Bin collection day for me is every Friday. For the past few months, I’ve experienced the same problem every week: Black bins torn open and the waste inside them being spread across the street.

I used to think it was just my little part of Efford Way that had this problem. However, I keep getting reports from local residents from Ramley Road to Newbridge Way about the same thing happening in their parts of the village.

This was compounded when, whilst walking to work on Friday morning, I had to clean up a large amount of litter that had come from two split black bin bags left outside 3 Wishes in the High Street. The litter had been spread across a large area and covered the pavement. I managed to sweep it all into two large piles by the litter bin before reporting it to the District Council and it was cleaned up by the time I walked home from work.

However, it is not sustainable for the District Council to continue fighting a problem by only fighting its consequences. We need a solution to black sacks which can be easily broken into by the variety of scavengers which live in our area.

The two obvious choices are plastic wheelie bins or metal bins. My personal choice would be wheelie bins. Although they might not be suitable everywhere in Pennington, or the New Forest for that matter, they could be the best value-for-money option and also be less damaging to the environment than single-use plastic black bin bags.

This isn’t a problem that has an easy solution. In fact, I can guarantee you that any solution will be controversial and some people will almost certainly disagree with it. However, if we want to solve this problem, we need to think outside the box and come up with a plan.