What’s green and pushes itself to the curb?

Okay. Okay. You’re going to laugh, so have your laugh right now. Go on. Yuck it up. I’ve got a problem. Ya, I know I’ve got more than one problem, but this particular problem is green and my problem is a bin. I fell for the green bin hyperbole. I crawled all over the idea of organic recycling. “It’s easy” they said. “It’s good for the world,” they said. “It’s good for the environment,” they said. “Organic recycling turns organic waste into a reusable resource through composting,” they said. Keep the composting thing in mind because right now and for the last 27 years, composting has worked for me and LOML without having a $20, airtight green bin. Prior to purchasing a great, big, black compost bin, we had a heap at the back of our garden where all the organic goodies went to magically turn into lovely, black compost. With our stateof- the-art black compost bin, vegetationlike organic material goes into the top and compost comes out of the door at the bottom. Every once in a while we added some dirt or compost layer to the top to balance out the greenies to the brown and things just hummed along. And, then?

And then it happened. We got “wind” of the green bin project coming to The County. The green bin would be the terminal answer (see above) to just about everything that would normally be disposed of in regular garbage with a three-dollar garbage tag per bag. Our compost bin was already enjoying such treats as baked goods, tea bags, coffee grounds and egg shells. What a treat to read we could now recycle bones, meat and fish, dairy products, grease and fat, pizza boxes, facial tissues, paper towels and cereal—to name a few items from the acceptable list. For some, pet fur and sawdust may have tipped the scale in favour of buying a green bin. We were amused to note the hair from our brushes was not “bin worthy”. Anyway, LOML and I went to Home Hardware, paid our 20 bucks and came home with an unvented green bin, a beige kitchen bin, a leaflet of instructions and a little swatch of paper bags for our kitchen bin. We greedily thought of how much we were going to save on bag tags. Woo hoo. Bring on the household waste.

Our green bin was lined with an approved liner bag, as per the instructional leaflet. Our kitchen bin was lined with a newspaper catcher, as per instructions and we were off to the “New Organics Recycling” races. On day one, the kitchen catcher was treated to three teabags, coffee grounds, leftover Froot Loops (granddaughter visiting), unloved chocolate pudding, a piece of toast, three tomato stems, cucumber peels, a banana peel and three apple cores. Just before heading to bed, the kitchen bin was dumped into the green bin. The lid was closed tightly and we all laughed heartily and headed to bed. And so it went, more or less, for three days. On day four, our regular garbage day, we were out of town and forgot to let our neighbours know that in addition to the blue boxes and the garbage can, the green bin needed to be wheeled out to the curb. Good thing we forgot, as it turns out. We returned on garbage day eve. LOML and I sat on the patio and remarked that someone’s dog must have pooped, big time, somewhere on our lawn. The smell was enough to send us on a “heap-hunt”.

Nope, the eau de dog doo smell was coming from the green bin, now crawling with maggots. DOH! As Homer would have said. Armed with a longhandled pitchfork, rubber gloves and boots, a particle mask, sunglasses, a pressure washer and a spray bottle filled with vinegar, I attacked the Green Bin. The writhing contents were promptly dispatched to a constructionstrength refuse bag and tagged with a three-dollar garbage tag. Gag, barf, holy crap and wow. If it smells, it’s chemistry. We had a chemical problem. If it crawls, it’s biology. We had a biology problem. If it doesn’t work, it’s a physics problem. We had a physics problem. A smelly biohazard was created in our green bin.

Today our green bin is clean, disinfected, open and empty. I have renewed my acquaintance acquaintance with the vented compost bin which, by the way, isn’t crawling with anything except an earthworm or two. It doesn’t reek and it does work. I will consider clearing a space in my freezer to store the non-garden-compost-bin compostables to await green bin pickup day.

By the way, our green bin had so many crawlies in it, it could have pushed itself to the curb on collection day given the proper directional instructions. I couldn’t find those instructions in the leaflet.

theresa@wellingtontimes.ca