donderdag 21 november 2013

You can tell a lot about people by the sort of rubbish they throw away...


I have just dropped my youngest one off at peuterspeelzaal (playschool). Over the last few days more and more boxes have been accumulating around certain houses. 

Sofie and I walk past them today - today must be pick up day because there are mountains of boxes and other stuff outside of some people's houses.

I am not uber green: I wish I could do more: I want to insulate our house because that is the first thing you should do - don't waste energy in the first place. We recycle, we re-use, we repair. 

I stupidly thought after hearing for years within Nottingham City Council about how fantastic the Dutch are at biking everywhere that they are too environmentally minded. But I am slowly seeing that Dutch society is not that green.

One indication: I am walking past houses and looking enviously at their rubbish. Almost all of it could be used again by someone with a screwdriver or someone that has little money or doesn't mind re-using. 

I see a pink balance bike; I see the biggest box of coloured wooden bricks that I have ever seen; I see 6 black plastic garden chairs (OK, not that fashionable but if you have no garden chairs at all, they are better than nothing!), two lovely tapestry cushions, boxes of shoes, chest of drawers, boxes of books!! All scattered around different houses: so it wasn;t just one thoughtless family: it was all of them. 

There were obviously items waiting to be collected that couldn't be repaired so I have less problem seeing them go to our district heating, removing what metal that can be recycled and then burning the rest to provide heat for a good part of Breda. 

I moaned about it to the husband when I got back. He was unusually still home at 9am. He stated that don't be silly, they come round with a wagon and take what can be recycled or re-used first. No, they do not. I have seen this massacre happening before.

The same bin lorry that takes our weekly recycling and household rubbish away comes down the street ( or one very similar) and takes the 'rubbish'away. The staff will pick up each of those items -re-usable, repairable or not - and will throw each one of them into the crusher where they will be crushed. 

This is not only a waste of money but also adding to the unneccessary pile of rubbish and creaping carbon footprint of all of us.Each thing that could be re-used or recycled that is thrown away, means that those are then not available for someone else or to be made into something else - which inevitably leads to more resource use. 

So along with not doing enough to reduce energy waste/use here in our area (it may be the same elsewhere in the Netherlands), the local council seems not to be doing anything about encouraging re-use or discouraging throwing away reusable goods. The service to pick up items from your house is free, regardless of what you are throwing away.

Happily at least I walked past some of those houses to pick my daughter up; the balance bike was gone, as were the tapestry cushions: someone was doing a little bit of re-using of their own it seems, well done!




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