The Dangers of Recycling!

A few months ago I noticed I was limping because of a pain in my right foot. The whole foot felt as though it was on fire & really hurt when I walked. My chiropractor pulled the affected foot about & asked if there was anything different in my lifestyle. After a very long, hard think, I realized what had caused it. Recycling!

Since Sam & family had come to live with us, there seemed to be much more to recycle.  All his beer & lager cans had been stamped on to make them more compact, using my right foot. (After a course of treatment, the foot pain eased, but this cost a fortune!) As we give all aluminium to a church scheme sponsoring a little girl in India, I was becoming embarrassed by the sudden influx of beer cans & tried to arrange them at the bottom of the bag, hidden from view. Didn't want people thinking that Harry or I were were verging on alcoholism! Now I use a little hammer to flatten the tins & my foot is back to normal. For people like us, who have no garage, recycling can present problems. Our kitchen is overwhelmed by little bags, boxes & bins, each packed with something or other that we have been urged to save by the Council.

The large wheelie bins are only emptied once a fortnight, so we really do need to recycle or there'd be no room left for real rubbish & anything left outside the bin will not be collected.Just looking at some of the houses round here, with small front gardens filled with bags of rubbish, makes it obvious that they are multi let homes. The bins  overflowing with rubbish do attract rats. (I will write about MY rat very soon!)

The Council also provides a box for a variety of things, including paper, glass, foil, tins, spectacles, shoes, batteries & textiles. This is emptied every week & believe me, is heavy when filled! We have separate compost containers provided for house hold food waste & I also have two compost bins in the small garden, but have stopped using these for now, on account of the large number of  fruit flies that somehow or other find their way into the kitchen. For a small yearly rent we have another large wheelie that we can fill with garden waste & cardboard. All this is made into compost & probably sold at a profit by the Council. Bit of a cheek that!

All this recycling is very time consuming & you have to be fairly fit. If you don't get a hernia or slipped disc lifting the heavy boxes, or damaged feet crushing the drinks cans, then you might forget what goes where or which day things are collected. You really need to be with it! Oh, & I still have to walk half a mile to the nearest plastic bank as the Council does not yet pick up plastic for some obscure reason. Is our city unique with all this nonsense? And why don't we get a reward for all the hard work?