Yay! The Allerdale rubbish crisis has been solved.

Allerdale has announced that something is going to be done sometime and they will announce further details later.

There is a song in the musical Best Little Whorehouse in Texas where the governor “does a little side step” when asked a question – and that is exactly what this week’s statement from Allerdale council represents.

The Times & Star reported last week on a woman who wheeled her garden waste bin from Seaton to Workington recycling centre.

That was an extreme example but it is not a single incident.

There is no point in being political about it: Allerdale’s Labour administration hired contractors who did not seem to know what they are doing and the new administration, mainly Independents, chose the most ridiculous solution to the problem – suspending the garden waste and recyclable plastic, tins and glass for the foreseeable future.

It’s a complete shambles!.

I can remember the fuss when Copeland changed from weekly to fortnightly collections but a colleague from Egremont says the bins are bigger and they have no problems at all: “We can’t even fill our plastics bin, it is so big.”

At the time the changes were being made I praised Allerdale who went the other way. They reduced the size of the household waste bins slightly but kept the weekly collection.

It all went wrong when Allerdale introduced a new system: we were given huge blue bins for paper and cardboard. What had been the paper bin became the recycling bin and the garden bin remained as it was.

I didn’t mind. Once again, I felt Allerdale was really trying.

What it did for me was to encourage me to recycle even more. Allerdale made it easy.

Then it all went hideously wrong and, more to the point, it became personal.

I tried for over a month to get my old paper bin emptied ready for its new role as the recycle bin and waited just as long to actually get my paper bin. All our trouble related to paper collection.

Everyone I spoke to had problems with paper collection.

It came as something of a shock, therefore, when Allerdale announced that it was suspending recycling and garden waste until further notice.

I am ashamed of what I am going to say next but the truth is, I have just about given up recycling.

My bin is full to overflowing of a mixture of plastic, glass and tin and it would all have to be separated if I was going to recycle it myself. It is just starting to seem like hard work.

And that is definitely a shame since I did a story this week about the sports shoe company New Balance which is striving with all its might to become carbon neutral and we should all be trying out best to head in that direction. But we now need Allerdale to lead by example and show that they actually have a plan!