JONATHAN BROCKLEBANK: Im now lumbered with TEN rubbish bins... why have they made rubbish so complicated?

They arrived the other day when I was out and, on learning of their presence, I went into the garden in the failing light to behold the spectacle at the back of the house.

There they were – all ten of them. Two green ones, two blue, two brown, two purple … and now, augmenting the collection, two grey ones.

I had so many bins outside my property that the last one (brown) poked out beyond the end of the wall and onto the pathway. This wouldn’t do. 

I spent several minutes manoeuvring each in turn, squeezing this one as close as possible to the drainpipe, that one an inch closer to the box for the gas meter, cramming the rest together.

Finally, it was as good as it would get. From the room where I sit typing today, I have a purple one and a blue one below the window ledge. 

The number of bins in some council areas has spiralled out of control

In the bedroom through the wall, the view looking down is of a new grey one and a brown one and the occasional squirrel trying to get in.

I feel worse for those in the properties over the back wall, opening their upstairs curtains every morning to look out on a row of 10 giant waste receptacles. I am sorry about that, neighbour, but it is out of my hands.

You may wonder why I have come into so many wheelie bins. Surely the correct allocation for residents in Glasgow is a mere five of them. 

Well, it’s because the chap upstairs doesn’t have the technology to suspend his in mid-air outside his area of back wall.

I get custody of them all.

I am old enough to remember when an outside bin was a clanging metal thing. You carried it out the front once a week to be emptied, then stuck it round the back, somewhere unobtrusive, later in the day. Sorted.

Try finding an out of the way corner for 10 wheelie bins.

Once a week? Do keep up. The grey and blue are every four weeks, the green every three weeks, the brown every two weeks and the purple every eight weeks.

And mind you don’t put stuff for the grey (plastic bottles, yoghurt pots, margarine tubs) in with stuff for the blue (paper, card, cardboard).

Those living in ground floor flats must wade through scores of bins

Here in Glasgow, we are in our four-week ‘contamination amnesty’ period. For now, if we err in co-ordinating our waste disposal with the appropriate colour, the offending bin will be tagged with a reminder to get it right next time, but it will still be emptied.

Thereafter, mistakes will not be forgiven. Our refuse will be refused and we will have to wait another two, three, four or eight weeks to redeem ourselves.

Lest you should imagine that all this sounds a deal more trouble than sticking a clanging metal thing out the front every week, know, too, that it falls under the banner of an ‘improved waste and recycling service’.

It says so on the council leaflet I’m reading right now. Five bins, it seems, are an improvement on four. Would six be better still? 

How many before it stops becoming an improvement and starts becoming ridiculous?

Our council is alive to the fact that much of the city is tenement buildings which typically contain eight households – and I suspect it knows too that eight households times five bins is 40. That, it seems to accept, is a bit many.

The current solution is to position rows of dumpsters at the kerb where cars used to park. 

The bins are therefore permanently ‘out’ in tenement areas which, I suppose, makes life easier for the refuse collectors. 

It is less copacetic for residents with cars and those of us who care what our city looks like.

But whoever said environmentalism was pretty? And if some tenement residents decide to ditch their gas guzzlers because a row of dumpsters has stolen their parking spot, well, it’s all to the good.

Back at my pad, indoor preparations had to be made for the arrival of the ‘grey’. 

Do you remember when household bins used to be things whose lids swung up when you opened the cupboard under the kitchen sink?

Last week we had four types of household bin. There was the bin bin, the food waste bin, the bottles and jars bin and recycling bin. 

Now, after a trip to Ikea, we have introduced a fifth bin to accommodate waste which is no longer welcome in the fourth bin.

A considerable portion of my kitchen is now basically a bin. I am not sure how much more the room can take.

Did I mention my back wall is chock-a-block too? I did have a plan to reduce my collection from 10 to nine but I am unsure how to execute it.

One of the brown bins is so badly damaged it is useless. Stick food waste in it and rats will scurry through its broken sides. 

The fact is we don’t really need it. This bin is, in and of itself, rubbish.

The problem is it’s plastic and therefore the wrong colour to go out on plastics collection day. This brown bin really belongs inside the grey bin, but it won’t fit.

Should I chop it up, perhaps? Or stick it out on brown bin day with a note saying ‘please remove’. Or grey bin day with apologies for the colour faux-pas?

Council officials are quick to crack down on those who use the wrong bin

My head hurts just thinking about it. If, at length, a phone call must be made to establish the way forward, it will require quiet days and breathing exercises first.

Talking of brown bins, my intact one was rejected on the pavement yesterday because it contained garden waste and my £50 permit for refuse of this nature had expired. 

A kindly white tag informed me of my options: pay another £50 or else take your grass cuttings to a recycling centre yourself.

All the addresses of these centres were provided, but I know where they are already, given the vast amounts of time I have spent over the years offloading stuff it is too much to expect refuse collectors to pick up, albeit it’s their job and we pay them for it.

It’s a tough gig, then, saving the planet. Sacrifices all round. I don’t suppose a clanging metal thing for outside and a swing-top number for indoors were ever going to survive the journey.

But the cynic in me does wonder how much of the current endeavour really is about the environment and how much is tailored to appease the strike-prone crews who collect our refuse on condition that we toe the line.

Our standard issue bins are obediently laid out for them like soldiers awaiting inspection. Wheel them to the truck and hydraulics do the emptying.

The tenement dumpsters have a permanent berth by the roadside. No more wheeling bins through closes. Much less squeezing trucks down back lanes.

I can see a day coming when their entire job will be mechanised. Their protests will fall on deaf ears. And getting rid of my bashed-in brown bin will progress from tricky to technologically impossible.