I used to live in Germany where the rubbish rules varied from town to town. In the town with the strictest rules, I was paying around $20 a month to have a 35L bin emptied once every two weeks.

In the street in which I lived, most folks had chains and padlocks on those tiny bins to stop bin tourists from dropping things in.

In Munich, most apartment buildings had a rubbish room. I had the good fortune to live in a building with strong doors, good locks and live in security to protect the bins that normally stayed in that room. A friend was not so lucky. The flimsy locks on his building's bin room doors were easily broken open and so they were always full of other people's rubbish.

In Dublin, household bins are weighed each time that they are emptied and you are charged by weight. The sense of community there is such that people do not seem to dump things in a neighbour's bin. Instead they chuck stuff into big heaps around the tiny litter bins in the park.

One time, when I was living in England, the bin men went on strike. My local council announced that a corner of the nearby school playing field could be used for people to dump their regular weekly rubbish. They pleaded with the residents not to abuse this and to only dispose of their normal refuse at that site. Sure enough, hours after the site opened it was full to overflowing with beds, sofas, couches, TVs etc etc.

Is there a moral to all of this? Yes. All over the world, we are united in the despicable way we behave when we have some rubbish to get rid of.