Recycling: Part II

When you move abroad, you find out new things about yourself. Lots of it is good, to do with the way you rose to the challenge, aspects that you enjoyed more than you anticipated, inner strengths you didn’t know you had. Feel good in retrospect stuff. But you also find out things about yourself that aren’t so nice. These are the dirty little secrets that don’t make it onto the expat websites. For example, you may be rather relieved if you’re honest, to find out from other people’s experience that your kids will lose their American accents when you return home, in spite of your assertion that preferring one accent over another is a form of racism. Or how about the fact that you never thought of yourself as materialistic, but it’s pretty nice, when it comes down to it, to live in a house double the size of the one you left in Britain.

Here is another one. I am not as green as I’d like to think I am. In Britain, I recycled carefully, I didn’t waste things, especially food, we used buses, only owned one car, a diesel, I minded about the future of the planet. Or so I thought. Here, we have two cars (which in our defence, is a necessity, given the almost non-existent bus service). I can salve my conscience by looking at the guzzling SUVs, and think “well, at least my minivan does around 20 to the gallon to your 15”. I try not to waste things, but it is harder, and I do less well. I do recycle, but it took us a while to get round to it, and I’m more lax about it. I have genuine questions as to the value of recycling – in a country where space is so vast, I do wonder if landfill is not a bad option, set against the energy required to recycle (and the comments on my previous post have done nothing to reassure me). It’s not these questions that make me lax though. It’s the conscience-salving that says I might not be doing it perfectly, but at least I’m doing it more than most people.

I can make all kinds of excuses, and have all kinds of logical reservations, but at the bottom level I know this to be true: I cared more for the environment when I loved it more. I know we’re talking global warming and consequences that will affect us all, worldwide. I know that being green is about safeguarding the planet and not about pretty green English lanes and how early in the year daffodils flower these days, and what is causing the decline in the number of sparrows, but there we are, I’m just airing my dirty washing in public and being honest. I may be a citizen of the world, but I am hugely influenced by my local situation.

There’s another element, of course. It’s not all to do with the English countryside. I tried to be green in the UK because everyone else is trying to be green. Sometimes it’s by reason of moral choice and sometimes it’s with financial or other incentive, but it is fairly unavoidable. Being a good citizen is increasingly bound up with being a green citizen.

I don’t share Margaret Thatcher’s view that there’s no such thing as society. There clearly is. We are hugely influenced by those among whom we live. This can be for evil – history shows that the majority of us can turn into the people who spy on our neighbors and colleagues, report them to authorities, turn on them, or turn a blind eye. I think it is often ignored, though, that society is a force for good too. We are all better people for rubbing along beside others who, in all kinds of ways, bring out the best in us. It is easier to behave well if the prevailing wind is carrying you along.

Recycling

Pig in the Kitchen has burst my baggie bubble, by asking if I feel guilty about where these little plastic darlings end up, in all their non-biodegradability shame. She has a point. I have been meaning to write about recycling for ages, so I thought this would be a good moment.

When we first moved here, I was rather horrified at the lack of environmental concern. It has become such a way of life in Britain. Here, recycling is a minority interest. If pressed, most people would agree that it is a Good Thing (difficult to argue the opposite), but few people actually do anything about it. It’s not that easy to do anything about it. You would have to look very hard to find a recycling bin in a car park; in fact, I’m not sure I can think of any at all. At first we paid a supplement to our trash collection service, and once a fortnight they would collect our recycling. We gave that up for three reasons. First, I don’t like paying for recycling if I don’t have to. Second, we had to put it out sorted into four supermarket carrier bags (newspapers, glossy magazines, cans, glass) in an open box, and on more than one occasion I found the wind had taken the lightweight plastic box halfway down the street. I imagined the newspapers and magazines had gone the same way. It’s very windy round here, and open trash boxes are not the way forward. Third, having witnessed the collection of the sorted items, dumped together into the back of a lorry inside their plastic bags, I did doubt that it ended up anywhere other than a landfill site. Maybe I just saw them on a bad day, but I didn’t feel I wanted to continue paying for the service.

We now collect all our recycling in our garage, and once every now and again, load it into the minivan and take it to a recycling center. It’s an intriguing experience. The place is staffed by volunteers, whose average age must be in the 70s. How shaming that the lead is being taken by the older generation who have little personal stake in all this. One old lady sorts and assists, going from bin to bin slowly and painfully with her zimmer frame. You have to dump your recycling items into the appropriate bin, so it is quite a task, sorting out the different plastics and papers. They recycle everything in great detail – even the lids of milk containers. There is often a line of cars if you go on a Saturday, so a round trip can easily take an hour. Our kids quite enjoy sorting and dumping, so we sell it to them as a fun trip, but I suppose you have to be fairly committed to recycling to be bothered.

On the depressing side, this recycling center, though very admirable, is small. There is space for no more than a dozen cars to park and unload at one time. The bins are not much larger than the kind of bin you see in every supermarket car park in the UK. It serves a city of over 300,000. Does that tell you how much recycling activity there is here? On the optimistic side, I do believe that there is more awareness and activity now than when we arrived, less than 2 years ago. The school has set up a working group, the preschool collects plastic bags to recycle, Dillons has a bin at the entrance for Dillons bags. It’s not high on most people’s agenda, but the beginnings are there.

So Pig, to answer your question. No, I didn’t feel guilty about baggies, but I do (a bit) now. In my defence, I don’t use THAT many (how much Playmobil do you think I have?), and in the kitchen, is it any better to use cling film? You have made me stop and think, though, you and the commenters who wash and reuse their baggies. I have never been a washer and reuser of baggies, but henceforth I undertake to be so. There you are, lovely Bloggy Friends. You are slowly changing the world through your blogging. As for you, Pig, don’t tell me you weren’t very grateful for plastic bags on this occasion (make sure you read the 'Addendum'). And none of us would blame you at all for not recycling those ones...

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