I love recycling, I feel virtuous every time I rinse out my milk containers and chuck them in. I love that there is a place for my newspapers, empty cereal boxes etc I do have a problem with egg cartons – they really need to find a home away from recycling as it’s such a waste –maybe someone can enlighten me on where I could take these.
But before recycling existed, before there was council departments employed to solve the recycling issue, before there was ARK or Red Cross who do a fabulous job, there was other forms of recycling which just evolved through word of mouth or necessity.
As I was lucky enough to grow up on a farm I saw recycling at its finest. There was no expensive compost bins – what didn’t go to the chooks went into the garden where tomatoes would sprout a short time later. Milk came from the cow – yes it still does –but it came directly from the cow into the milking machines and you filled a bucket and when it was gone you rinsed and repeated. There were bottles used in the cities and towns but they were rinsed and recycled back to the milkman.
We ate our own beef so no beef trays or Styrofoam. If we ate chicken we had already chopped its head off, plucked it and boiled it so no chicken bags. We ate our own eggs. We either grew our own veges or got them from the neighbour so no plastic bags. Mum made our sweets so no packets. We ate fruit in season which we often grew or again got from the neighbours or swapped for ours. Nobody ate takeaways, we only had chocolate on special occasions, and all our clothes were made by our Mums.
We had a wood stove so we used the timber from the farm to fuel it so Mum could cook and we could get hot water. Although Dad was the main wood chopper, Mum could swing an axe as good as anyone and would bring in the kindling and wood so we could eat. Looking back we were so incredibly lazy. Dad was/is a great bbq cook and he also caught us a lot of fresh fish from Rainbow Beach.
Cereal boxes and any paper products were burnt in a fire pit outside. The only thing I can remember having to dispose of was the odd tin can from maybe spaghetti, baked beans or the obligatory Milo later on – but they usually found a purpose for nails, screws or tied together with string to be used as phones. They were actually our burglar alarm one year when there was a prowler in the neighbourhood. We strung them together along the second top step so when the baddie hit them they would make a noise and alert Dad so he could deal with them.
Our lunch was wrapped in greaseproof paper and in a container – no muesli bars or poppers. We only had instant coffee or tea leaves and there was an art to making the perfect cuppa. Often we would cut out the inside of Christmas cards and recycle the card back to rellies. We got our library books sent to use in brown greaseproof paper and string from the Qld Library in Brisbane and we would devour them and return for new ones.
Soft drink bottles were collected and money was given in return, and there were no media campaigns to make the public aware you got money back on empty bottles – we just knew. The same as we knew how to make a phone call for free from the public telephone box.
We never had bins with a Green Lid, a Yellow Lid, a Blue Lid, or a Red Lid – we lived simply and it was just natural to recycle. I love to see people that recycle now who do it because of their passion to live off the grid. They have not had the benefit of the knowledge we gained growing up. They have had to wing it and I think it a great honest way to live. I know recycling in a necessary evil and Councils undoubtedly do a wonderful job of it. The first time I visited the ‘dump’ and recycling section at the Sunshine Coast I actually took photos – it was such a streamlined, clean, organised, operation and you were terrified you would do something wrong. I just think as you get older you come full circle and realise what is important and what is excess and I take my hat off to previous generations who led the way.
