The street is now clean. The rubbish is gone. Another bulk waste collection “day” finished. After weeks of being littered with broken office chairs and worn out mattresses the dross is gone replaced by dead patches of lawn where trash and treasure once stood.
Next year the neighbourhood will do it all again. People will throw their unwanted flotsam and jetsam onto the verge and treasure hunters will sift through it all, looking for something they can sell at a garage sale so that someone else will have something to throw on their own verge the following year.
It’s a sad reflection of a society that values consumption over constraint. For it matters not where greed strikes – in-store, in a garage or on a verge – the desire to consume and possess is never-ending.