Recycling Trash

None of us can escape the discussions around global warming, carbon emissions, rubbish, recycling, pollution, renewable energy issues.... I was taken some years ago by the idea of zero waste. What a great idea!

Try as I might I can't see how to reduce my rubbish to zero. I've been looking at the rubbish I throw out and I've come to two startling conclusions:

1 It's 50 percent packaging. Since the health Nazis began insisting everything is wrapped I seem to be buying packaging from the supermarket to throw out. In my father's youth biscuits were sold out of barrels and wrapped in paper for you, sweets were bought out of jars, and bread was in a roll of paper. Today everything comes in plastic and (apart from bread in the previous examples) wrapped in several layers. Did anyone in NZ ever die from germs on a boiled lolly that wasn't encased in plastic? I don't know but I'll bet none. So I have to pay for all this packaging and then feel guilty about having to throw it out.

2 Much of the stuff I buy - which isn't edible - is not made to last. It can't be repaired and even if it can it's much cheaper to biff it and buy a new one. Kitchen implements, buckets, garden tools, children's toys, shoes, you name it -it's cheaper to throw it out. (And it's all wrapped in plastic you need a disposable electric saw to open).

So while I'm sympathetic guilt-tripping ordinary consumers is just trash.