Recycling in the UK is everywhere...black wheelie bins like ornaments on the drive, different coloured bins or bags for paper, plastics, garden waste and glass....recycling bins in supermarket car parks and shopping centres and bins for drinks bottles and paper waste in high streets and festival grounds and heavy fines for disobeying.
Here in South Africa it’s a different story...the security estate we live in has black wheelie bins collected every Tuesday, they don’t mind if the lid is open or bags are piled up by the side and they don’t fine you if you put garden waste in or plastic bottles, it’s a private company and gets taken to landfill. There’s also a paper collection that you put out in orange bags on the 2nd and 4th Friday of the month and that’s about it, although I’ve heard rumours of a plastics collection but I haven’t sussed out what day yet.
Pick ‘n’ Pay hyper markets have a row of coloured wheelie bins inside the main door and a few of the smaller shops collect batteries and ink cartridges but they are hard to find.
I use PLANTLAND, a chain of garden centres; the one in Irene, nr Centurion has a collection of coloured oil drums for items for recycling. It is collected by a local charity and sold with the money raised going to the Mentally Handicapped (yep, still called that here and not Learning Disabled). The other option is to hand any bottles to the men that stand at the robots at the Atterbury Junction near Menlyn off the N1, as they collect rubbish in exchange for a small donation (20p or so) and they sell the plastic on.
