Thursday 18 January 2018

Relaxing and Recycling

 We have been back at work for about a week now. It's another year, and with it comes a new set of challenges. The results may be good, bad, or result in things staying the same for the immediate future. It's a stressful game nowadays, and long gone are the heady days of every moment being easy and peaceful. Now, one has to actively seek ways to calm the mind and spirit. For me, this will mean art school to pursue my drawing that has been left on the back burner. Archery is also in the pipeline, now that I have a bow, and some guitar lessons with a tutor accompanied by my grandson who is also about to learn. The motorbike is now fully rehabilitated, and she is going to provide many a soul freeing ride. Amsterdam and The Hague beckon this year as a long ride. Later, we return with the family to St.Davids. The year is going to be a rollercoaster of a ride, but we like a challenge.

The state of the world bothers me. There is greed, conflict and destruction happening globally, and I fear that we have now passed the point of no return. The natural world is of huge importance mostly, as without it nothing else matters, and we try to do our bit to help. Amongst other stuff, we try to reduce our own consumption of plastic by purchasing thing's that come in as little, or no packaging wherever possible, even if it means spending more to do so. Our household waste is carefully recycled wherever possible, with the vegetable waste being through onto the garden borders as soon as it is made, and then hoed in to add to the quality of the soil. 


Every piece of unwanted paper that we have in the house is shredded, and this is then taken to one of the properties that we look after, where a resident is a fastidious composter, and welcomes our large bags of paper waste to mix with leaf mould and grass clippings that we produce throughout the year. The resulting compost is then spread on to the garden borders.


We produce about three hundred tons of garden rubbish a year, and this, by law, now has to be taken to a recycling centre based near Bournemouth International airport....thankfully. It's a very expensive part of our business, in fact the single biggest expense, but once deposited, along with the entire garden waste from every other garden trader, tree surgeon and household in Dorset and Hampshire, what amounts to hundreds of thousands of tons annually, it is formed into huge piles, turned and temperature regulated, sifted and shredded, until it comes out the other end as a re-saleable compost. Tree surgeons wood is chipped and sold on, and they now even handle food waste, which is processed using anaerobic digestion for heating


Our little contribution always seems so small, but along with hundreds of others it makes quite a large amount of rubbish.Do any of you recycle, and if so, how, and with what? I am always looking for ways to improve our own methods.

To end, can I just say how sad it was to hear of the death of Dolores O'Riordan of The Cranberries.





4 comments:

  1. I agree with your second paragraph 100%. We (not us, I hope) are leaving a terrible legacy for our children. I just hope they'll be able to cope with it. I'm even worried about that!

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    1. Cro, just found this from you. I think that as long as some have a conscience, and act on it both in what we do, and how we publicise it, then that is all we can ask of ourselves. What the children/grandchildren do, their legacy terrifies me, for them. I all too often feel that the greed of the world, is stacked way too high for 'The World' to cope. Still, we must keep on, keeping on, as a wise pastor once told me.

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  2. We recycle as much as possible, but kudos to you for such huge efforts.
    Good luck with the archery - I loved doing that, but had to give up due to a tendon injury. I found it to be quite meditative when standing on the line - just me, the bow, and the target and everything else just fades into the background. Still got my longbow though - can't bear to get rid of it.

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  3. Hi Dave,
    It's been on the news recently that the UK ships it's wazte plastic to China for recycling, and they just dump it in landfill and pocket the cash. Going to have to review our council recycling, maybe even campaign.....gosh! As for the archery, you have a longbow...wow!

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