Mighty oaks from little acorns grow

AT a recent gathering Lu proudly told me she had started recycling 7 weeks ago but was drawing the line at pulling things out the rubbish bin that the rest of her family had discarded.

So guys put your used cans and wrappers on the side for Lu to sort.  Someone else asked what the point of recycling was when in their opinion (they don’t recycle) it all gets dumped in the same place anyway, this is an often quoted ‘fact’ from people who don’t recycle.

Another excuse is that Spanish councils don’t collect recycling as they do in the UK, maybe that’s why council rates are so cheap in Spain. In any case rubbish collection points also have recycling bins there so instead of taking one heaving bag of rubbish take a bag of plastic and cans, a bag of bottles, a bag of paper and the rest can then be put in the bin. Same weight and volume it’s just distributed differently.

One Christmas when living in Suffolk I delivered a flyer (yes on recycled paper) to local households asking them to recycle all their waste. Following it up in the New Year nearly a third had actually started to recycle as they had looked at their mountains of waste in a new light. Come on everybody get recycling!

The eco warrior hat is on again as a recent visit to Morocco impressed me with the way that almost everything is re-used.

Little workshops can be found reconditioning all manner of mechanical and electrical goods, little scooters seem to last forever held together by hope and a piece of string.

Food is often sold loose at markets so bins are filled with scraps of food rather than used plastic wrappers and drinks cans. Of course the guiding factor is a lack of money for buying new yet I do think third world countries will fare better in future as resources dwindle.

Instead in the western world people clammer to buy the latest mobile phone, a brand new flat screen TV or that must have MP3 player. If the lights went off even for a few days how would we westerners communicate without emails, Facebook and Twitter?

Supermarket chains with their supply chains would stop dead and if we did not have a Cold War style bunker full of tins of food or even better an allotment and a few chickens, tummies would soon be rumbling.

Petrol is a huge expense nowadays so now when without clients the windows are open and the air conditioning firmly off, this may explain my appearance as its been commented I look rather bedraggled when arriving by car as my hair seems intent on trying to escape as I beetle about. It saves money and the environment so worth the funny comments. With the summer hordes arriving from the UK many readers will have put on their taxi driver uniforms and transformed their homes into hotels. Remember to check that guests have turned off the air-con before disappearing to the beach all day. Telling family and friends they are welcome to visit as long as they hire their own car normally sorts the wheat from the chaff; but my mother is excluded from this edict as I don’t want anyone living here to suffer the consequences.

I still don’t know why councils always water the plants in the heat of the day. Most of the water evaporates in the sun and I hazily recall from my school-days that plants drink at night. Even in Morocco at noon in 50 degree heat workmen were busily watering away; it’s mad I tell you mad!

My ‘buy a Spanish cucumber’ headline a few weeks ago surely helped as sales are up 23% on last year.

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