Recycling

 First published in Column 8, 20^th March, 1991

 In spite of all the green thinking infiltrating people’s brains I still feel we recyclers are in the minority.

I come from a recycling family: well, we’ve been into compost for generations. (Not quite literally, although there have been times when I’ve put on my gumboots to squelch unwilling plants and twigs down into the muck.)

Though compost is ingrained into our family’s consciousness, the gardener and I still disagree about what things can and can’t be put into it. She reckons orange peel has no place, nor tomato plants, or potato tops. I claim that once they’ve been chewed up and recycled by our myriad teams of slaters, springtails and worms they’ll do any piece of ground a power of good.

The gardener talks ominously about mould, however.

All that aside it’s taking a bit of time to get my kids into the recycling mode.

Till recently we had at least three places in our kitchen for no-longer-usables to go. Food scraps and leftovers went into the compost container; paper into the coal bin; and plastic into the rubbish. (Now that we’ve discovered both paper and plastic recycling outlets here in the city our kitchen has become even more complex.)

In spite of years of nagging and training – or should that be training and nagging? – the kids still throw apple cores and banana peels into the coal bin. This leaves a mess like black congealed custard.

They throw plastic into the compost bin, along with used Gladwrap – it’s got uneaten sandwiches in it, hasn’t it? I tell them the worms can’t hack it, but my concern about the worms hasn’t raised their environmental consciousness one iota.

Everything else, like empty baked bean tins and felt-tip pens with lost lids, ought to go into the rubbish bin. Do they? Of course not, they stay on the bench where they were last put, while everybody argues over who left them there.

When I see my family’s attitude to recycling – the gardener and I are the only ones who really take it to heart – I wonder how the general populace will go if in the future they have to separate various kinds of rubbish before tipping it.

I mean, if my kids can’t tell the difference between plastic and paper after years of hectoring, is it likely your average Joe will either? Can you visualise most of the population picking through their rubbish to separate out the plastic and the paper and the tin and the food scraps?

At least it would restore New Zealand to a classless society. Your nattily-suited Yuppies would be on a par with the tramps who pick their way through the rubbish bins in the Octagon.

So far the only interest any of my kids has shown in recycling has been in the collecting of aluminium cans. A couple of Sundays ago, the boys had a field day with the leftovers from the wine and cheese afternoon at Woodhaugh Gardens.

To give him credit, my older son has stated that he felt his motivation for collecting cans was not purely environmental. After all, he is getting cash for them.

I tell him his capitalist scruples are several cuts above another mercenary class of recyclers: American newshounds who pick their way through film stars’ rubbish bins – in search of scandals.

 

Yellow (recycling) bins ready for collection
Courtesy Bernard Spragg NZ

The ‘gardener’ was my mother, who lived with us for around twenty years. In the last decade we’ve been putting orange peel, tomato plants and potato tops into the compost with no ill effect.

Times have changed, of course. Now householders are expected to recycle all sorts of things. In many cities paper, cardboard, tin cans, plastic items etc go into a green bin, for collection; bottles go into their own separate box, food scraps into yet another bin and absolute rubbish into a red bin. Most of my kids now deal with this properly, but their own children…

And aluminium cans, which ceased to be cash-earners for kids sometime after this article was written and became part of the green recycling, are now back in favour as cash cows.

A letter from two school pupils appeared on the 26^th March 1991 in response to this column:

We read the ‘Column Eight’ article about recycling, in the Midweek, March 20. At Warrington school we have three rubbish bins. One is the tin bin – its rubbish goes to the skip. The second bin is called the paper bin – its rubbish goes to the incinerator. The third bin is called the compost bin – its rubbish goes to the hens. We have got eight hens, and if we put plastic or metal in their bin we know it would kill them. we know the incinerator won’t burn metal and if we burn plastic all the poisonous gases will affect the ozone layer. We think that Mike Crowl’s children should come to Warrington school so that they could get some practice with their rubbish skills so that his house rubbish goes in the right bin.

Ryan Beck and Jamie Davie