30 May 2022

Monday

Today I did not meet any famous people nor did I witness a bank robbery.  There were no car accidents and I didn't have a hospital appointment. No home improvement plans were made and I did not book a holiday abroad. I didn't even go for a walk in the nearby countryside. No long lost friends came a knocking on my door and I didn't  read even one page of a book. It was just Monday. Nothing of any significance happened.

However, I erected a seven foot wigwam of bamboo canes and planted several runner bean plants around it. Then I planted a row of cauliflowers. All of these plants were given a generous watering to help them on their way. I also visited our local Tesco superstore where there is a bay for plastic recycling.

Council collections of material for recycling prohibit many plastic items so we gather all of our extra plastic waste in our  own bins and about once every six weeks I take this stuff to the recycling bay at Tesco. I  have been doing this for the past twenty years. Ominously, there's a sign there now that warns visitors the recycling facilities are set to end.

The sign mistakenly advises that our waste plastic should be picked up by council collection services but whoever wrote that sign had not done his or her homework. It is the same with most British councils. Very few of them encourage the collection of all plastic waste. Most citizens simply put their extra plastic in their general waste bins which in Sheffield we call our "black bins".

When I was a teenager, there was a very competent local rock band who never quite made it into the big time at national or international levels. They were called Nothineverappens and that's how some of our days  can be when nothing of any note happens. Just like today.

30 comments:

  1. How many people in this world would long for just an ordinary day right now. I laid tile and I worked also planted in the garden. I relished the quiet.

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  2. Well, according to your post quite a bit happened. You built a wigwam! You're not covering with canvas but a bean covering will grow. You've sounded off about plastic waste. I'd give you marks for being occupied.

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    1. Thank you for reading my homework Mr Kline.

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  3. We are lucky to have a recycling program in my city that makes it easy to recycle. My recycling bin is always much more full than my garbage bin each week when the trucks come to empty the bins that we set out on the curb on the night before pickup.

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    1. You put ALL your plastic in your recycling bin? That would be heavenly.

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  4. Our recycling doesn't allow "soft" plastics, such as the bags sliced bread comes in and the plastic supermarket bags and so on. We are supposed to collect those ourselves and take them to the designated bin at our local supermarket, but the twice I have done that, their bin is filled to overflowing with other peoples bags also stacked around it on the floor, so I just put the soft plastics in with the general waste now.

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  5. Such days gently flowing along can be so soothing, especially when on other days, we are confronted with numerous problems or at a particularly sad time in our lives.

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    1. As Jackson Browne and The Eagles sang - "Take it easy".

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  6. Uneventful days I call them. Sometimes they are the kind of days I need. No dramas or crises to contend with. Just potter through the day. Lovely!

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    1. I like the verb "to potter". You can't beat a nice day of pottering.

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  7. I like that kind of day. It is quite soothing.

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    1. If all days were action packed and memorable we would be overcome. Nice to have gentle "nothineverappens" days in between.

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  8. Not sure what you mean by " extra" plastic. Surely it is either plastic or not plastic?
    We put anything vaguely plasticky in the black wheelie, along with glass bottles and tins and it gets taken. ( our general waste goes in a brown wheelie.)....Why can't the country all get together and have the same bins for the same rubbish. When I was looking out for an old lady some years ago, I had terrible problems with her carers putting rubbish in the wrong bins.....I had to fish it out again!! They presumably came from different local areas that had different systems.

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    1. Here's what Veolia Sheffield say about plastic in our brown bins: "We can only accept plastic bottles in your brown bin, if your bin contains other plastics it may not be emptied."

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    2. My next door neighbour works for Veolia. He monitors the gasses coming out of the ground at landfill sites. He puts garden waste in his brown bin, but everything else goes into his general waste bin and goes to landfill. I have never asked him why he doesn't separate it.

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  9. Just you average Monday then!
    Well, it's Tuesday now, and I can report that yesterday I forgot to take my plastic waste to the bin in my rush to get to Lidl, to join the queue before they opened. I wanted to buy a handheld, battery operated, hedge and shrub trimmer - advertised on sale yesterday. By the time I'd fought my way through the crowds (at 9.05!) there were only three left. Back home I read the instructions, assembled the thing and then waited while it charged up. By the time the little green light was flashing it was far too hot to work outdoors - and I'd gone off the idea!

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    1. You can trim your bush tomorrow Carol!

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  10. Anonymous9:36 am

    I rather like days where nothing happens. I feel such a sense of achievement.

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    1. I like your ironic twist there Andrew.

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  11. "Tell me why I don't like Mondays?" The Boomtown Rats. "Manic Monday" The Bangles.

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    1. I'll tell you why you don't like Mondays Geldof. It's because you go to bed too late on a Sunday night ye lazy fecker!

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  12. I liked your day.
    You got some things done and that's good.
    We don't like inside the City of Camden so no one picks up our garbage or recycling [plastic, cans, cardboard] so we take it to the local recycling center every two weeks. It's a chore but i like the idea of recycling.

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    1. I wish I could follow the material we supply for recycling - see where it ends up.

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  13. I had a similar Monday. It was delightful.

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    1. I'm busy, busy, busy doin' nothin'
      Doin' nothin', that's the life for me
      For when I'm doin' nothin', I'm busy doin' somethin'
      Somethin' that suits me to a tee

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  14. Our plastic recycling has gone back and forth over the years. Currently they have been pretty lenient and pick up everything we toss in the recycling container (blue bins for us), but years ago, they would sort them and toss the unacceptable items all over your lawn.

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    1. Okay. They TAKE it all but what happens to it? Is it really recycled?

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    2. I hope so but that is probably being naïve. I know we don't have a recycling processing center nearby so it all gets bundled up and trucked elsewhere to be processed.

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  15. I've become skeptical of recycling overall. I've seen articles saying a lot of it goes in the incinerators anyway because there's not enough of a secondary market for some materials (like plastic and even glass). I'm not saying we shouldn't do it -- because you never know -- but the sad fact is that a lot of stuff we put in our recycling actually doesn't get recycled.

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  16. I know I left a comment here :(

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Mr Pudding welcomes all genuine comments - even those with which he disagrees. However, puerile or abusive comments from anonymous contributors will continue to be given the short shrift they deserve. Any spam comments that get through Google/Blogger defences will also be quickly deleted.

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