Until recently I lived in a nice room in the Fernwood neighbourhood of Victoria. Fernwood is a nice place, but lacks the maritime character that Victoria neighbourhoods should aspire to.

My room had a big window looking onto the front yard, including the spot where the recycling bin was put on recycling day. Except that “recycling day” is a bit of an abstraction there, any day you put out your recycling binners will be by to take most of it away, and make sure it goes to the places where it will be most appreciated. In fact, the house would often be visited by two different binners between the time I started a thought and the time I ended it. No, seriously. And I’m not that slow of a thinker.

I now live on the very maritime Ross Bay, roughly at the intersection of the neighbourhoods of Fairfield, Rockland and Gonzales, but I no longer know which day is officially recycling day. And so my recycling bin sits permanently on my back stoop. I don’t think about it much, because I keep assuming that it will get taken care of. But it doesn’t. There are no binners down here.

Why is that? From my time co-habitating the Greater Victoria Public Library with a number of homeless intellectuals, I’m aware that binning is a tricky enterprise that requires well-planned execution for financial sustainability, but this is a residential neighbourhood and I assume there’s plenty of recycling to be had. And it’s not just that my stoop is somewhat set back from the street, I often work by my window and I hardly ever even seen anyone on the prowl.

If there are any internet-enabled binners reading this, there is a full box at 160 Memorial Crescent, easily accessible from the back of the house, which faces onto Busby. Even if you aren’t planning on setting up a permanent trapline down here, do make a stop. I’ve even set the large-sized glass bottles aside from the rest of the material.