Round my way the council collects garden materials for 'recycling', and provides expensive wheelie bins for the purpose (lots of plastic involved). The environmental cost of the fleet of wagons used to go round to every house collecting some grass cuttings here and some twigs there doesn't bear thinking about. I think this nonsense started at the time the UK government decided that EU legislation outlawed compost heaps.
At one time not so long ago there was an informal, low-energy, high efficiency recycling network thoughout the country - the rag and bone man. Nothing was wasted if it made any economic sense to reclaim it - and it was totally bureaucracy free. In that golden age we even had second-hand shops!
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