HACKNEY HAS more people with degrees from good universities than any other part of Britain. And incomes to match: the disposable incomes of residents of the borough have risen faster than for people anywhere else in Britain. 

Admittedly the claims come from surveys and analysis — yes, just another set of statistics, and of course rentals have also zoomed in northeast London — yet they do suggest that Hackneyites are not stupid.

Staff at the big Kingsland High Street Sainsbury’s at Dalston E8 2LX might not agree. They found that customers kept throwing obviously unsuitable items into receptacles clearly specified for batteries to be recycled. A manager wearily commented: “Many customers were treating them as rubbish bins.”

Often, the battery bins overflowed after being clogged up by surplus items; at other times they became unusable after mushy food was thrown in.

Store bosses put on their thinking caps. Determined to continue the recycling, they moved the two battery bins to the shelf displaying batteries. 

So that less-intelligent shoppers did not simply drop their unwanted stuff where the two recyclers used to be, Sainsbury’s placed a whole row of rubbish bins in their place in hope that might end the idiocy.

Dead batteries a problem? No, but dead brains might be.

Hamish Scott 110918

* Backstory: Sainsbo boot polish costs more than Bolly; Hackney reviving Kingsland Waste market

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