Everybody’s talking rubbish
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This is what I love most about our zero waste challenge; everybody has something to say about rubbish!
From our neighbours, to shop keepers, to checkout girls, to friends and even perfect strangers, everyone has something to say.
We’ve had an amazing response when we’ve explained to people what we are doing. Even those who have no interest at all in their rubbish, find our idea intriguing and can’t help get pulled into a conversation.
I never preach to people (well ok then, most of the time I’m good), tell them what they *ought* to be doing (probably because I know that if people do that to me I automatically turn the other way; I’m pretty bloody minded like that), but invariably people start asking questions and showing interest. Even if it’s an Elephant Man type curiosity and a good yarn to tell at the pub later it doesn’t really bother me.
I see it as planting seeds. You sprinkle some seeds on a piece of ground and some grow. Others die and some come up a couple of years later. Or as Neil from the Young Ones once put it so beautifully, “We plant the seed, nature grows the seed, we eat the seed “.
It’s like that with ideas and conversations. If the timing and conditions are right, the thought will grow into action. And if not, then they won’t.
Thinking about it, it’s like anything in our lives.
Any ideas, plans or goals; there are occasions when everything falls into place. The right people turn up, we read something at a specific time in our lives or we have just the right conversation to allow things to align in a positive way.
We literally call it ‘being in the right place at the right time’. Others call it coincidence, some call it fate, many call it luck. It doesn’t matter what we choose to call it; the results are the same.
So it was the same for us. I’d had a few attempts at slimming our bin in the past, but had rapidly fallen off the wagon. It was too hard, I wasn’t prepared to make the needed lifestyle changes, Mr Green didn’t have the interest to support me and I wasn’t committed or determined enough to see it through. It all felt too big and overwhelming.
But three short weeks ago the timing *was* right. I read a story in the news about plastic and how it was effecting marine life. As I was relaying the story to Mr Green about animals who were dying from ingesting plastic or about birds that had become entangled and died he went silent.
The colour drained from his face and I could see the clear shock of it all effecting him in a very profound way.
From that moment on he said we were not to take another carrier bag from the shops. From there his interest grew so that when Almost Mrs A challenged us to our own zero waste challenge the bud was ready to blossom and grow.
And here we are, sewing seeds of our own as we take steps through our challenge. I’ve been fortunate to meet so many wonderful people through this site. The amount of support and encouragement we’ve had has been phenomenal and we are truly grateful for every comment and conversation we’ve had.
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It is brilliant isn’t it, it’s a subject that touches everyone. I really love the new site layout by the way. I thought it was great before, but it looks really fab now. 🙂
Thanks for your kind compliment Almost Mrs Average! Because the site has grown over the past month we felt we needed a way to organise the content better. Hence our new look! It was pretty hairy doing this on a live site, but I think we are nearly there. Let us know if something needs fixing.
It’s all abut education – the more people know about what actually happens to what they throw out then the more they will care. Eventually, step by step we can change the world.
I’m just concerned it’s taking far too long.
It will happen Sarah (I know we would like it to have been yesterday:) ). More and more people are becoming aware of the situation. And for those who aren’t, I think new laws and regulations will force changes.
I was reading today about an area where fines and ‘recycling officers’ (forgive all the terminology, I’m tired this evening) have been piloted in an area in London. They were ensuring that residents are putting something out for recycling every week / fortnight and if they’re not, they are paying them visits to help them recycle more.
Mrs G x