Making sense of the Wheelie Bin Convention

Here was me, pootling across the park to the pharmacy when I encountered a whole group of people with wheelie bins all having a conversation. This photo is taken just after the group broke up as I was about to pass them... I considered going off to the right rather than up the hill, as I was having deeply uncharitable thoughts about this activity, but there were more people with bins there as well.

You may need to understand we are six months into disrupted waste collections. That's also three months into an all out bin workers strike,  general waste is being collected on an intermittent basis... supposedly once a week, but more usually once every three weeks, into our sixth month of no recycling collections, then garden waste was opened for annual payment then cancelled, and anyone who paid had their payment returned. (My main colleague was in that position, I often don't sort mine out immediately, and I already had a bad feeling about how this. was turning out)

There had been reports on local news of irresponsible people dumping their waste into local parks - and whilst I had jumped to what turned out to be a very wrong conclusion, it wasn't an unreasonable one in our current circumstances.

Anyway, once we'd reached this point I realised that the Mobile Waste Units were having one of their once in a blue moon Saturday morning slots in a place/time I could've taken some of my ever growing pile of recycling to. They'd even sectioned off a part for people on foot! Last time I used the Mobile Waste Unit's local visit, on a different location, I'd nearly been mown down by drivers desperate to drive past me and my shopping trolley to unload their cars and get away. I did protest out loud that if they had a car, they could get to the main Household Waste and Recycling Centres which I, as a non-car owner. was unable to do as you're not allowed in those places on foot.