Hounslow council has recently started recycling food waste. I requested one of the bins so I could join the party.

Now when the designer sat down to find an easily communicable image of ‘food waste’, he would have probably found himself scratching his head at the decision. What sot of food, how do we show it is eaten, how not to convey a different idea etc.

And it is a good idea having an image. In the Royal Festival Hall there are pairs of bins everywhere accepting very specific categories of waste. Unfortunately there are no pictures of what can go in each bin – only descriptions in words. It takes ages to throw something away, as you have to read about ten different lines on the bins to know which one to use. Pictures are far better.

However, I wonder what the designer thought he was representing when he/she put this image on the Hounslow food recycling bins:

I mean, what sort of diet does he think the average Briton has? Chicken drumsticks and white bread? Is that actually a bone at the or is it a dog biscuit there at the bottom?

I know it is meant to be just a reference, but maybe there is a sad truth behind the image. I imagine they did plenty of market research into the best possible images of un-eaten food (which probably consisted of reading some comics by the looks of it). Maybe white bread and chicken drumsticks are the most obvious food images in this country, may be that IS what everyone eats after all. 

So that’s it: we are a bunch of wasteful, big-toothed, malnourished bunch of food twats. According to the council.

I winder what I would icons I would put on the bin. Probably a fried egg with a bite taken out of it, a wobbly jelly with a bite taken out of it, and a squid with a bite taken out of it. And probably a gnawed human femur, just to annoy the Daily Mail crowd.

Posted on March 3