Recycling

I believe in recycling. I do it as much as possible. There are compost bins in the garden and near our unnecessarily large wheelie bin, there are extra bins for paper, glass and plastic/aluminium products. I bought two of the extra bins myself because our city council hasn't yet fully got its act together on recycling - even though there are leaflets and regular pronouncements about "the environment" and how cool it is to live in England's "greenest" city.

Every month or so I go to one of the city's recycling facilities to find overflowing skips and nowhere to put throwaway plastic bags. There are very few of these "facilities" around. In fact, I once launched a letter writing campaign against Somerfield supermarkets about the sudden closure of our most local facility. I mean - what is going on when in what is allegedly a more environmentally responsible age - we find recycling facilities actually closing? Crazy!

How do you easily dispose of batteries or washing machines, old computers or old TVs? Okay there are ways and means but half-hearted recyclers are more likely to just throw such items away because it is too much trouble to unearth the hidden secrets of Recycling World! It should be made easy for people - not hard as hell.

This Christmastime, how much packaging will we all dispose of? It is heart-breaking and so wrong. Producers should be forced to become far more frugal about packaging - reducing it to a bare minimum. Two weeks ago, I was in a McDonalds "restaurant" (ha!) and I saw little kids with lunchbox-style kiddies' meals containing crappy plastic "gifts" which would excite a normal child for no more than fifteen seconds. They shouldn't be allowed to produce that plastic crap nor the cardboard boxes - it is such a blatant waste of this planet's precious resources. Why are some human beings so stupid?