A lotta bottle

’Twas the first day of the new recycling regime in this part of Swindon today. As I walked to work this morning, the clear plastic bags for plastic bottles that had been put out for collection were very revealing in two respects. Firstly, the large number of people that put bags out filled with a relatively small number of unsquashed bottles, despite the council’s advice and the cost of the bags. Secondly, being a person who is quite content to drink tap water, the number of water bottles in many of the sacks was a surprise. Some households clearly spend more on bottled water than I spend on food. A masterpiece of marketing over common-sense.