, cardboard and recyclable plastic and tins?   Does grey represent friendly landfill type rubbish, and brown?   Perhaps brown, represents, the worst type of landfill rubbish.  And black?  Where do you go with this one?   

Dartford Council have chosen green for the general landfill type of rubbish, grey for cardboard, recyclable plastic and tins, and black boxes for bottles.   And in Bexley Council, and Houten, Netherlands, there are brown bins for food scraps.  And so it goes on.

I must admit I have started to become a little fixated with the colour of rubbish bins, as you may have gathered from this blog.   When passing through other counties, or countries, I tend to look at  the colour of bins, and try and guess their contents.  A little sad, I know.  But fascinating in a strange sort of way.