farmdoc's blog post number 208

I do it. I’ve done it for years. Recycling, that is. A big wooden box I made sits in the pantry, and all the recycling goes in to it: paper, metal, plastic, glass. Every 2-3 months, when the box gets full, I take its contents to the tip – sorry, waste transfer station – where I decant each item into the appropriate bin. No doubt doing all this makes me feel virtuous. But I don’t know how much actually gets recycled. And hypothetically if all of it was recycled, it’d be only scratching the surface of our planet’s massive environmental problems. All of which is, for me, the backdrop to National Recycling Week which runs from last Monday to next Sunday. Judging from the website, it’s full of activities and educational opportunities, all coming to us care of commercial interests which profit from recycling. Thomas L Friedman, in Hot, Flat, and Crowded, labels events such as National Recycling Week, Walk Against Warming, and Earth Hour, as environmental parties – whereas what is really needed, what is essential and critical and vital, he says, is an environmental revolution. As I wrote yesterday, this overdue and inevitable revolution is the responsibility of governments. In the meantime, the parties are okay as long as they’re seen for what they are. Will I continue recycling? Yes. I’m too obsessive not to.