A Bin Manifesto

A girl skated past, bare feet, high waisted jeans, tight striped top. It was like the nineties were playing through his window. The grind of her wheels continuing on in a long fade, as did everything on this street.

Across the road a willow was standing naked, waiting for the warmer weather to sprout new growth. A corrugated fence in front of it leant at an angle, thrusted forward invisibly over time by the extending branches behind it, occasionally trimmed but never managed. To complete the scene the roller door on the garage alongside wore a flaking mural with paint greyed and drab. It was a kingfisher gazing over a creek of yellow and green, sunlight having erased much of its beak. The whole thing was more depressingly suburban than anything else.

At nine thirty-five, or thereabouts, the garbage truck came by on its rounds. The heave and grunt of it had echoed across the neighbourhood for the last few hours. Now it had finally reached number seven, two doors down from Anton’s window.

Anton stopped typing. He refrained from finishing the email as he watched expectantly for the truck to halt in front of him. As it did so, its mechanical arm, precise, but without precision, heftily grasped Anton’s wheelie bin and effortlessly emptied it into its belly, pouring a week’s worth of filth down the digestive tract of society.

Anton was a jerk. Always had been. It came with his arrogance. That and the privilege afforded by fortune. Not a cash fortune, but social. The greater asset by any measure. He was easily liked, easily loved, easily lusted. And being a jerk seemed to only enhance this.

As his inherited bin was deposited back upon the curb he felt the rush of chill through his lean body. He watched eagerly at the empty box his bin had now become, sauces, slops and dregs having trickled and fermented over years into what could only be described as a congealed paste at the bottom. Black, and pungent. The chill was felt to the base of his spine as his core engaged, his calves tightening as he prepared to pounce.

Anton’s eyes drifted down to the absent punctuation mark at the end of his email which he had failed to add in his rush to click send. In the few moments it took for his incomplete email to be delivered Anton had erupted from his chair, slipped on his shoes and dashed out to the street in nothing but his exercise pants. Left and right, no one could be seen. His senses were alert, chest flared as though he were a silverback, muscular shoulders arched to intimidate. Tumbleweed should have rolled.

The area being clear of all pedestrians was of no solace to Anton. He had grown suspicious in his months working from home. The only reason to have moved into this street was for its convenience, and in an inconvenient world Anton now found himself attuned to its daily schedule.

A few minutes from now Rashid would stroll by on his umpteenth lap of the block for the morning, his eighty year old arms waving his walking stick in a cardio routine that verged on swordplay. Rashid would stroll on the opposite side of the street but would always stare intently through Anton’s window hoping to catch his eye. Once caught, Rashid would politely tip his hat and point to the sky in rehearsed praise of the weather as he continued on. In the beginning Anton had shouted a provoked hello through his window only to discover that Rashid spoke not an utterance of English. And so their familiarity remained, always casual.

Despite the ease of his interactions with Rashid, Anton moved to collect his bin before their paths crossed again. The repetition of waving was growing tedious. Particularly when one of the trickle of humans past Anton’s window was the reason for his frustration come bin day. While it was unlikely to be Rashid, no one was above doubt.

He reached his wheelie bin, breath catching. As his head poked tentatively over the edge, in the paste at its base he saw, once again, a disposable cup.

Apoplectic is a word not often used to describe what would otherwise seem a reasonable human response, but Anton was rarely reasonable. As he cursed and jumped about, anyone approaching his street would have gained fair warning to reconsider their chosen route. Thankfully, it was only Rashid in his usual exuberance that witnessed Anton’s rage, only Rashid that could be charitable in his appraisal. As Anton’s eyes were again caught, Rashid tipped his hat, pointing heavenward in a gesture perhaps more suggestive than subtle.

Anton gazed down at the cup. Black cardboard. White lid. The Frozen Pond’s stippled logo stamped across it. Already he had been beaten.

One of the main grievances Anton had come to experience during this enforced time at home was the public use of his private bin. Upon each bin day a passerby would habitually deposit their finished coffee cup into his emptied vessel. His bin. While harmless, Anton had been stirred. When he went out to the curb the presence of a single, ubiquitous, disposable cup irked him beyond his usual self. It defeated the purpose of an emptied bin. It wasn’t even his rubbish.

He immediately kicked the lid back over and dragged the whole thing into his narrow front yard. As he tossed it against the wall he could only mutter the vehemence he was feeling.

Anton had been to The Frozen Pond. They only did takeaways. It was a hole in the wall that served up the majority of the immediate population and their logo was seen on cups in every bin across the suburb. The Frozen Pond no doubt would have their very own geological strata in the landfill that amassed from this area. Which was to say they were popular. And popularity had only increased in an absence of society functioning as it should. The Frozen Pond had become a bastion of unfulfilled consumerist tendencies, and their branding kept the gears going.

For exactly twelve weeks now Anton had been unable to prevent The Frozen Pond’s cups from entering his emptied bin. He wasn’t always quick to retrieve it from the street, but he had hastened his own routine in an effort to prevent its defiling. Something about these cups being brought back through his front gate plagued him. The disregard his bin rogue held for the sanctity of bin day overwhelmed.

The distance from The Frozen Pond to his bin was nearly one kilometre, the apparent distance necessary to finish their drink. Once or twice, fine. But they had established their own pattern now. Unconscious or not they were choosing to use Anton’s bin. And Anton was choosing to hate it.

The chart by his window listed each of the people that came by on bin day. He had been thorough in his observations too. The only one whose name he knew for sure was Rashid. The rest bore suitable monikers. On the first occasion it was Pram Guy who had dealt with his accusing glare. Then Obnoxious iPhone Lady spent the remainder of Anton’s street talking about how strange he was standing at his front door making notes each time she came by.

He had even gone to The Frozen Pond with a prepared tirade about their disdain of the environment in their flippant use of disposable cups, suggesting they were culpable for such crime. Unfortunately rants like his were all too common at the moment and Anton only succeeded in raising a few eyebrows of concern from the young staff he may have otherwise flirted with.

The facade of his likability was splintering.

There were, however, other unintended consequences.

Being the beacon of social encounter that The Frozen Pond had become, there had been several witnesses to Anton’s outburst. These witnesses were, to be kind, challenged by Anton’s accusations of poor waste practices. Each had left on that day with a shame which pierced their bubble. With nothing to do, with entertainment thin, and with the occasional conversation over a fence the only way to prevent madness, each and every one of these witnesses had gone about changing their ways in a sudden and dramatic shift from landfill. Green bins were properly used. Recycling bins more carefully considered. Neighbours caught wind of what was going on, also spurred into action, the result being that the collective landfill generated across the suburb reduced sharply.

Then came bin day. Week thirteen.

Anton was showering. Today would be different. There was a confidence in his plan, and enough had become quite literally enough. The aftermath of three months of obsession meant that Anton had focused on little else. Anton was doing battle with a spectre. But today he would be ready.

With less than ten minutes remaining until his bin would be collected, Anton did not listen for the rumble of the garbage truck. He could not know that his outburst at The Frozen Pond had resulted in several bins not being filled over the past week, thus not being moved to the curb, and therefore not being emptied. This reduced number of bins meant the truck had stopped less often, reaching his window far ahead of schedule.

Anton heard the crash of trash. With dread he promptly flew from the bathroom, managing to wrap a towel around himself before seeing the brake lights of the garbage truck disappear around the corner.

He was outside in time though. His bin, just emptied.

Anton gazed down into the void of his wheelie bin, proud, smirking, cocky. But when he caught a glimpse of the disposable cup at the bottom he nearly lost his balance.

“How?” Anton bellowed, shaking the empty bin, strangling it.

On it went, right up until Anton noticed that the logo stamped upon the cup still stared straight up at him as it had for months. His mood turned decisively confused as he performed various futile attempts at dislodging it, realising all at once that it was firmly stuck to what the previous tenants had amassed at the bottom of their bin.

His jaw fell. His shoulders hunched. His bare chest shrivelled as pride diminished. No longer a silverback, he realised he had been taunted by the same single cup for three full months.

A breeze channelled down the street. The willow shifted gently, scratching at the fence imprisoning it.

Anton cracked.

His bulging eyes were not handsome. His reddening neck, veins pumped, was not humbling. His wheezing breath betrayed his hubris, and at once he set about eliminating that cup. Beyond arm’s length his hand would not suffice as he struggled feebly to reach it. A goldfish flailing. His face and body rubbed at the sides of the bin as he grunted in some primal haste, the black paste greasy and slick, coating his upper body. But the cup remained.

Anton upended himself entirely as he dove into that bin. The black paste accepted him as he was guided face first into the bottom, legs waving in the air, towel lost as the first of his neighbours shook their heads in contempt. In Anton’s ire he was unaware of his indelicate exposure. Even as the whole bin tipped over he seemed incapable of collecting that cup.

Yelling is what Anton had learned to do best. As he struggled like a child to free himself he finally sensed a presence nearby which shook him from his tantrum. Today Rashid was not across the street. Instead, Rashid was right there beside him, eyes furrowed.

Rashid comprehended all too clearly the source of the problem. He ushered aside the crumbled Anton. A single lance of his walking stick and the disposable cup was pierced. Rashid held it aloft, the logo of The Frozen Pond high above him. Then with a wry grin he tipped his hat, and pointed heavenward.