katielou
"no such thing as away"
posted Thursday, 3 January 2008
Ian posted these in Facebook, but I think they deserve wider attention. A chap in the US who has kept ALL of his rubbish for a year.It makes interesting reading, and I'd like to see the exhibit. I
'm sure there must be someone out there wanting to make a Turner Prize out of it. Surely the Baltic would leap at the chance to display it. Jo and Andy and I were just talking about how to reuse/recycle/pass on old computer bits/cables and the difficulty in trying to get glass milk bottles these days, due to our collected rubbish being made up majoratively of milk bottles. They showed me a book someone has given them on ethical living, and I might have to achieve a copy of my own. If we can't have glass bottles, why can't we have tetrapack milk like they do in Sweden? At least some supermarkets (even in Durham) are now collecting tetrapacks for recycling. Looking at a period of time's worth of rubbish would be an illuminating lesson. I keep a lot of my rubbish in hoping to be able to recycle it, so I can see months where I've had more plastic trays from ready meals / pizza boxes than I have composted vegetable scraps, but also I can wonder whether it's better to buy eg washing liquid in plastic bottles which I can't recycle or cardboard boxes that I can... the maths of Full Environmental Costing making a big difference. There simply is no such thing as "away" or "dispose" - and that has to change. Nappies was the other example we happened to discuss at dinner - is the energy and detergent used in washing real nappies eventually going to be overtaken/replaced by a better designed degradable disposable? I think Jo's hoping that there's an improved effective & environmentally friendly solution by the time she has kids!
Also, in a not too different vein, from Anna - a similar reflection to my post on not using energy. And one of the things that made me smile in Barbados last week was the ingenuity and reuse of materials by people. The tin shacks were cobbled together from all sorts of driftwood etc that here would get tipped or burnt, and very characterful places they made too! And I couldn't help but notice that at the end of my street at one side of the church the old victorian school building has just been demolished, whereas at the other side of the church is a series of new houses going up. Reuse of materials? Not likely!
And don't ask me about the environmental impact of the holiday I've just had... I feel bad enough! Though, since I mention it, is it better to buy fairtrade bananas from Dominica (their only main export) or to ship them less distance from Tenerife??
'm sure there must be someone out there wanting to make a Turner Prize out of it. Surely the Baltic would leap at the chance to display it. Jo and Andy and I were just talking about how to reuse/recycle/pass on old computer bits/cables and the difficulty in trying to get glass milk bottles these days, due to our collected rubbish being made up majoratively of milk bottles. They showed me a book someone has given them on ethical living, and I might have to achieve a copy of my own. If we can't have glass bottles, why can't we have tetrapack milk like they do in Sweden? At least some supermarkets (even in Durham) are now collecting tetrapacks for recycling. Looking at a period of time's worth of rubbish would be an illuminating lesson. I keep a lot of my rubbish in hoping to be able to recycle it, so I can see months where I've had more plastic trays from ready meals / pizza boxes than I have composted vegetable scraps, but also I can wonder whether it's better to buy eg washing liquid in plastic bottles which I can't recycle or cardboard boxes that I can... the maths of Full Environmental Costing making a big difference. There simply is no such thing as "away" or "dispose" - and that has to change. Nappies was the other example we happened to discuss at dinner - is the energy and detergent used in washing real nappies eventually going to be overtaken/replaced by a better designed degradable disposable? I think Jo's hoping that there's an improved effective & environmentally friendly solution by the time she has kids!Also, in a not too different vein, from Anna - a similar reflection to my post on not using energy. And one of the things that made me smile in Barbados last week was the ingenuity and reuse of materials by people. The tin shacks were cobbled together from all sorts of driftwood etc that here would get tipped or burnt, and very characterful places they made too! And I couldn't help but notice that at the end of my street at one side of the church the old victorian school building has just been demolished, whereas at the other side of the church is a series of new houses going up. Reuse of materials? Not likely!
And don't ask me about the environmental impact of the holiday I've just had... I feel bad enough! Though, since I mention it, is it better to buy fairtrade bananas from Dominica (their only main export) or to ship them less distance from Tenerife??
Read comments/tell me I've lost the plot