Imagine the bin strike in Birmingham never returns to normal.
Bin strike workers refuse to come back to their jobs. They have this epiphany—they are better than this. Or they realise that since society has not respected their demands, they won’t do this job ever again. Some reason, something, leads to a permanent change in their consciousness, and they decide they won’t be bin workers anymore.
What good can come of it?
It means rubbish will start to pile up. It will continue to pile up, with no one to dispose of or take care of it. The role and responsibility of disposing of your own rubbish—litter, food waste—will fall exclusively to homeowners, businesses, and individuals themselves.
And I think if we respect the right of other persons to decide for themselves what they want to be in life, or people in general realise that being a bin worker is not a good job—it’s a lowly job, an insulting job—and they collectively decide that no one should pick up their rubbish… after all, if all humans are equal, why should anyone pick up our garbage?
What would it mean for society?
As an idea, it just lifts humanity into the next stage of evolution—respect, care, and understanding for each other. Practically, it also means amazing, great, conscientious changes within ourselves.
Now, practically, people will have to take their own rubbish and garbage to the landfills themselves—including food waste, recycling, garden waste, etc.
All of a sudden, people will have to become more conscientious about how they look after their garbage and take care of their waste materials. They will think twice about what they buy, what they eat—because now they have to take into account that they must dispose of it themselves.
They’ll buy more smartly, more intelligently, and the way they take care of their rubbish will be with as much detail, focus, attention, and care as they use in preparing their food.
They will think many times about how to manage rubbish: peeling stuff separate, dirty waste separate, food waste separate, plastics separate, cardboards separate—because you don’t want to be taking foul-smelling garbage in your car.
People will have to take out time especially for disposing of waste. Those who have cars will use cars; others will use public transport to take out their garbage. And they might be embarrassed by the amount of garbage they’re carrying every day.
Imagine a person takes four bags of garbage on the bus, while others have only one or two bags. They will look at him—“how irresponsible he is”—and he will say, “Sorry guys, I usually don’t produce so much rubbish, but I’ve been entertaining my in-laws for a week—hence all the extra garbage.”
And those people who live alone, who don’t have access to a personal vehicle or public transport, they might have to share resources—pay someone a little amount in the community to take their garbage with them. This may lead to a much more interconnected, conscious, taking-care-of-each-other society.
The end product of such a thing?
Now, in Birmingham City, there are only 20 landfill workers, and they are each paid £100,000 per annum. All they have to do is ensure that when people come to dispose of their rubbish, they have meticulously segregated it: recyclable cardboard, recyclable plastic, non-recyclables, food waste, other dirty waste, garden waste, condoms, etc.
Once verified, their rubbish is directed to the respective part of the designated landfill.
Having come up with this system of rubbish and waste management—by individuals and businesses—we have now created a more conscientious society, who think much more carefully about what they buy, consume, eat, how they peel their vegetables or fruits.
Because if they over-peel, they are just going to increase their amount of waste.
And maybe we’ll end up developing new technologies that convert food waste and human waste into compost, which can be used in gardens.
We can also identify what is truly non-recyclable, such as certain plastics. This will make it easier for us to stop using them—or we’ll find ways to tax businesses and individuals who use and dispose of such non-regulable packaging.
There are many, many angles to such a change in society. Maybe we’ll get some specialist robots to manage waste in such a detailed way in the future.
But the point is: no idea is fundamentally bad or good. It just needs people’s involvement on a deeper level. The more complete the understanding of an idea, less likely it ever creates a problem, we didn’t understood plastics we create pollution, we designate behaviours and ideologies as moral, we end up creating marginalisation of people etc.
And there is no problem in anything—humans always evolve, become better, and find novel solutions, provided if we want to.
Peace is always possible in life. It was possible a thousand years ago. It’s possible today. And it will be possible a thousand years from now.
However—peace, love, compassion—they won’t be possible if all we know is to complain, not use our imagination, and not respect another human being.
Then, no matter what time you’ve been living in, you are a miserable bunch of people, for one reason or another always.
Respect each other.
Break away from your conditioning.
Be bold in loving people, loving yourself, and loving the ideas you get.
Long may the bin workers’ strike continue—and may they never come back to their work ever.
Because frankly, it’s a disgusting job, and no human being should have to do it for another human being. Or at least, if they do it, they should do it for a very dear, dear price.
It’s not about the value that people contribute to the community being a leading factor in determining their wages or self-worth in the community. That must not happen. Collecting rubbish is an important thing for society therefore it shouldn’t be done at the value its currently being done, or people must take care of it themselves.
If it’s about the idea—the principle—then I would say: we must pay these bin workers at least five times what they are being paid right now, or we dispose of our rubbish ourselves.
The world is changeable—anytime, anywhere.
Whenever someone takes a stance and is willing to see it through and make their point with intelligence, determination, and from their own mind—no one can stop them.
And anything can become a more permanent point of change in society.
Neomodern 