SO, picture the scene. You're in the car with your bags ready ready to take them to some far-flung destination. You've been waiting all week to do this and now the time is finally here. 

You pull up, jump out of your car, grab your bags out of the boot, and head towards the gate. Suddenly, you're stopped by a stern-looking individual who asks you several questions about the contents of your bags before asking you to open them so they can check them.

Are you at the airport? Well, actually, no. This is the way in which Cornwall's household waste and recycling centres are begining to operate after Cornwall Council announced plans to have residents' rubbish bags checked before they're dumped. 

According to the council, 58 per cent of black bag waste taken to HWRCs could be recycled, and now staff at the centres, run by SUEZ in partnership with Cornwall Council, will be advising people how to separate their waste, on sorting tables. 

Now there's nothing wrong with encouraging recycling, far from it, but are staff at these centres really equipped to be rummaging around in people's household waste? 

After the national PPE scandal during the Covid-19 pandemic, how exactly do the big brains at Cornwall Council expect people to believe that staff at the centres will be protected from the potential nasties lurking at the bottom of week-old, or possibly longer, bin bags?

Can you see them enacting such a policy if they themselves were to be the ones doing the dirty work? 

Talking rubbish is one thing, but asking people to rummage through it is something quite different.