Waste is big business

An odd thing to photograph, I suppose, but I find our local waste and recycling centre quite a fascinating place. There's usually a queue of cars waiting to get in and dump their stuff so, when I happened to walk past and there was hardly anyone there, I was a bit surprised. The staff were using the lull to compress the waste in the big skips, using that big JCB. Everything has to be thrown into the correct skip - some for general waste, some for garden rubbish, some for recyclable items. When you're in a queue of cars it can be hard to spot the right bit and even harder to park up near enough to be able to carry your heavy bags of waste from the car to the skip. Thankfully the staff are mostly quite helpful. For a while during lockdown, the site was closed, until they realised that everyone wanted to use the time at home to manicure their gardens and clear out household clutter. (Not that I've made much progress on either front, personally!) 

I may be weird but actually I'd love to learn how they operate a site like this and what happens to all the waste once it leaves here. I think as a nation / world we are going to have to get much cleverer about how we deal with our waste. As it is, there is frustratingly little information to help us. I had to change an LED lightbulb last week. (Grr, I thought they were supposed to last almost forever!) Anyway, it proved difficult to find out how to dispose of the faulty one. It seems they CAN be recycled here. (I should have popped it in my pocket and called in with it, I realised afterwards!) 

Apologies for the rather distanced photo. The tip entrance is on a bend and it wasn't safe to stand in the road or the entrance. I had to stay on the opposite pavement and I couldn't zoom in with my phone.