This is fine, the BBC have released this film to highlight to us mere tax paying mortals the problem affecting the environment... Personally, I loath when I see any waste discarded, fly tipping being my personal bug bear in Nottinghamshire (a land-locked county).
Good, great we all know...
But realistically what can we do about this?.... Well, we, or at least I certainly, pay my council for refuse collection services, they come each fortnight and take my waste away. Any excess I store, compact and take to the local household waste site run by Biffa.
These are council services, they are firms whom have tended to the council to responsibly collect, manage and dispose of my waste on their behalf, and I as a customer of the council expect it to have been done responsibly.
Maybe, I should contact the council for an audit trail of where my waste goes, but I'm pretty sure the council would say "they collect it, and they dispose of it".. and way back when in the mists of the negotiations for that lowest rate possible waste collection service there was a plan probably waved about in front of a Councillor or clerk and it was accepted as the planned disposal method.
And across the whole country there will be similar, if not identical, sets ups with each and every council, from London to Llandudno, from Nottingham to Norfolk, everywhere in the UK the waste is collected and managed by councils.
So this piece of journalism by the BBC, though informative and ghastly, is really pointing the stick at the wrong folks, we can't opt out of council waste collection, one can't selectively only pay for part of the services afforded by our council tax. If we could then one would be able to opt in and out of anything, chaos would reign.
The responsibility to dispose of this waste therefore, rather than it end up in the ecosystems of our planet, is that of the collecting agent, they took our money for it, we put our trust that its being fulfilled, and if not perhaps those councils need to be brought to account, rather than this kind of video make me feel guilt.
For I do feel guilt.
But there's very little practical steps I can take to dispose of my waste through any other channels, or companies. I can't incinerate it myself, I can't bury it anywhere myself, I can't recycle things myself, they are large industrial tasks which is why I pay my fee and clearly hope for the best.
But the best isn't good enough. Councils of the United Kingdom, sort this one out.
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