For those of you who aren't aussies, Peter Cundall is a TV presenter of a show called Gardening Australia and he is extremely passionate about what he does. ( and I love him ! )
Well, yesterday I WAS Peter Cundall. I went to empty the food scraps and found myself yelling out " Gees I love compost. Have a look at this beautiful stuff". ( Aussies will be laughing)
It absolutely amazes me that our scraps turn into the earth.
I have always understood this process, but the speed at which it happens just blows me away. It really moved me because I suddenly had a huge permaculture wake up call. We really need to try and move towards that idea that anything that comes into our property stays on our property and gets reused or turned into soil. Then I looked into our garbage bin and saw all the things that won't turn into soil, won't regenerate and are not cyclic in nature. The garbage bin truck came and picked those things up today and took them out of sight, but they will lay there wherever they are put forever and never return to the earth. Forever is a very long time.
So... if I was to ONLY bring things onto our property that became part of the ongoing cycle, that is used then broken down and used in another format, what would I have to STOP bring home ?
That is such a difficulty question because the answer is things like milk, margarine, etc etc.
So....... the question remains. How am I going to get rid of all this plastic. There are only so many milk bottles that you can cut up or reuse etc. I would estimate that we would use about 4 2 litre bottles a week. That's 208 bottles a year. Hmmmmm I will definitely need to start buying the three litre bottles. I will also give the whole thing a lot more thought.
Bring back the milko with the reusable glass bottles - pppllllleeeeeeaaaaaassssssseeeee
6 comments:
LOL about the compost ;)
The plastic dilemma is something that I too have been thinking alot about lately.
Getting rid of plastic is a really hard thing to do. I have managed to cut down quite a bit but there are some things that it is impossible to buy unless it is packaged in some sort of plastic.
The problem is that people put rubbish in their bins and it is taken away but they don't realise that there is no such place as 'away' and that it will sit in the ground indefinitely.
I think a trip to the local tip should be compulsory for all school age kids so they can see where their waste ends up and that it's not pretty.
Great post and a timely reminder to me to be ever vigilant when I do my shopping to not bring this stuff into the house whenever possible.
Good advice :-) Your grandmother was a wise woman.
I've never frozen Anzacs before but it just occurred to me that it would be a great way of stopping my husband from eating a whole batch in one day.
I am struggling with this one too. Somehow I seem to lose sight of the plastic problem half way through my shopping and then I curse myself when I get home and see the rubbish in my shopping bags.
LOL!! I get excited about about germinated seeds and run around going woohoo!!!!
It is difficult trying to reduce those plastics isn't it ~ I aready have a cupboard full of empty milk containers:(
Those milk bottles drive me nuts! We go through 6 x 3L bottles each week. I'd love to go back to the old glass ones that the milkman delivered (and collected).
Wow! This post really hit home with me! Just yesterday I was marvelling at our compost bin, peering into its depths and imagining the lovely soil I would have in the Spring (I live in Canada so things take longer to break down here.) And then you mentioned the term, "not cyclic" and I thought, what a profound and elegant way to characterize what we have to change about how we humans live on/with this planet. Thanks for the inspiration!
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