A neighbour recently purchased a new fridge and a new washing machine. He put the big cardboard boxes and polystyrene packing near the blue rubbish bins outside my place.
No problem. The cardboard boxes were gone in a flash by the "pickers" ... but nobody wanted the polystyrene. There was quite a lot of it.
Anyway ... the rubbish truck comes by at 3am each night. The idiling truck and banging of bins sometimes wakes me up.
Good opportunity for a leak 555 ummm ... too much information
Back to the story.
As I was heading back to bed, I had a quick peek at the rubbish guys. 3 lads sorting through the rubbish. The 4th guy (the driver) collected all the polystyrene and dumped it directly across the road into a big pile. Took 3 trips to carry it all over the road.
Pulled out his cigarette lighter and set fire to it !!
Great plumes of toxic black smoke billowed into the air. Fortunately the breeze was blowing the smoke away from my place,
but I'm not convinced that was a consideration in his mind. The whole thing burned furiously for 20mins.
Couple of things were so wrong with all this.
I live in a rural area with rice fields all around, so I suppose rubbish guy thought it was doing no harm ... but would he burn this stuff in a crowded soi situation ? I think not. The locals would be spewing.
Secondly ... is this the official municiple policy for disposing of polystyrene ? Burning it by the roadside at 3am when nobody is watching ... except for a farang with a Jap bladder.
Obviously there is no commercial value in secondhand polystyrene, as the "pickers" would certainly have snatched it beforehand.