Clutching my empty drink can, I pushed on the lid of the white bin in the office kitchen. It flipped open and the smell of peeled banana skins and apple cores wafted out of the depths. I peered inside. Aluminium cans, plastic bottles, paper sandwich wrapping – and on top of all that, a layer of food waste, contaminating everything.
The black bin next to it was pretty much the same. A slowly marinating heap of mixed recycling and food waste – teabags, coffee pods, used takeaway boxes, fruit peel and apple cores.
“It’s not good,” I said to our office cleaner after the end of one work day. “In our previous office the white bin was always used for recycling. Who puts recycling inside a black bin, anyway?”
She looked at me like I was mad, before switching the bin liners around with a sigh.
“That’s not going to help. The bin liners might be labelled, but people will still use both bins for food waste unless we put labels on the bins.”
The cleaner shrugged and gave me a look that said ‘it’s not my job to label your bins.’
It’s not my job to label our bins either, though. I’m not the office manager… I thought.
The next day, unable to locate anyone by the title of ‘office manager’ in the company directory, I messaged one of the company’s HR team. “Could we get labels for the bins in the office? The cleaner just switched the bin bags around when I asked her about it.”
“I’ll forward your suggestion to the office manager,” came the reply, three days later. (To be fair, it was over a weekend.)
A week passed. Then another. Three weeks. Four weeks.
The company’s CSR report came out. A weighty tome (as digital documents go), full of statistics on the company’s environmental efforts and social responsibility initiatives.
I emailed the head of the CSR department, with some questions. “By the way,” I added, “I asked HR a month ago about getting the office bins labelled. It’s undermining our recycling efforts.”
Another day passed. I got a reply from the head of CSR. “You’re right. We’ll get it sorted,” the reply said. “But here, I’ve attached the labels. If you’re in the office, you could print them and put them up?”
We had no printer in the office.
“There’s a print shop nearby, though,” another colleague suggested. Great. So I can spend my own money to fix an issue that’s so far taken HR a whole month to sort out. I’m already buying teabags for the office out of my own pocket, I thought, as I took my mug of tea across the kitchen to the bins. I’m not also going to-
The bins were labelled. Hallelujah! I rejoiced, as I carried out the most satisfying disposal of a used teabag in many years.
A few days later, it was a busy day in the office – the entire sales team appeared to be in attendance, with some clients on site, and there were barely any free desks.
And the bins?
They were still clearly labelled. But both the white bin and the black bin were filled to the brim with mixed recycling and food waste.