WASTE NOT, want not
COLIN PONDERS THE PROBLEMS WITH PLASTIC AND GETS NOSTALGIC FOR SIMPLER TIMES
In yet another sign that the world as we know it is going hell-wards in a fast-moving handcart, someone pulled the “No Junk Mail” sign off our letterbox and went away with it. Within days, our box was jammed with junk. An uncharitable friend suggested it was the postie who did it, but I’m not having that.
If you can’t trust your postie, who can you trust? It was much more likely to have been a money-strapped neighbour who pinched our sign for their own letterbox. And I almost understand. There are mountains of junk mail just waiting to be foisted onto all of us.
As an experiment years ago, I started collecting the junk mail just to see how much of the stuff got pushed through our boxes, but I had to stop before the pile grew bigger than me. The world has become quite stupid when it comes to things we don’t need.
Lately, though, there’s been lots of talk about trying to turn back the tide of unwanted stuff before the whole world becomes such a tip that we’ll be able to walk to Australia across the plastic bags. And, good grief, there’s even been some action.
Supermarkets are now working on getting rid of the throwaway plastic bags they worked so hard on making part of our daily lives. Which isn’t going to save the planet, but at least it has got us thinking about it. Though, what it also has me thinking every time I go into the supermarket is that almost everything is still wrapped in plastic anyway.
The vegetables, the meat, the bread, the pick and mix lollies are all either plastic-wrapped or require the plastic bags the supermarkets thoughtfully provide. The other day, I bought some save-the-world washing machine liquid because apparently it doesn’t pollute like the powder does, but it came in a plastic bottle. It’s very confusing when the messages are nixed by being so mixed.
Believe it or not, I am old enough to remember when milk was delivered in glass bottles and how, on wintry Invercargill mornings, the milk would freeze solid, pop the top off the bottle and wear it like a little silver hat on an icy white neck. The bottles were recycled, round and round, along with the lemonade and beer bottles.
Kids would earn extra pocket money selling bottles to the bottle man. Scouts had bottle drives. The garages of beer-loving blokes in the neighbourhood were especially targeted. Recycling was everywhere. Mothers used to unpick awful old jumpers and knit them into awful new jumpers. Everyone grew their own vegetables and there was no such thing as left-over food. In those funny old days, probably hardly anything was ever thrown out. The tips must have been tiny.
And I’m not for a moment suggesting we should go back to ways of the past because you can’t go back. But you can grab some good ideas and make them work all over again. And even if we can’t make them work, we might as well have fun trying.
Just so long as we don’t start unpicking those old jumpers again.