What do you throw away? Do you have allotment mentality?

I’m sure you’ve all heard of Gardeners Question Time on Radio 4 (a national treasure), even if you aren’t avid listeners. Recently they had an amusing discussion about how to break the allotment mentality of one of the questioner’s husbands and most of the panel admitted they had the same mentality, saving every little piece of string, paper, pot and the like.

Wouldn’t it be great if we all had allotment mentality. We waste so much in the UK, and yet there are complaints about paying extra for the rubbish we throw away. When a country throws away about 1/3 of all food bought then there is something seriously wrong.

We’re losing the memory of the 40s and 50s, when rationing was in force and you had to save these items for use time and time again, simply because there wasn’t any you could just buy when needed. I’m not wishing for a return of rationing, but any sane individual has to admit that we can’t carry on like we are – buying, using, throwing away in an ever decreasing circle.

A little thought and a little time means that you can save a lot of money and be that bit greener - have a box with string in it and save your wrapping paper, jiffy bags and the like for use more than once. I overheard someone in an office the other day, who was offended to have received something in a recycled envelope, as if it was a personal affront to them. We bought baby essentials online recently and there was a sticker on the box saying ‘I’m an old box being reused’, an excellent idea.

A prime example of waste is what’s produced by businesses every year, basically money just thrown away. This year is especially true in Norfolk schools, as the County Council are having a reorganisation, meaning a lot of change in school structure, with First/Infant schools losing more classes than usual and staff changes. Once the kids had cleared off home for the Summer holidays, the teachers set about clearing out the remnants of another school year.

There is limited storage space for each teacher and with lots of movement of staff, a clear out is inevitable, but the waste can be enormous. (Paper, stationary, books and the like are often thrown into a skip with virtually no regard to the value of the items to either other schools or at the very least to the local charity shop) Now if you’d asked the kids, who’d just gone on holiday, what they should do with the stuff that had no value, they would have almost always suggested we could reuse them or recycle them, as they are taught in class, the very last option being to throw them away.

Could the County Council do more to supply temporary recycle bins for the big clear out at the end of each school year? Could individual head teachers work out a scheme for their own school to try and reduce the waste? The total cost of all those skips adds up to a pretty penny, most of which could probably have been saved.

The recycle schemes of the district and borough councils in Norfolk leave a lot to be desired. Firstly there isn’t any commonality across the county, so in one town householders can recycle some things and in another those same items aren’t allowed. Sadly the councils have aimed for the government targets, which are pitifully low, rather than offering real recycling schemes for domestic customers and businesses. On the whole councils are recycling what they have to, not what they could.

I’ve often heard from Councils, ‘its against government regulation to offer recycling to businesses’. Actually this just isn’t the case, they could easily offer a recycling service that they charged for, just like most of them do for landfill rubbish. I know many businesses with no recycling facilities at all. It is difficult to find recycling services in some areas of Norfolk, but seldom impossible.

It always amazes me about the hundreds of tonnes of glass that are thrown away amongst the pubs, restaurants and hotels in Norfolk. Most of this glass could be recycled, but I can’t understand why we no longer have a system of collection of empties by delivery trucks? When I was a lad, I used to sort the bottles at the Jolly Sailors, Brancaster Staithe. The delivery truck arrived to deliver the beer, fruit juice and other drinks and would then take the empties and crates. The pub even received a credit for the empties. Now in most pubs the bottles are simply thrown away. I feel there is something fundamentally wrong with this, after all washing out a bottle has to be cheaper and definitely better for the environment than making a new one.