New world order

The new dustbins have arrived. Boring suburbia has finally succumbed to the new waste management regime. The party is well and truly over. Where there were piles of black bags there are now wheelie bins and food waste tubs. The world of chaotic abandon that we knew and loved has died and has been replaced with cold order. Our masters have spoken and now we have to separate all our rubbish and limit what we discard.
I can no longer waste food. The finite dimensions of the brown bin are my weekly allocation and that’s it. Guests will leave my dinner parties hungry because I have to serve up conservative portions out of fear of ramming the bin. I am giving serious consideration to buying a pig.
When I was kid I was an anti-establishment eco warrior but now the hippy pricks I went to college with ARE the establishment and I take a perverse delight in throwing tin cans into land fill and feel the need to burn tyres in the back garden.
The wheelie bin is tiny. At a push, with discipline we could probably cram a week’s rubbish into it but they’re not going to collect it every week. They’re going to collect it ever two weeks. We are fucked. We are well and truly fucked.
Ever so slowly Big Brother has crept up behind us in the shower and bent us over. He’s distracted us with pictures of polar bears and glaciers, he’s fed our guilt. We were so busy cooing over Knut he managed to sneak all those green bins onto us and now I’m not allowed to produce any by-products!
This is the thin end of the wedge my friends. It will be your water next. You’ll be rationed to limit the hydrocarbons needed to clean it. We’ll live in a world where we’re only allowed three hours of electricity a day and you can forget gas.
How dare we progress as a species! How dare we get used to the lives of relative comfort that our forbears died for. How dare we have children and use plastic bags to carry our food back from the hunt. Bad, bad mankind.
What we have here, my brethren, is another system of control. The planet will die if you don’t conform, you should be shamefaced, look at the floor. What you have to understand is that everything is your fault. Landfill, that will be your fault for spending your whole life eating a couple of times a day you selfish bastard. Shit summer? What do you expect with all your ‘going places’ in machines they let you buy or ride in?
They built you a road and you only went and used it didn’t you? God, you’re pathetic.
Well you can forget all that now. A couple hundred litres of rubbish a month is all you’re allowed. Get used to it, adapt to the new order or you will be punished. Make no mistake, you are being watched, your consumption is being monitored. Task forces are being employed and statutes implemented to keep you in line. You thought you were a good person but you’re not, you’re wasteful and ignorant and selfish and stupid and you have to learn the error of your ways or the polar bear dies and you won’t like that will you because they’re cute.
The rats will be ok though. They love it. As do the foxes. Obviously they’ll probably attack your children more now because they can’t get into your wheelie bin to feed and your offspring will look mighty tasty and tender but the cute mammals are fucked.
The fly’s and the weevils and all the those creepy crawlies that actually make up the majority of the biomass of the planet aren’t doing to badly either but you wait and see, it’s those niche species, those evolutionary dead ends that will pay for your behaviour.
We have arrived too late. We’ve come through the door full of optimism and there’s nothing left in the drinks cabinet but half a bottle of Midori that no one wants. Everyone that was going to put out has already put out and the lounge smells of vomit. We’re just in time to help clear up and go on the rubbish run. We’re the designated driver having to scour the streets for public bins to dump the tinnies in.