THE NON-RECYCLERS

What to do with the neighbour that won't recycle? Everybody who lives on our little road here recycles their card, paper, glass, tins, plastic etc. We all sort it out and dutifully place it in bags and green boxes, thoughtfully provided by the Council, whence it is collected by surly and bad-tempered recyclers who seem to take great pleasure in throwing the boxes across the road, oblivious to the damage caused to the boxes themselves or to the gardens and hedges in which they land.

Alan Bennett commented in one of his diaries on this phenomenon. He expected, he wrote, that the bin men would be surly, but that the recyclers would be munchkins on a higher plane - being pioneers and ambassadors for the green ambitions of the nation. Which wasn’t so at all, he said, or rather wrote, wringing his hands. Indeed, Alan Bennett went on to point out that, if anything, the reverse was true. It was the bin men who were the polite and helpful envoys of officialdom. Well, here I am noticing exactly the same thing and 200 miles west of Campden. How odd! Maybe, being a green agent is wearing on the soul.

Still, back to my neighbours that don’t recycle. I don’t know why they don’t - possibly they are upset by the carelessness of the recyclers, but I doubt it. Possibly they have no recycling box, though the Council falls over backwards to give you recycling consumables and starts you off helpfully by providing large quantities of recycling literature to put in them, so I doubt it.

And because this family - there are only three of them: man, woman and child - don't recycle, they perforce put out a large quantity of rubbish bags. Yesterday, I counted six full bags. Most of the rest of us who do recycle have just half a bag. Not that I make a habit of counting people’s rubbish bags, you understand, but when the things are just a few yards from one's door and you can't help but walk past them on the way to the shops, their number intrudes subliminally into the sub-conscious. I am sure there were six. Which is two each!

Nor are the six bags the product of an epic bout of de-cluttering for there are regularly a large number of full bags on the pavement on Thursday mornings.

The question is how can one tactfully suggest to the family that they might be a tad more community minded? My dilemma is not helped by the fact that I don't really know them. They are relatively recent arrivals and we aren’t a terribly neighbourly lot around here. They haven't been to my house or I to theirs. But otherwise they seem agreeable folk. We say hello to each other when we pass in the street; we smile and remark about something or other. We recognise one another as inhabiting the same community.

Why should I bother I ask myself? Well, yesterday I found myself becoming irritated by the sight of the six bags of rubbish. I know I shouldn't be irritated. The world, I tell myself, is what it is; imperfect. It is not made soft and fluffy for my benefit. Irritation is nevertheless a failing to which I am prone. But what can I say that might be tactful and helpful and won't leave the family feeling that the neighbours are spying on them?

I have to confess to being hopelessly gauche in such situations. I tend to hide my head and hope what ever the problem was will have gone away by the time I look up again. I believe ostriches adopt the same principle and it seems to have worked for them. When I do try opening my mouth to remonstrate I either end up apologising (as I did once when a man parked his car on the edge of my garden - “so sorry that my garden should have got in the way of your car ”) - or else I say something that I immediately regret and which leaves me feeling foolish. I really do need to take lessons here. I don’t want to fall out with my neighbours who drive two BMWs between them but are otherwise, I am sure, very caring folk and kind to animals. Indeed they have a little dog. And I drove a BMW myself once upon a time and a very solid car it was too.

Which is why I throw myself on your resources. Is there an easy and tactful answer? Or should I mind my own business, stop trying to save the planet and get a life. Answers on a postcard please.