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The duty of every right minded, forward thinking citizen of the world is to recycle; that is an accepted fact across the planet.

The theory of recycling waste matter is widely recognized as the only way to conserve energies & resources for future generations & save our world from certain extinction. I accept that, I’ve no problem with it & I’m very happy to go along with all the arguments which support recycling in all its forms.

What I can not accept, is the amount of floor space it takes up in my kitchen. There is a bin for plastic, a bin for paper, & a bin for stuff I can not make up my mind about because it looks like paper but behaves like plastic & feels like fabric. There is a bin for glass bottles which is four times the size of the bins for everything else because we drink a lot in my house. (Sometimes we get drunk & confused enough to place plastic bottles in the glass bin because the contents have the same effect.)

There is a bin for metal caps, which is tiny because we tend to prefer cans for beer & soft drinks, & there is a bin for corks which is overflowing (we are saving them to build a boat & at the rate we drink wine around here we should have a fleet by the winter).

There is a big plastic hanger full of plastic supermarket bags & another full of thicker plastic bags which we use for garden waste, which we also submit for recycling. In the corner there is a enormous pile of magazines that nobody remembers to take to the paper skip on the road into town, & it therefore resembles a paper igloo. I comfort myself that in the event of the Bank repossessing the house, we’re fully equipped to construct a papier mache three bedroomed detached.

My kitchen measures about fifteen square  metres & at least nine of them are dedicated to saving the world.

Jan Gamm writes reflections on life with an emphasis on world travel. She has lived in many countries & traveled extensively in the Far East, the Middle East, America, South America & throughout the South Pacific. She writes for fun & for money whenever she can manage it.

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