The Daily Telegraph

Scavenging, Mr Gove? Some of us have been doing it for years

- READ MORE at telegraph.co.uk/opinion VICKY YOUNG

Let us ignore the inevitable jokes about scavenging in bins being Michael Gove’s plan for post-brexit Britain. What is most interestin­g about the Environmen­t Secretary’s suggestion that councils should open their waste sites for people to take away and reuse whatever they want from them is neither the idea’s novelty nor its comic potential: it is that some of us have been doing this for years.

I am an unlikely ecowarrior. I buy too much stuff brand new from shops. However, I have also learned that one person’s discarded junk can be someone else’s Christmase­s all coming at once.

Imagine my delight, for example, when shortly after a naturopath advised me to overhaul my diet, my neighbour offered up – free of charge – not only a yogurt maker but a juicer. Both were top of the range, purchased a couple of years earlier during a short-lived health kick, but had become unused, kitchen-cluttering reminders of good intentions set aside. I saved both from the tip with indecent haste, and can proudly say they’ve been used almost daily ever since.

We got the sweetest corduroy rocking horse and a Tripp Trapp highchair the same way, when an old friend was moving house. Her girls were nearly teenagers and she couldn’t wait to liberate herself from these chunky bits of clutter. I practicall­y bit her hand off for the chair – blooming expensive if you buy one new – just as my son was transition­ing to sitting at the table. And he had hours of joy from that faithful, if careworn, rocking horse.

Six years later his tastes have moved on to Nerf guns, skateboard­ing and cricket. My neighbour was so grateful when I offered her the horse for her two-year-old that I hardly liked to mention my relief I’d saved myself the faff of driving to the tip. The chair we sold for a tenner at the annual Clapton Jumble Trail last month where the buyer couldn’t believe her luck at finding such a bargain.

I also got rid of a pair of once-used “heelies”, a colossal, space-sucking toy garage and a set of Mr Men books – while my son hit the jackpot: a Nerf gun, a skateboard and a cricket bat.

If you’ve never been to a jumble trail, I cannot recommend them more highly as an opportunit­y to rid your house of tat without travelling further than your doorstep. The fact that ours raised money for our school merely added to the goodwill glow that being part of it created.

At the end of the day we donated the stuff that hadn’t sold to what we’ve come to refer to as the “Hackney recycling service”. Yes, it might look like we’re just dumping stuff on the street. But, left with a sign saying “free – please take”, you’re giving the stuff you’ve moved on from the chance to make another person happy. I’ve seen unwanted toys, kitchen parapherna­lia, and even a lamp disappear from that pavement in a matter of minutes.

It’s hard to describe the warm fuzzy feeling of knowing that your junk has gone to a good home where it will begin a happy new chapter. And it’s worth bearing in mind that if instead you had thrown away that musical plastic pirate ship it would have been destined for landfill or dumped at sea, perhaps to end up choking a cormorant to death, or inside a whale’s stomach.

So thank you, Mr Gove, for saying what many of us already knew: that – as The Wombles well knew – it is entirely possible to create a perfectly lovely home from the things that everyday folks leave behind.

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