The first thing you notice when you move in with an eco-freak is that the place is thick with Germanic notices: ‘Clean tin cans only’, ‘Flush on the second Thursday of each month’ and ‘Don’t you Dare!’
If you intend to remain on good terms with your new partner, you vill obey, ja.
The first thing you notice when you move in with an eco-freak is that the place is thick with Germanic notices: ‘Clean tin cans only’, ‘Flush on the second Thursday of each month’ and ‘Don’t you Dare!’
If you intend to remain on good terms with your new partner, you vill obey, ja.
It feels as if you have moved in with a premenstrual fundamentalist tigress who has new-age ideas on how you should treat her cubs.
When you offer to do the washing up it’s usually because it’s the polite thing to do. Yet you soon find that the pile of dirty dishes contains not only plastic bottle tops and ban-the-bomb notices, but whisper thin bits of clingwrap that need to be washed and dried before being consigned to the Clean Mixed Plastic bin for recycling next to the fridge. Then you get dragged off to meetings where beardies and wierdies discuss how builders who chuck their rubble into nearby gullies are stuffing up the waterways and killing little animals and plants. They put the fear of God into you about where your kids will find drinkable water in 20 years and tell you how Grahamstown manages to lose 35% of the water it receives annually. It’s true, I tell you.
Where, you might ask, does this water go? I’ll tell you – it just leaks out of a reticulation system that needs proper maintenance and doesn’t get it.
Another thing is trying to get water test results from the Makana council, which so far has taken a bunch of environmentalists close on five years. These figures are meant to be open to public scrutiny on a daily basis. So unless the greenies and beardies make enough fuss and someone eventually takes note, we are all going to be dead or potty pretty soon.
Which brings me back to my eco-freak partner. She is as green as they come and makes an embarrassingly loud noise at such meetings. I naturally attend each one and show a modicum of interest in the hopes of maintaining my status in her lair. But actually, it’s all rubbing off on me a bit and I am starting to feel that some of the flags are worth waving. For instance there is this business of garbage bags. Most of us put out one or two a week – say 75 a year. These are carted off to some vile stinking corner of the town where a bulldozer squashes the broken fridges and used condoms into the ground and the wind swishes the Checkers packets up against the pony club fence. They also decorate the fences for miles around, or entangle themselves in the intestines of cattle who die a miserable death, bloated into smelly balloons on the roadside.
I met a knowledgeable little Englishman the other day while walking the dogs. He tells me that every bit of plastic that has ever been made is still around – and will be for another million lifetimes or something. Of course you can shrug your shoulders and think – there’s not much I can do about that. Or you can actually do something about it.
My Nikki does the two-bag thing – which everyone should apparently be doing. She bungs all her bottles and plastic and dog-food cans into clear plastic rubbish bags. They go out on Mondays next to the black bags. It all goes to the tip where the clear bags are opened and the contents sorted into plastic for making polytimber which becomes park benches that last for ever.
Tin cans, bottle tops and so on go to another scrap guy who makes them into VWs. Fruit and veg waste goes into the worm-farm, which I will tell you about some other time. It seems that worms are vegetarians and also a bit fussy about bitter things like citrus, onions and chillies. So this stuff goes in the ordinary compost bin and the bacon rind goes on the bird feeder.
Where does all this get us?
Well the 75 black-bags of rubbish that you put out every year diminish to – take a guess. Four bags. That’s right four.The worm farm leaks out a juice, which you tap off from the drum once a week and put on your favourite plants as a special treat. Once a year you tip out the worm farm goo and chuck it on your lawn or cabbages to make them super healthy. Finally you end up with a smug grin because you know you are making the planet better for the grandkids. And best of all you are in the eco-freak’s good books.
