I had a chest infection on the Tuesday. I mention this not as an excuse but as evidence, because it is the only thing I have that resembles a defence. While I lay at home with a hot water bottle and a documentary about bridges, a meeting took place in which my employer asked for someone to oversee the new food waste arrangements. Nobody volunteered. Nature abhors a vacuum, and so, it turns out, does Gillian from facilities, who looked at the attendance sheet and saw a gap with my name beside it.

I returned on the Thursday to find a small brown caddy on my desk, a roll of compostable liners, and an email with the subject line “Congratulations”. It was not a congratulatory email. It was a list of dates.

The Guidance

Under England’s Simpler Recycling rules, workplaces must separate their food waste, which is entirely reasonable, and the government has been admirably clear about what has to happen, which is that it has to happen. The how has been left to local arrangements, which in practice means whoever was away that day. I have read the guidance twice. It is thorough on the destination of a banana skin and silent on who should carry it there, how often, and what to say to a man called Neil who has put a polystyrene tray in it.

I asked Gillian Marsh, our facilities coordinator, how the decision had been reached.

“Nobody else was available, and Stephen has always struck me as a reliable sort of person. He was off, but that is not a criticism. It is more of an observation about timing.”

The Caddy as Moral Test

I had not expected the caddy to become a moral test. Colleagues who have not spoken to me since the fire drill of 2019 now approach my desk with a teabag held out in front of them like a small, damp confession. Some narrate. “Is this one allowed?” they ask, of an apple core, as though I had a lanyard and a tribunal. I do not have a lanyard. I was offered a sticker, which has since peeled off.

Neil Hargreaves, a finance manager and the source of the polystyrene tray, says he has found the experience unsettling.

“I put a satsuma peel in on Monday and felt watched,” he told me. “Nobody was looking. That is sort of what I mean.”

The Sign

I made a laminated sign. It took forty minutes, most of which was spent locating the laminator, which was in a cupboard with the Christmas decorations and a defibrillator. The sign lists what goes in the caddy (food) and what does not (everything else). It has a green tick and a red cross, in the interest of accessibility. Nobody has read it. Last Wednesday I watched a man look directly at the sign, nod slowly, and then put a yoghurt pot in the caddy, lid on, with his face about nine inches from the red cross.

The caddy is emptied into a larger bin in the courtyard on Mondays and Thursdays, and the courtyard is shared with a dental practice. Its receptionist has begun to watch me cross the tarmac with the wariness of someone observing a neighbour’s drone. I have nodded at her twice. She has not nodded back, and I respect that, because she did not ask for any of this either.

People assume the difficult part is the smell. It is not the smell. The difficult part is that a role with no title, no budget and no end date has a way of becoming load-bearing. Last week the caddy was left on a colleague’s desk for an afternoon while I attended a dentist’s appointment of my own, and by four o’clock three separate people had emailed to ask whether it was “still a thing”. It is still a thing. It will be a thing long after the rest of us have left.

I asked Gillian how long the appointment lasts. She said it was reviewed annually, then paused, then said the review was itself a role, and nobody had yet been put forward for it. I have not taken a day off since. I cannot afford to be ill, and I am fairly sure they know.