The bin men are here and they’re taking away

the shite and detritus we make every day,

the wrappers and nappies and crappy old bits

and bobbins and clothing that no longer fits.

They load all the bins on the back of their truck

and empty them out in big bucketing chucks.

They wheel them all back to the edge of the road,

where later will come, from their humble abodes

the people who live there to reclaim their bins,

who take them and fill them with more of their sins.

The bin men don’t care, they just take stuff away

the rubbish we make every night, every day,

they take it and dump it in piles upon piles

they smother the earth with it, mile after mile.

Recycle the plastic, the paper and card,

the bottles and tins, because that isn’t hard.

But how to stop making shit in the first place?

That is the puzzle for the whole of our race.

These are some things that we can all do right now,

beginning with thinking about why and how

the crap that we make gets to us at the start

so we can at long last stop making the clart.

Stop buying the things that we don’t really need,

just stop giving in to our consuming greed;

stop throwing away and just mend it instead;

start buying recycled and preloved old things;

a good life starts with these little beginnings.

We have to start now, we at least have to try

and this is the reason you need to know why:

one day our own grand kids will dig down and find,

amidst all the plastic and rancid pork rinds,

a thing with our name on, and then they will know

what granddad and grandma did so long ago.