And a box of Space, please

When we first moved in to the new Chateau Lunchista, it came complete with a small cuboid of green space, which we clutter up and the city council replenish every fortnight. Here it is:

It carried out its humble task to the best of its abilities, never letting us down. It didn't fall to bits, throw tantrums or grind to a halt announcing that it wouldn't carry on without "upgrades". It didn't even fiddle its expenses. All the fortnight's recyclable junk from Chateau Lunchista fitted within its confines (as long as we worked on it a bit). The city council delightedly announced at the end of last year that 43% of all our waste had managed to avoid ending up in a hole int he ground.

Then one hot summer afternoon last week, it became evident that someone at the city council had decided that their good citizens were in need of new space, and lots of it. The space, together with instructions on how to use it, was being delivered from the back of a van, all down our street. Here's our share:

Notice the sleek, black, shiny finish: light just falls into them. Press the black circle on the black flaps at the sides and the lid opens in a self-satisfied manner, revealing the even blacker space within. It is in fact so immaculately black that one feels slightly guilty for soiling it with such mundane detritus as squashed tuna tins, plastic bottles and dog-eared newspapers.

We suspect that Mr Straight, the colourful character whose firm provides most of the UK with its recycling boxes, has somehow developed an upgrade which, like the Tardis, encloses a space capable of extending into the fourth dimension, so that it can accommodate an infinite amount of rubbish. However, given that our new boxes are beginning to fill up in the usual way, we are guessing that the 4th dimension option has been disabled for now, perhaps pending some kind of licence application, or tests verifying that people will still be able to lift them. In the meantime a sort of rubbish version of Parkinson's Law will ensure that, with three boxes instead of just the one (yes the green box, complete with a new sort of fishnet covering to stop things blowing away, will still be out there strutting its stuff), people will put more rubbish out for recycling than the present 43%.

But that's nothing. Lunchista has heard industry rumours that Mr Straight has a team of cosmologists working on the ultimate piece of recycling infrastructure: a box containing its own mini-Black Hole, which will instantly compress any rubbish to a single point of infinite density.

It might be a tad difficult to pick up, mind you.