Day 3...tupperware, worms and polythene

So the paper experiment at the butchers hasn't really worked...well, its OK for ham etc, but not for meat that has a tendency to bleed! So Vikki bought extra large Tupperware containers and Chris the butcher kindly put all our meat in the Tupperware....perfect!! He thought it was a fantastic idea and said that's how they used to do it....so what happened....we used to use reusable nappies and hand them down from generation to generation, we used to use reusable pop bottles and return them to the shop, we used to use the milkman.....

At some point, somebody, somewhere, must have forced us all to stop being sensible and make us completely lose touch with reality. We all love convenience, but not at the expense of the environment...and common sense!

I blame Leo Baekeland, a Belgium chemist who apparently invented synthetic plastic in 1909. Was that the start of our consumer society....and when we suddenly decided that everything disposable was beautiful.

Enough of that...the worms arrived today, 500g of them, not as many as I thought but hopefully they'll help do the job...also bought them a nice little duvet made of coir! This keeps them warm in the winter...

Finally, following the excellent advice from Almost Mrs Average (http://therubbishdiet.blogspot.com/), about polythene recycling, I dived in the bin tonight and retrieved 2g of polythene which I'm saving to send to the polyprint plant. Now I'm expecting a few carbon conscious comments here...."surely that has more impact on the environment through the transport emissions"...well, its a good point, but I have 2 answers to that, factually correct or not:

1. The post van/train/lorry would be on the road anyway and I'm ensuring it's at capacity. It would be worse if I used a courier for an individual trip from home to recycling plant, but I'm not, I'm tapping into an existing transport network that would be running irrespective of my parcel.
   
3. I'm voting with my polythene...by sending it off to the recycling plant I'm making a point, albeit a quiet one, that I'm not prepared to send it to landfill. Hopefully, if enough people do it, the cost/benefit will start to stack up and other entrepreneurs will see that there is an opportunity and set up a service...or local government will subsidise it to avoid landfill tax fines.

Unfortunately, plastic recycling is often difficult to justify because it is a low weight, high volume material. So the only other way we can make a difference is to refuse the products in the first place and phase its use out that way...we'll continue to do that and through reusable containers and careful purchasing, I think this is one area we're really going to improve on.