Bin there, but not done that !

I am all for recycling as much as possible.

It is not an easy thing to do and takes a lot of thought.

There is a small cluster of 5 Local Council supplied bins in my back-way. These are three blue ones for main recyclable items, a brown bin for garden and food waste and the bin of last resort in a sort of blackish-grey.

The smaller sorting receptacle in our kitchen starts the process by separating the basic groups for later depositing in the outside bins and again, it is quite an effort not just to do it but to do it correctly.

The bin men or as they are now called, Waste and Recycling Operatives, are very picky about what they will take even following my best efforts to comply with the issued instructions. The blue bin contents are regularly spot checked and with the sanction of a warning notice and, in leaving the offending bin un-emptied, a second chance to get it right for the scheduled bi-fortnight collection.

There is also the fall back scenario, if my domestic bins are full to capacity, of taking the surplus waste to the nearest Civic Amenity Site although on a weekend it is usual to have to queue up on the ramp for about an hour for the privilege of dumping stuff in an allocated skip.

There are other options and these are in the form of small clusters of small recycling bins to be found at supermarkets, pubs or car parks and these number, in the UK, around 15000 or so sites.

In addition to the specialised bottle banks in such settings which are collected by commercial operations there are the Clothes Banks which are a valuable source of income for charitable concerns.

In fact the current value of clothing collected in this way is around £250 a metric tonne and this is thought to put, in total, some £75 million annually into the funding starved accounts of such important organisations.

However, a relatively recent phenomena hitting this income stream has been the strange, forcible disappearance of around 20 clothing banks every week.

It cannot be an easy task to remove a full bin and yet this rate of theft, for theft is what it inevitably is, indicates a well trained and efficient army of perpetrators equipped with suitable transport and lifting gear for a quick getaway which has so far been without witness or evidence.

There was a similar crime wave involving clothes banks in 2009 to 2010 followed by a sort of uneasy lull or cease fire but in the last 18 months there has been a significant upsurge.

Notwithstanding the potential value of the contents the actual gun turret shaped bins themselves cost from £600 to £1000 each and with additional expenditure if branded in the name and national livery of a specific Charity.

The culprits do not appear to have a defined criminal profile and could as well be opportunists or plain traders in rags and cloth. The old rag and bone men , or Tatters to give them a more populist name plied in cloth amongst their traditional iron and scrap goods and such business will still have some value even in today's consumerist throw-away society.

A few of the bins reported missing did turn up rebranded for another Charity although the recipients were probably just offered them on the cheap rather than being implied to be involved in some way in the crime spree.

The loss of income to the beneficiary Charities is significant and with the 750 stolen bins alone thought to have been capable of generating about a million pounds.

It is a case of more vigilance and supervision of the recycling sites but the cost will be tangible and another drain on the hard pressed resources of the hard working Charitable sector in this country.