Quote(s) of the day - part two. Dustbin day.

"My generation sucked the marrow out of the world, but it's the next generations who inherit the Earth and we have to help them get political and lead the charge on things like sustainability, ethical farming and waste reduction. If they don't we're all in serious trouble." Neil Perry

I chose this quote because it is so very much what I feel. That our generation has basically destroyed the world and that our children and grandchildren are going to suffer for it. Although. At heart I am an optimist - fighting against the knowledge of the dire things going on in the world at the moment - but nevertheless I do believe that if the political will was there everything could be solved. The brain power is certainly available. You only have to look at what man has achieved technologically to know that we can solve this too. I do despair a bit about the political will, particularly at the moment when politics seems to have lost all idealism and practicality, but nevertheless I do think that, on the whole, when disaster looms a solution is found. I just hope we are not too late.

This quote is particularly relevant today because it is dustbin day for us. Well it's the day we put them out - tomorrow they get collected. The above are from a different council but are basically the same as our options. Other than the fact that our green bin is small like the red one. We alternate the red and yellow and can put out a green one each week. I'm sure there are variations around Australia, but basically Australia is pretty good in comparison with some other countries. Not that I have a lot of experience with other countries. I do know that in France - in some places people just put bags full of garbage on the street (not in bins) for collection, and that in most country locations there are communal rubbish bins of varying types where you take your rubbish. You mostly have to put it in the car and take it there. I know they have bins for paper, plastic and glass but I'm not sure about organic material. And some of the hypermarkets ban plastic bags.

One always partly worries about the recyclable bin - is it really recycled? Now we find that actually most of it was shipped to China where they dealt with it, but they have now refused to take any more. So far there has been no impact here but then again I don't really know what happens to our recyclables. I do know that there are scientists out there doing wonderful things with plastic, but then every now and then you despair when you find you can't win. The wonderful recycling of plastics into those very warm jackets for example, we now find spread minute bits of plastic into the environment - particular into the sea where animals and fish eat them - and die. But we must keep trying.

I also remember seeing a wonderful program on the television in which the guy from Grand Designs, whose name I have temporarily forgotten tried to spend a few nights in an Indian slum. He found he couldn't do it - but that's not what is the point here. Whilst he was looking around he came across small backyard recycling centres, where people basically pored through the garbage and rescued every tiny usable bit. It was all sorted and sometimes sent for recycling, sometimes made into something on the spot. But the conditions they were working in were horrendous. In our household we have a small battle about washing out bottles and tins that are going into the recycle bin. I envisage actual people sorting through all this stuff and dealing with the stench of rotting milk and decaying sardine tins. Whilst my husband maintains its all done by machine and I'm damaging the environment by washing them out. And maybe I am. Like I said, you just can't win it seems.

I just don't know. I guess I don't ask enough questions. I just think the best of people and hope that everything will turn out alright. Which, I guess, is pretty naïve. Our green waste, for example is composted by the council and we can get the compost back. Not sure whether it's free or not. I worried about putting noxious weeds like bridal creeper into it and we did ask, but apparently the heat generated is such that the weeds are killed.

On the whole things are improving as to waste reduction and recycling. We are certainly more aware of the problems these days. The supermarkets make grand gestures like not supplying plastic bags, and giving 'old' food to the Second Bite organisation. And yes, it's not all done to be good. They probably make money out of it. The media is certainly castigating Woolworths for stopping the use of plastic bags, saying we will now use more bin liners and that they will make more money out of selling their 'canvas' bags. Maybe so, but I think it's a small step in the right direction. I think it's very sad that we always look for the ulterior motive. Sad that we should even think about it, and sad that there often is one.

Ok - I've had my little rant. I do so hope that we solve it all sometime soon. It could be done I'm sure.

"Waste not want not," as my grandmother used to say, though my children think it was my mother, their grandmother, that said it. A mantra to live by anyway.