What a waste

Don’t you reckon there always seems to be a new fad, something that suddenly we are all meant to be into, or all of a sudden doing and participating in?

Like drinking bottled water, installing a heat pump, wearing Crocs etc, etc. I hate fads and run as far away from them as I can. I like to find or create my own fads. It must come from my dad who always said to me, “Don’t be a sheep.” Looks like at least one tidbit of parental advice sunk in then.

One of the current fads doing the rounds is abolishing single-use plastic bags and this may be the first time I join in with everyone else and immerse myself in a current trend. Of course the single-use plastic bag is only the tip of the waste iceberg (vague pun intended) as it is becoming more apparent every single day that we all need to do more about controlling the way we think about and dispose of waste. The moment really has come when we all need to take responsibility and reuse and recycle, and ideally avoid excess waste product as much as we can.

There was a time when I was renovating houses and the amount of skips we filled with building and demolition material from one house in particular was mind boggling. When undergoing one 90-square-metre house reno we must have filled at least 12 of those orange 3m Flexibin disposable bags. Imagine those all on top of one another – that’s a big stack!

I’m not trying to come up with a solution or daring to suggest one, just sharing with you

www.theshedmag.co.nz | my concerns and that the we need to give a lot more careful consideration to the amount of waste materials we all dispose of.

Is it best to get a length or two more timber than you need, or just enough, and grab more next time you are at the timber yard if you need it. One bag extra, or make do?

Friends have told me that in London they saw folks taking items out of the plastic that the supermarket had wrapped products in and leaving it at the checkout: “Your plastic, Mr Supermarket, your problem. I don’t want the things I buy wrapped in so much plastic, thank you very much.” What a great attitude.

I’ve heard in Canada they have tool libraries where you can borrow tools just like books. I love new tools, can never get enough of them, and I never know what to do with the old ones. They’re not good enough to sell, but maybe I should give them to a charity to reuse.

This was all brought home to me when my granddaughter got me to take an old plastic bag to our favourite bakery so they could reuse it. She was so proud of our joint effort. It hit me then that it’s really the next generation that we should be making real changes for. Anyway, let’s see what us responsible sheddies can do to change. Let’s give much more thought to reduce, reuse, recycle, and create less waste.

Greg Vincent Publishing Editor editor@shedmag.co.nz

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