In the quiet pueblo blanco of Olvera, where I’ve lived for fifteen years, a war has erupted. Not over healthcare, jobs, or the creeping cost of living, but over something far more mundane: rubbish.
The town hall has hiked refuse collection fees and doubled down on a door-to-door recycling scheme, complete with barcode-tagged bins linking every scrap to your name. Non-compliance, though unspoken, carries the threat of fines. This isn’t just about sorting plastic from paper - it’s about control, surveillance, and the theft of our time.
The town hall is saying “it’s not our fault, we’re just following orders” citing an EU directive that seeks to make citizens more responsible for their rubbish, however there is nothing in the EU law that conflates recycling with refuse collection. This seems to be a decision made nearer home.
While door to door recycling collection may at first seem innocuous enough, it has inconevienced many people. The closing of most of the public recyling bins means smelly organisc waste has to remain in the house until being put out on the correct day. Folk with limited space find in intolerable to be expected to keep separate bins in their house for paper, plastics, organics, and “resto” the catch all-category that has many inexplicable exceptions from batteries to jam jars. In the absence of public bins, many frustrated citizens are just leaving their rubbish in the street as a dirty protest. So far, the town hall isn’t listening.
However I believe Olvera’s bins are a microcosm of a larger betrayal. The traditional left, who are in charge here, has lost its way, having become wedded to neoliberalism’s altar of individual responsibility and managerial disdain. By dismissing the legitimate anger of ordinary people, they’ve left a void - one that populists, with their placards and promises, are all too eager to fill. This is not just a local squabble; it’s a warning of democracy’s fragility across the West.
The Recycling Dogma: A False Salvation
Recycling is a modern sacrament. To question it is to invite scorn, as if you’ve denied a universal truth. Yet the reality is far less divine. A ‘New Scientist’ article from decades ago pointed out a brutal truth: burning a piece of paper can be kinder to the environment than driving it to a recycling center, where it’s sorted, shredded, pulped, bleached, and reformed - each step guzzling more fossil fuel than the last. In a world still hooked on oil and gas, recycling often costs more carbon than it saves.
I don’t hate recycling. I hate the lie it’s built on: that individual acts can offset a system addicted to overproduction and waste. Corporations churn out plastic, reaping profits while paying nothing for its disposal. Meanwhile, we’re guilt-tripped for not rinsing a yoghurt pot. This is called ‘Agency Fallacy’: the myth that our small choices can fix a large system that is structurally broken.
“If the planet burns, it’s not because you used the wrong bin. It’s because the system was designed to burn it.”
The Minute Snatch: Your Time as Their Resource
Every day, we lose fragments of our lives to tasks we never signed up for. Take the EU’s new water bottles, with caps tethered to the neck to “aid recycling.” Sounds noble, but try screwing one back on. It’s fiddly, awkward, and steals seconds each time. Ten sips a day, and that’s five minutes gone. Multiply that by millions, and you’ve got a mass heist of human time. I call it the ‘Minute Snatch’.
Banks are the masters of this theft. Not too long ago, bank tellers handled your transactions. Now, you’re the teller, fumbling through online banking or over-engineered ATMs. A UK bank once bragged, “We’re all bank managers now!” No, we’re not. We’re unpaid clerks. Self-checkouts at supermarkets? You’re the unpaid cashier. Website CAPTCHAs that make you identify traffic lights? You’re training AI for free. Each task chips away at your day, your dignity, your autonomy.
This isn’t empowerment - it’s exploitation dressed up as convenience. And it’s not accidental. It’s the logical endpoint of a system that sees your time as a resource to be mined.
Neoliberalism’s Long Shadow
The roots of this lie in neoliberalism, a philosophy that recast society as a collection of individuals, each responsible for their own fate. As Grace Blakeley argues in ‘Stolen’, Margaret Thatcher’s declaration that “there is no such thing as society” wasn’t just rhetoric - it was a blueprint. Public services were gutted, collective bargaining weakened, and responsibility was shifted onto the individual.
“There’s no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families.”
- Margaret Thatcher, 1987
This mindset - responsibilisation, as sociologists call it - makes us feel guilty for systemic failures. If recycling doesn’t work, it’s your fault. If the economy tanks, you didn’t upskill enough. If the climate collapses, you didn’t cycle to work. The Agency Fallacy thrives here, convincing us that our tiny acts matter while corporations and governments dodge accountability.
Olvera’s Bins: A Local Betrayal
In Olvera, the PSOE, a party with “socialist” in its name, should be the voice of the people. Instead, they’ve embraced neoliberalism’s playbook: enforce compliance, monitor citizens, and dismiss dissent. Their social media posts about the recycling scheme have been curt, even rude, brushing off concerns about cost, privacy, and practicality. Residents aren’t just angry about bins - they’re angry about being ignored.
The scheme itself is a case study in overreach. Bar codes track your waste, raising questions about GDPR compliance and proportionality under Spanish consumer law. Fines, though not yet explicit, loom as a threat. For many, especially the elderly or those in rural areas, the system is impractical. Yet the town hall presses on, blaming individuals for systemic flaws.
This isn’t socialism. It’s managerialism - a top-down imposition that treats citizens as cogs, not partners. And it’s failing the people it claims to serve.
The Populist Void
When the left abandons its principles, it leaves a gap. In Olvera, the town hall’s refusal to hear the citizens’ legitimate grievances over the recycling scheme has left their protests exposed to darker forces. These louder voices, often carrying agendas that lean toward authoritarianism rather than liberation, seize the opportunity to amplify discontent. They gain traction not because people share their vision, but because the traditional left has turned a deaf ear.
This is the macrocosm you see across the West. From Brexit to Trump to the rise of far-right parties in Europe, the pattern is clear: when progressive parties wed themselves to neoliberalism’s cold logic, they lose the trust of the people. Populists, with their simple answers and emotional resonance, rush in. They don’t win because people love their ideology - they win because no one else is listening.
“When the left stops listening, the right starts shouting. And the people, desperate, follow the noise.”
The Threat to Democracy
David Graeber once wrote that bureaucratic systems punish the powerless while absolving the powerful. Byung-Chul Han described our “achievement society,” where we internalize our own exploitation, proud of our “agency” even as it enslaves us. In Olvera, you see both: a system that fines you for a mis-sorted bottle, while the corporations who made the bottle pay nothing.
But the deeper danger is political. When the left fails to offer a real alternative - when it swaps solidarity for spreadsheets - it cedes the field to those who thrive on division and fear. Democracy doesn’t die in a single blow; it erodes when trust is broken, when people feel abandoned, when the only voices left are the ones promising order over justice.
It’s Not Your Fault - But It’s Our Fight
Let’s be clear: it’s not your fault. You didn’t design a world that runs on fossil fuels. You didn’t choose to spend your days as an unpaid bank teller, cashier, or AI trainer. You didn’t ask to be a bin inspector, scrutinized by Bar codes & RFID chips (yes, Olvera’s bins also have the same radio frequency chips that supermarkets use to stop us running off with a bottle of whisky). The Agency Fallacy wants you to believe you’re the problem. You’re not.
But this fight is ours. Recycling won’t save us. Compliance won’t save us. Only collective action - real, messy, human action - can.
We need a left that listens, that rejects neoliberalism’s hollow promises, that fights for systems where responsibility is shared, not dumped on the individual.
Olvera’s bins are a small story, but they’re a warning. Across the West, the failure to heed that warning is giving populists the keys to the future. If we don’t reclaim our agency - not the false kind, but the kind rooted in solidarity - then the next war won’t be about rubbish. It’ll be about democracy itself.
Things to keep in mind
- You don’t owe the system your spare minutes.
- You don’t owe your soul to a recycling bin.
- And you definitely don’t owe your free labour to the companies that created the problem.
- It’s not your fault.
- It never was.
[This blog was researched and drafted with help from ChatGTP and Grok]