Musings on recycling on Earth Day.

As you may or may not know, today is Earth Day.  I seem to recall turning off the lights for an hour last year, or was that just me?  (trying to read stories to my son with a wind up torch, lol).  We haven't done anything special this year, but the fact of it being Earth Day reminded me of a visit we took recently to a local amenity site.

We were taking some garden waste for green recycling and some other bits and pieces, and for the first time ever we saw them moving some of the general waste rubbish (that's the stuff which is picked up on bin day and would normally go to landfill , but here in Berkshire we are lucky (not sure if that's the right word or not) enough that it all goes to a waste to energy incinerator)

It was a truly epic site, quite apocalyptic.  There were two or three enormous diggers with huge scoops that were scooping up great mountains of rubbish and moving it around. The scoops were so big that one of them had a double mattress on the arm which must have flipped up, it was just casually lying there.  It felt like some kind of post apocalyptic dystopia, or a scene from the film Wall-E.  The amount of waste was astonishing and I just couldn't get over the fact that it was all being thrown away.  There was just so much, and so much that looked like it could have been re-used.  Plastic bags torn open and their contents spilling everywhere, household food waste, bits of fabric, and a hell-of-a-lot of plastic packaging.

I left with mixed feelings.  I was torn between feeling like I would never throw a single thing away again EVER because I just didn't want to partake in this entropy any more; and feeling like really what was the point, what was the point in washing and sorting and recycling all our waste when the impact our family would be making was so microscopic it was almost negligible, it seemed futile and it was completely impossible to live in this day and age without producing eipc amounts of rubbish.

However I then stumbled upon a wonderful blog called Trash is for Tossers and I was like "oh, it is possible".  The blog's author Lauren Singer lives a zero waste lifestyle which I find so inspiring and beautiful. I can definitely do more to reduce the amount of waste I and my family.  I don't think we would be able to go totally waste free because it seems we don't have access to the sorts of amazing food places that she has where you can take a load of glass jars and cloth bags, fill them up with food and leave with no plastic (that's never going to happen at Tesco)  but I can certainly try and reduce our impact. It's a similar mindset to veganism/vegetarianism, the difference we make to the big picture is probably very small but it is still something, and I believe that our actions, however small send out positive vibrations into the world which can transform into something much bigger.

So here is to small acts, on Earth Day, maybe we can't save the world ourselves, but each person taking little actions adds up to something truly epic.

Welly Boot Planters

So I had this pair of wellies that had split and were good for nothing...or so I thought!  Then I had this idea (yes you heard correctly, I thought of it all on my own, not copied from pinterest or anything!) to turn my old wellies into planters.

So I took myself and the boys off to a garden centre and bought some lovely colourful primroses, just the thing to brighten up a miserable garden in dripping wet Blighty.  I also cheered myself up with a very large slice of carrot cake and a pot of Earl Grey tea, (Boris had a flap jack).

How did you do it? I hear you cry, well it was easy really, I just folded down the tops about 2 inches to make them a little less wobbly, punched some holes in the feet of the wellies for drainage, filled them with my home made compost and bedded in the flowers and ta da!

They look really jolly at the end of the garden, and Boris helped too, attempting to punch holes and spreading compost all around the patio.  He had a great time watering them too!

What I am Currently Reading: Revolution in a Bottle by Tom Szaky

I recently borrowed this book from my local library more for the green credentials that the business advice.   I found it a really enjoyable book and would recommend it to anyone interested in "green" businesses.

 

This easy to read book tracks the exciting adventure of the author from broke student to successful business man.  I found the story entertaining and enlightening.  He includes all sorts of facts about recycling, rubbish and waste and comes across as a very likable person.  I liked his passion for creating a product with low impact on the environment and his ingenuity at making it into a financial success.  I did feel slightly uncomfortable with the way he got-into-bed so to speak with large corporations such a coca cola, but I could see his reasoning because although he was sleeping with the enemy (the rubbish producers) he was creating a positive outcome for the environment.  Perhaps this is the way more "green" companies should go instead of fighting against the big businesses?  I am not cure, but it certainly got me thinking.

The only chapter of this book that I didn't like was the last one where he talks about how to run a successful business.  I felt like if I had wanted to know how to start a business I would have bought a proper business manual not a personal success story, I was much more interested in HIS story than his tips for starting and running a successful business. 

Having said that I did find reading about his experience inspiring and it did make me fantasise a little about starting my own "green" or "eco" business. It is that sort of book, it gets you excited.

I would highly recommend this book as an interesting, entertaining and captivating read (I read it in about a week!) but not as a business advice manual.