I’m not sure what we do wrong, but somehow, we seem to generate an awful lot of rubbish here in Glencarse.

Even after recycling all our paper, bottles and cans and composting our compostable kitchen waste, we still seem to end up with at least one-and-a-half wheelie-bins full of black bags to be collected each week – and sometimes more.

This is no problem here as we have two wheelie bins and, if we overflow them, there is a bin for the Church too. So, potentially, we can have three wheelie bins worth of rubbish emptied a week.

Perhaps this has made us a little complacent. But we’re going to have to buck our ideas up. Once we move to Dunfermline not only is there only one wheelie bin at the Rectory, rubbish collection is only once a fortnight – with no improvement in recycling collections or facilities over Glencarse. This will be less than a quarter of our current capacity! If we’re not careful we’re going to be swamped with rubbish!

This will be the first time we’ve lived in an area where the council collect the rubbish only once a fortnight. I had thought the idea was that the reduction in the frequency of rubbish collections was supposed to coincide with an increase in recycling collections but this doesn’t seem to be the case in Dunfermline. Far too tempting, I suspect, to jump on the ‘green’ band-wagon – ostensibly to encourage people to recycle more – but really just to save money.

I have discovered that at least one person in the Dunfermline area has advertised his services, for £5, to come round with a van to pick up excess black bags and take them to the tip.

Good luck to him. I have a feeling we’ll be giving him a call before long!