A lot of people do not have access to a car so are unable to head down to their local recycling centre to dump large items. 

That is probably the reason you find furniture and other rubbish clogging up back streets in many towns and inner-city areas.

The idea is that one should have to find a car or borrow a neighbour’s car. People are not going to bother getting a car, it really is as simple as that. Yes, we would like our streets to be clean but expecting those without vehicles to go that extra mile over something they are not too fussed about is asking too much.

Of course, I am not condoning fly-tipping but the easier option for some is to just dump it nearby and hope the council will clear it. Wrong and lazy but it is the main reason this happens.

At times I have seen people queuing to enter their local recycling centre with a handful of bags and have been turned away because they decided to walk into the centre. Happened to me once too.

According to the council website: ‘Parking vehicles outside the centres and walking waste into the centres is not permitted’.  However, ‘pedestrian access is permitted to residents living within 0.5km of the sites only.’

But that makes no difference to some folk as this image on King Street shows.

With rubbish collections having taken a hit you will find bins overflowing regularly. Other times people are not provided with wheelie bins and live in areas where bin wagons cannot venture.

So, what options do we have? You could extend the pedestrian zone to several miles. I am sure some people would be happy walking to the recycling centre with the odd bag.

Then again rather than spending money picking up other people’s rubbish the aim should be to get the rubbish to come to them.

What might be a good idea, and I know this has been something that has been looked at in the past, is to place skips on specific days within neighbourhoods.

The problem is it does not happen often enough and when it does people do not know about it.

That way if you have household rubbish that needs to be thrown you walk at a specific time and dump it in the skip.

The neighbourhood skips reach people within wards and access those homes and people with no vehicles. They could also be used for all the excess rubbish caused by bi-weekly collections.

Nobody is excusing the actions of people but if you can find a way around it then why not try?