Green with rage

I am stuck behind a big yellow recycling lorry in Bristol, which this year became the UK’s first European Green Capital. It is collecting food waste from the special brown bins we have to use, and the stench is horrendous. Behind me are about another dozen cars and, sad to say, I fear that not all of them have turned off their idling engines.

Squadrons of recycling vehicles invade every day, blocking our narrow Victorian streets and causing misery and mayhem — starting with the school run: ‘Dad! I’m going to be marked down for a “late” again!’ ‘Sorry son, but these teabags mustn’t be allowed to rot in landfill. And besides, we have our city’s green status to consider!’

I am not against recycling — just the extreme methodology the city has adopted. Bristol is now so over-the-top with it all that bin day involves five or more different bins collected by three separate diesel–powered lorries. And I have a theory about why these mobile compost heaps insist on working through the morning rush hour: it is all about our city’s war on the car.

If you want to be a Green City, anti-car is what you have to be. And so when I finally make it past the wretched yellow truck, my journey continues to be blighted by the overweening traffic regulations with which we are now awash. We have a dense network of car-sharing lanes, bus lanes and cycle lanes strewn about our streets like chopped spaghetti. It’s dangerous, because to avoid falling foul of enforcement cameras it is necessary to veer from lane to lane while trying to read what times of which day you are allowed to drive where. I find it tricky enough and I live here; heaven knows how visitors cope.