summer, recycling

Summer is so beautiful, especially as January passes, that I almost fear to write, to acknowledge that the days are passing. Fionn is at his grandparents' at the moment and thus early mornings here are very quiet. Last night we went out to dinner and then walked along the beach. Brighid and Favourite Handyman both collected pieces of wood for the raised bed gardens and carried them back on their shoulders. Brighid wore a very beautiful smocked dress a friend had made for her and gifted when she was born. With a full skirt and a bow at the back, it is similar to the dresses my mother made for my sister and I when we were small. This one had spaghetti and berry sauce down the front and was wet from the sea around the hem by the end of the evening. It was made with love and she had fun while wearing it.

I bought some chicory seedlings the other day and now have to prepare a spot to plant them in. I sowed chicory seed last year but none of it germinated.

Now the market for recycled glass, plastic and metals has collapsed world wide, stories of recycling centres struggling to stay afloat are making the papers frequently. For me, living in a place which is a long way from anywhere, I think it is an opportunity to ask some different questions about recycling. Everywhere I have lived in the last ten or so years, we've been talking about recycling. Good services, bad services, improving services. The range of recycling services seems a badge of how enlightened a council is. For a city dweller, putting the recycling out, applauding the council or berating them according to their level of collection, is a pleasant way of feeling green.

But why the hell should we feel better about shipping plastics to China (how much fuel is that, not to mention how much fuel to get it all to whichever port it leaves New Zealand from) instead of putting them in our own local landfill? Is China not doing enough of our dirty work by producing clothes and toys and electronic goods cheaply and sweatedly, to feed our consumer desires?

I would like to see a lot more focus from the council here in smallwettown on composting. Food waste is one very significant portion of household waste that need never leave town. For many people, given that we live in a low density housing area where hardly anyone is in a flat without a bit of garden, most of the food waste need never leave our gates.

There is nothing saintly about my supermarket consumption. Nothing at all. We don't buy readymade foods like packaged pizzas and fish fingers, but we do seem to acquire a significant amount of packaging waste each week. There is no waste packaging from my home made kefir, but come term time, I do humour my son who has no tv and generally wierd parents and who especially asks for bought yoghurt not the home made kind for school. I say no to him about 8005 times per week, so the odd yes to yoghurt does not constitute ridiculousness to my mind. We usually buy bottled beer, but when I know we are having guests or will drink a rigger in a day, then I go to the fill your own liquor shop. They have Harrington's Wobbly Boot on tap for $9 a 2 litre bottle and it is a very nice drop.

There is more I can do to reduce packaging coming into my home and with a little more steel resolve, those reductions will become permanent. But I've stopped thinking that the council needs to collect all my crap and send it to China. Frankly, I hope everyone will rethink the way that we treat China as our lower class relation, servant and dumping ground.