Pity the poor residents of Southgate Road, N1. With half the street in Islington, the other bound to Hackney how are they meant to know if they're coming or going, let alone which day what rubbish collection is? For it seems that living here is very complicated if you're keen to separate your waste and use council recycling services. Friends of the Earth have condemned Southgate Road as "the most confusing in the country for waste disposal". In the entire country!

Wow. That sounds pretty serious. We wondered how many complaints the respective councils had received about this mind bogglingly complicated duet of weekly rubbish collections.

None, apparently. Not one.

The Daily Mail sums up this allegedly fearsome confusion with a visual representation of what the poor residents have to contend with.

We happen to think this is one of the most helpful things the Daily Mail could have done. If everyone cuts this out and sticks it on their wall somewhere - at least the half that refers to their side of the street - problem solved, yeah?

Or residents could just read the leaflets the council give them explaining collections rather than looking at their neighbours from another borough over there. As a spokesman from Islington Council so sagely says, its "hardly rocket science".

Image of very organised recycling courtesy of practicalowl's Flickrstream under the Creative Commons Attribution license.