As a family who recycle everything, we notice that we use quite a lot of water washing out dog food cans and plastic trays and bottles, so using one resource to save another. Is recycling just a salve to make us feel better?
When I was young, many many years ago,
we shopped at butcher's and meat was wrapped in a piece of paper, as was fish from the fishmonger, the grocer wrapped cheese in greaseproof paper, put eggs into the boxes we took back from last week, children took bottles back to the shop to get the coppers for returning them, we took jugs for some things. Vegetables were bought from a greengrocer, and all put into the shopping bags you took with you, muddiest things first.
We respected everything we bought, meat bones were made into soups, kitchen scraps were given to the 'pig-man' or put on the compost heap, even to the dog.
I could go on, I know everyone's sighing, but THAT's what we ought to be doing, instead of putting out bags and bags of rubbish, all neatly sorted into different bags, scrubbed clean.
AND we didn't have disposeable nappies for our babies.
Yes, I know, I'll shut up now.
