What a load of rubbish…?

That could be a comment about the entire contents of this blog, but actually I haven’t done a wheelie bin post for a while… all right, I haven’t done any kind of a post for a while.  So a wheelie bin post it is.  (Newcomers to the blog – it’s a recurring theme going back to my very first post.)

Here in Fish Hoek, although we are in the far south and on the other side of the mountain, we do enjoy something that nobody else in Cape Town does… kerb side recycling collection.  Every week we are given a clear bin liner and every week a van comes and collects the full one and takes it away.  We trust that it is emptied and the contents are sorted and recycled, but who knows!  This pilot scheme has yet to be rolled out across the rest of city, so for now we are really the privileged few.

We also have wheelie bins and the putting out of the wheelie bin can be an issue of much sensitive neighbourhood protocol.  On some streets you are frowned upon if you put it out the night before, whereas in other areas this kind of relaxed behaviour is acceptable.  But one thing is sure… pretty much as soon as the bin goes out, the bin pickers will arrive.  It takes some getting used to seeing grown men and women carefully emptying out the contents of the wheelie bin, untying the bin bags and removing anything that might be edible, reusable or have some saleable value. Some householders will chase them away, claiming that they make a mess, but I have watched many times as they just as carefully put everything back in the bin.  We, and many others, pack our wheelie bin accordingly.  If we have any food items that are still edible, we keep them separate and put them in a plastic bag at the very top, or even on the lid.  A friend of mine has just told me that she freezes little bits of leftovers that otherwise she would bin and puts these out on bin day, and I’m starting to do that too.  Anything else that might be of interest, again we put in a plastic bag separately.  And the bag is usually whisked away very promptly.  The early bird most definitely catches the best bin pickings.  I have often seen four or five different people come and check through our bin.  The organised ones have a supermarket trolley which they load up with their findings.

Locally, these people are often referred to as “bergies” from the Afrikaans word “berg” for “mountain” because some of them live on the mountainsides in shelters made from plastic sheeting and timbers.  Some live under motorway flyovers and a number of the bin pickers who live in our area live under the bridge at the edge of the beach.  Alcohol and drug abuse is a problem for a number of those living rough like this; some have fallen off the edges of society for other reasons and for others it is a deliberate choice.   Whatever the reason, these are still people made in God’s image and I am grateful for the tiny opportunities to help them.  As a friend said to me recently, “It is incredibly easy to bless someone over here.”  Where there is much poverty, even a small bag of frozen food, or a pair of worn out shoes can make a difference to someone’s life.  As can a smile and a warm greeting.

(Photo credits go to Hermann Hanekom who blogs at newsferret.wordpress.com whose photos I found via Google.)