I thought I was going spontaneously combust when I arrived home to find a dumped cardboard box next to our wall. Now living on a corner plot brings with it many a problem, mainly of the doggy doos variety, but I would never have laid money on the dreaded R word bringing our house into horrors – Recycling – ARRGGGHHH.

The said box on closer inspection was full, not of litter and this is too good to have made up, it was full of council leaflets on ? You’ve guessed it recycling. They were to convince all us council tax payers to fork out X amount a year to have our garden refuse collected, encouraging us to use recycling banks (which are located in places only accessible by car ???) and so the bullying continues.

As I picked up my phone to dial the number which was conveniently at hand, I noticed from my kitchen window a van stopping to collect the contents (2 vans thus far for one box, very carbon neutral I don’t think) and to add insult the box was left behind for the street cleaners (yep another van) to get it the next day and of course they were probably cursing me for leaving it there.

Now we regular recycle thanks to brainwash TV otherwise known as cbeebies. They are constantly pressurising young minds to worry about the planet rather than whether they can get away with picking their noses. My three year old is more aware of what can and can’t go in the bin than me and I recycle purely on the basis that I might get put on the naughty spot for putting a yoghurt pot in the normal bin. Mind you all the TV experts say a minute on the naughty spot for each year of life so a 32 minute sit down could be worth it.

We don’t even really watch all that much TV and this is the situation we find our selves in. Again this is all hardly eco friendly they should be getting the kids to turn the TV off and play a board game by candle light to save the world instead.
Even the Christmas trees had us all in a tangle – “dispose ecofriendly” this year. 1) plant it in your garden – but I just paid some one £400 to have the garden cleared.
2) take it to the council recycling plant – great- wait, so in the car, then into an electric machine, then package and transport in a van the chips and I then hoover out the card for 2 hours. Is this all offset?

It is all complete madness, but hey I still do it.