I sometimes think we take our local authority waste and recycling collections for granted. Apart from different coloured bins and a switch to fortnightly collections, very little has changed in my local collection service in the past decade – and yet our councils have been coping with budgets that are now around 50% smaller than they were in 2010. Recently, the chairman of the Local Government Association, Lord Porter, spoke of an £8 billion funding shortfall in council budgets by 2025. The purse strings are obviously still very tight.

The consequence has been noticeable in some services, such as adult social care. But that’s hardly surprising. That few of our neighbours will have noticed the impact of their council’s budget reductions on their recycling service is a tribute to the men and women managing and operating the collections.