Reduce, reuse, stop moaning

Hester Lacey wrote in the Guardian earlier this week about how difficult it is to grasp her local council's latest recycling scheme, which seems to involve two wheelie bins, one for domestic (read: destined for landfill) waste and one for recyclable waste. Trying to master a two-bin system when imposed on the different boxes and bins of her own devising for green waste, burnable cardboard, glass destined for the bottle bank and so on,  all seemed too much for her.

There are problems with the wheelie bin system, I admit. They do need the occasional cleanout, although this is made 10 times worse if you're sloppy about what you put inside and don't bag things up properly, or if you fail to clean your recyclable waste properly. Finding somewhere to put these oversized bins is another issue.

But really, is this all so hard? For instance Lacey complains that window envelopes have to be thrown in the bin. Not so: I cut or tear out the window and throw that away, then shred the rest for addition to the compost heap or a trench composting scheme at a convenient moment.

Lacey's grievance stems from the assumption that our responsibility for the superannuated "stuff" of daily life - from our bath water and empty washing up liquid bottles to the scraps of food on our plate and the perfectly good electronic devices that we no longer want - ends the moment we toss them in the bin. This isn't a worldwide phenomenon: in China people will buy stacks of paper by the inch, so valuable to the burgeoning economy are scrap materials.

In an episode of Hancock I saw recently on DVD, he imagines what it would be like if we were issued with a supply of all the air we'd ever need at birth, and had to drag it around in a container the size of the Albert Hall. Think of the same principle for "our stuff" and you'll get an idea what I mean by taking responsibility: metaphorically speaking, we're all pulling around a giant truck full of abandoned TVs, old cassette players and hardly worn clothes.

Sites such as Freecycle can really make a difference. Since I joined I've given (a deep fat fryer taking up room my pantry) and gotten (numerous offers of manure from horse-owning Freecyclers). I have a superannuated mobile phone on my desk waiting for my next visit to the nearest Oxfam, and a pile of worn out but still recyclable clothes and shoes for the charity collection point in the supermarket car park.

I'm not saying I'm some kind of recycling guru, but I am not going to let the complexities of figuring out what goes in which bin or the whole five seconds it takes to sort newspapers into a pile stop me from recycling.

Right, sermon's over. At ease, recyclers ...

Comments

[Karen]

I think the window in window envelopes actually counts as paper and can be recycled. What bugs me is junk-mail catalogues in plastic wrapping.

[Jess]

The endless sorting does rather irritate, but I can see the point of it. Trouble is, recycling isn't necessarily greener than burning or, indeed, landfill: it terms of carbon, it can be worse. A lot more work needs to be done on all this.

I feel the easiest and most obvious solution to waste is to produce less of it in the first place. I get incandescent with fury about the wasteful packaging of foods, complete with tons of plastic instead of biodegradable paper. Also the air/road miles associated with food. It's one of the main reasons I got an allotment in the first place.

[Podchef]

Living on a tiny island can lead to all sorts of garbage nightmares. Fortunately a few years ago our County solved a lot of our woes. Anything recyclable can go in one large bin which gets sorted off site.

We personally compost/feed to the chickens anything food related. That just leaves non-recyclable papers which can head to the compost too. Stuff like newspapers are at a premium here--once they're read and re-read by several people they then head to the stove. Many of us heat solely by wood still. Magazines/clothes/useful stuff/books can be placed on a certain table at the community center where anyone is free to take it. This stuff goes around and around the island several more times. What's left gets taken to either the landfill--when it is truely worn out or useless--or to the charity shops.

On other islands at the landfills--we don't have one on ours--the county employee in charge of taking the money usually runs a side business. You can reduce your fee by rendering up useful and good items instead of throwing them away. These are then refurbished and sold on thus reducing your cost and the cost to the earth, and someone who needs something inexpensively and doesn't care about the appearance so much can get what they need. Win win win.

[Lorika]

I like the image of us all dragging around our past garbage behind us like phantom baggage. It is quite instructive to think of it that way. Too often I think we all think that once we throw something away it just goes "poof!". But in fact most of what we throw away will out last us. Scary thought, but one we need to keep in mind.

[Jenette]

I kind of enjoyed your sermon. It wasn't until we moved out "here" that we opted out of trash service and I realised that it all is a matter of the few seconds to figure out what to do with stuff. We have a place to take plastics etc. Sometimes it takes awhile before we get around to loading it all up to do that, but it does get done. I also think a bit about what I use in light of recycling (it's part of the reason I went to cloth daipers... aside from the cost and the way it doesn't give my daughter rashes). Disposable daipers don't recycle very easily. I have a friend to thank for breaking me in and showing me how easy cloth really is. Its really all about making the choice and figuring out a system. So anyway, good blogging and thanks for the sermon. Jenette.

[composter]

I think that recycling is more efficient than incineration. Although recycling may produce more carbon than incineration, recycling also produces a re-useable product in the end that can be consumed in a manufacturing process. The benefits of incineration are minimal (perhaps they can generate a small amount of electricity from the steam).