The Case of The Appearing Green Bin

Yes you read the title correctly. Normally mysteries are about disappearing people or things but in my case its about an appearing green bin.

Start at the beginning. Wednesday is rubbish collection day (trash to my US friends). The procedure here is to alternately put out either one week the normal rubbish bin followed the next week by a blue recycling bin. This particular Wednesday dawned dark and cold as has been typical of this early February weather. Most residents put out the required bin onto their pavements the night before ready for collection first thing in the morning normally before 8:00 a.m.

I disappeared off to work before the main event. On my return, in the dark, I checked the bin before realising the one outside was green. Not black like the one that had been placed outside the house the night before and was awaiting collection when I had left that morning. I stood puzzled for a few minutes, A green bin? I looked around there were no other green bins, in fact it was the only bin on the pavement in the street that I could see.

In the rear of out home our black bin had already been returned to it storage location. I had thought for a minute I may have gone colour blind especially in the dark and cold.

When my wife returned from her work, she confirmed that the bin had appeared on our drive that morning. She had placed it back on the pavement in case it belonged to someone else and to clear the drive. The bin is empty and clean and contains no clue as to whom it belongs.

It’s now Friday evening the bin remains where my wife left it, unmoved, uncollected and clearly unloved. No notices have been posted about a lost bin. Who deposited it there and why. Is this some sort of new surveillance trick by the security services? Perhaps aliens have invaded shaped as large green bins?

Green bags are supplied by the local council if you subscribe to their garden waste collection service, but not green bins.

My wife and I had already covered the ‘did you order it?’ discussion. But if the bin had been delivered would it not have had a wrapper and a receipt? Perhaps it fell off the back of a lorry, literally, but how did it come to be deposited neatly on our drive.

Perhaps its a gift, what should we do, notify neighbours?

So if anybody is missing a large green bin, please let me know, of course it may be gone in the morning! But it’s presence has been noted, it may appear in a tale or two not just a blog!