Recycling (but only if I say so)

But no. I can’t do that. I used to be able to.

My husband once came back with four picture frames which now hang on our staircase with family portraits. He’s retrieved wood and a lawnmower too. We use it regularly.

But now, it’s forbidden.

The wooden ladder he was after that lay in the skip and is going to be smashed and made into Ikea furniture or something. He can’t take it home and use it as a ladder.

I should point out he doesn’t loiter around the tip waiting for good things to arrive. He was there recycling (donating to business) some things we don’t need.

I don’t care what numbers officials come up with. Recycling (putting stuff in a machine to break it down) must be more expensive and environmentally burdensome than just using the thing as it is.

Recycling is now just another business. It’s not actually for the purpose we think it is (the planet). It’s for companies to profit. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if Ikea has some stake in it.

We throw cuttings into the tip. Bucks CC grind it up, make it into compost and sell it back to us.

I’m satisfied to see that the tip increases its recycling amounts year on year. But I don’t understand why I can’t take someone else’s rubbish away and use it myself.

Sure, prohibit tipper trucks from arriving and carting the whole lot away but we – the little people – ought to be able to have the odd thing. Shouldn’t we?

It strikes me as rigid and purely business otherwise. That makes me think we’re being hoodwinked. We can only recycle on their terms. (Who are ‘they’?) And only if they profit from the whole process.

What do they think we’re going to do? Take a ladder away and sell it? That means we’re making some money from recycling. Can’t have that.

Or is it that old Hi-Vis wearing state-controlled figure, H&S?

Well, I suppose not getting an old wooden ladder out of the tip means we’ll go out and buy a new one. So they think… It just builds more feeling of resentment in me about being fed untruths. Big wigs don’w care a fig about the planet. But they’ll press us with the urgency of saving the planet, being green and doing our bit. And they’ll wallow in the wonderful revenue that recycling (the new moral manipulation) brings.

Cynical. But I’m not the only one.

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