I love the countryside - its sights, smells and away from it allness. Having said that l think we give all this mud, trees, rocks, insects and animal life too much reverence - something we should see as a resource rather than something to be preserved as is and forever. Environmentalist thinking seeks to do just that - put a stop to real development and settle for, or hark back to, some imagined equilibrium with nature, minimize our footprint and then tread warily.
Wakefiled Metropolitan District Council's 4Rs campaign takes this up - reduce, re-use, recycle, repair.
I was brought up in a make-do-and-mend environment, grew to love the great outdoors, became a teenage vegetarian and avid reader of John Seymour's Self sufficiency books (1). Like many others, the great escape from the ratrace beckoned - if today it was the allotment then tomorrow it was most certainly a farflung croft. . .
. . . growing your own food, rearing your own livestock, the natural cycle and handicrafts. Idyllic, the work seemingly its own reward and the chance to sit on some red-skyed hilltop basking in some romantic oneness with it all at the end of a back-breaking day's toil. But then the quest to make it all work seemed to involve writing books for romantic urbanites with evermore ridiculous advice as to how to be more self sufficient.
Such pearls as chopping wood for fire is of double benefit as you get warm chopping it as well as burning it. And another being a way of getting free hot water on a sunny day - chopping the bottoms out of bottles, sliding these over a hosepipe with slow-running water passing through and goodbye gas bill. Other heating beauties were the use of woodburning stoves (no, not the trees!) or peat - erm? . . . ancient flora and fauna. In the end it all appears to be 'let's see how many things we can produce for ourselves' - self-sufficiency for the sake of it; a microcosm of life in one family plot, all very nice hard labour and getting nowhere fast. If ever subject to a risk assessment most allotments and smallholdings would be shut down. Although many an opening for insurance services, licensing and hot air carbon offsetting schemes.
The four Rs prove to be just as much romantic erm? . . . rubbish really.
For starters 'reduce' would seem to be at odds with the consumerist nature of even our uncertain society. We do like to shop and, considering Big Business is becoming unfashionable, retail looks to feature heavily in most's plans.
Even the most ardent environmentalist benefits from an abundance of consumer goods and services, most pay lipservice and are well stocked up even if it is with organic 'alternatives'.
'Recycle'
I hate rubbish. Kids casually dropping litter as they idle along their way, bad boy racers chucking MacDonalds/KFC/etc. packaging out of their car windows, man-made detritus strewn along river banks . . . . and the lack of bins in public places. The last point first noticed umpteen years ago in Leeds rail station. Nowhere to put an apple core. Pocket? Walk around with it in my hand until l find a bin? Yeah, right.
Noticing the same lack of bins in Wakefield Westgate station l was informed by a very dapper station attendant that bins were no longer provided due to Terrorism. Hmm . .
It gets worse, in London we have the anally retentive bin inspectors making sure us punters put our rubbish in the correct bin - or risk a hefty fine. Apparently someone recently received a £5o fine for putting a letter in a street litter bin and obstructing other litter. Some people ought to get proper jobs.
l do hate litter and am not opposed to recyclng per se. One of the last Tomorow's World programmes l saw featured a massive processing machine that with use of magnets, cyclones, blowers and filters, etc. seperated household wastes into a few basic elements, all of which were apparently useful. The technophobe l was thought that like the washing machine/tumble dryer combo of the time this was a snarl-up waiting to happen. True, they did and even full scale industrial processes have their breakdowns and hold-ups where one operation failure holds up the whole process - but also provides a chance to get ahead with other parts of the operation. Likewise modern machines like the car carry many interconnected operations; complex machinery works and even with down time is superior to previous operations.
Instead though recycling is done inefficiently in the home. Every process carried out indepently - washing, seperating, storing and transporting to the correct bin and arguably wastes more resources, time and energy than is saved by recycling.
And what of the end products? Aluminium (and possibly plastics and glass) maybe the only real candidate as all the other stuff is likely produced cheaper or more efficiently from raw materials. Much of the other stuff is recycled into material that then has to have a use found for it or is a compromise or expensive - and thus requiring our extra labour to purchase; our labours seemingly the only thing considered to be abundant.
Consider that all of the American waste of the 21st century will fit into a single landfill, using just 26% of Woodward County in Oregon. Of the entire US landmass, the landfill would take up about one-12,000th or less than 0.009 percent (2). That's America and without using other methods of waste disposal.
'Reuse' covers quite some remit - everything from our houses, body parts and materials. To the homeowner it can be any number of tips from Viz or erm . . women's mags. Anyone familiar with the hoarding of things that may come in handy will be blessed with sheds, attics and/or cellars full of things that can be repaired or used for something else. lf you can find, fix or match them up that is. Frustrating, arduous and inefficient.
The beachcomber/skiprats amongst us may pick up the odd find or draw some personal pleasure out of fixing something up or improving it. But then for that one there are plenty of others that disappoint, many an oddly patched up item and nothing matching.
lt is interesting being inventive but any product worth fixing usually becomes mass produced, has many forms and develops and older stuff becomes obsolete. The original intentions behind extending something's use being to make a saving become lost and the path taken becomes the focus.
Part of the argument seems to concern the cheapness of an item and its disposability, that nothing is built to last. . . .
tbc . . .
(1)
http://www.wakefield.gov.uk/Environment/WasteServices/facts.htm(2)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0751364428/qid=1137940226/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_3_2/026-8287842-2278834http://homepage.eircom.net/~odyssey/Politics/Quotes/Lomborg.htmlhttp://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article340238.ecehttp://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CA841.htm
