About eighteen months ago I thought about the challenge invited by an airline’s policy on cabin baggage – forget the weight, if it’s smaller than a certain size you can take it on board.
A similar challenge has been set by the company that collects my garden rubbish. I have a ‘green’ wheelie bin, which gets stocked up every month with grass clippings, hedge trimmings, pruned branches and other garden waste. On the back of my latest bill, in the small print, I read that the company will decline to collect any bin that weighs more than 100 kg. Reassuringly, they point out that in their experience this only happens once in a thousand collections.
I should say so. Given the bin is maybe 1.25 m high, and about 40 – 50 cm in breadth and depth, its volume comes in at a paltry 250 litres or so. A weight of 100 kg would entail filling it 40% full with water. It’s hard to envisage that I could come close just sticking garden refuse, complete with lots of air gaps, in it. I’d need to really pack it with moisture laden grass clippings, leaving no time for them to dry out, to get it that heavy, I think.