Student bin problems are real problems

Overlooked, underrated and under-appreciated: bins.

You don’t care about ’em till ya need ’em. Whether it be for recycling – shout out to all materials going in one – or for that mouldy takeaway that’s been lurking in your room for days, bins are the most needed of inanimate objects. Especially if you’re a student and you have to take out your own rubbish because mummy’s not there to help.

Liverpool doesn’t have food bins

“Just put it in the normal bin.” But HOW?! How can I let this food go into a plastic bin bag and to a rubbish heap rather than being used for compost? Where is the bio-degradable? Where is the SANITY? Surely the effort the council must go through to distribute food waste bins can’t be worse than the pain our privilege feels when we must go against everything our parents told us about waste. Every night a gentle scream can be heard from at least one house on Smithdown as another student scrapes their remaining oven chips into a waste bin, when they could be used to compost plants we can’t grow because we don’t have gardens.

Where is the brown bin of environmental love?

Your housemates don’t know how to take out a bin

“Can you take the bin out?”

“Yeah!… how do I do that?”

Your housemates refuse to take out the bin so you always have to do it

“Do you think the bin fairies do it? I am the only person who ever takes out the bins. I am the only person who ever does anything in this house! I slave away all day and you lot don’t know you’ve been born.”

The bin hasn’t been emptied in so long it’s overflowing like a smelly waterfall

That ant infestation and the small nest of mice means shit really has gone too far. You finally decide it’s time. The bin is overflowing and it is basically impossible to tie the bin bag up now. The rubbish has collected all around the bin on the floor. Its time to embrace the bin juice and really get stuck in. What could be mouldy cheese is stuck behind your fingernail after this process. Thoroughly wash.

Eggshell jenga > ring of fire

Being woken up by the bin men only to realise you haven’t put the bins out

You better hope you’re not hungover when that truck comes rumbling down the road. Tuesday isn’t the most ideal bin day for Liverpool students, you were probably The Raz the night before, or Brooklyn Mixer if you reckon you’re a little classier, so stumbling out of the door half dressed, abandoning your 4/10 pull from the night before to put the bins out isn’t ideal. But when already covered in Raz juice, a little bit of bin juice isn’t going to make your situation that much worse.

The HORROR

Having to stand in a bin to make more room

You pulled the short straw and you have been chosen to crush the never-ending rubbish lurking in the dustbin, to make more room as its only Wednesday and the recycling is already full. It is recommended to wear your ‘Raz shoes’ for this one. Expect the local Scousers to judge you by peering through their blinds as you jump on top of the rubbish manically and shamefully.

Your bin is always being stolen

It’s 3am, you’re still awake (you’re a student) and you hear that familiar rumble and surpressed giggling coming from the street. Someone is off with your bloody dustbin again. You consider chasing them down the street, but they’re already far off in the distance, down the mysterious alleyway at the end of Langdale. It is rare but sometimes these bin thieves do have the courtesy to replace it, but only with their own overflowing bin.

Your recycling bin only gets emptied half as often as the waste bin

We’re students, do you really think we produce more general waste than recyclable waste? Vodka bottles and beer cans galore. Once a fortnight really isn’t often enough to empty a typical students alcoholic waste bin. Even worse because most students live in a 6-10 person house, far more than the average family, whose parents probably go through one bottle of wine a month.

Thursday-Sunday is peak recycling bin-filling time

You don’t even have a recycling bin 

Imagine the terror of arriving at your house and not having a recycling bin. Where will the loo-rolls end their lives? How will you make sure your wasted notes paper is reincarnated into something new? Jeremy Corbyn loving students curse themselves everytime they have to put their empty baked beans can into the general waste. Enviroment obssessd students should not have to cry themselves to sleep every night over this. Procrastinating from uni work by litter picking in Sefton is hard enough without this extra guilt.

Lonely, so lonely

You don’t have a bin at all 

The great mountains of the Mersey? Nah, it’s just the pile of rubbish bags in that weird alley behind your house because your house didn’t even come with a bin.