Spent the last weekend at the BC Womens Show at the Pearkes Centre. It was way too nice out for people to be stuck indoors. The few that did attend were all very interested in products made from recycled materials (known in the ‘trade’ as ‘recyclates’). Surprise and delight being the main reactions - yes, recycled can be elegant, trendy and sophisticated.
My Bokashi composter is working a treat. If it’s the 2nd Saturday this week then it must be recycling day down at the Fernwood Community - that’s for my bags
of plastic bags and tetra packs (Recycle2shop sells Christmas ornaments made from those Tetra Packs). These pretty vases/T-light covers are remade from coloured recycled plastic bags for sale on our ebay store.
Talk about plastic bags - the big controversy in the recycling world at the moment is all about biodegradeable plastic. Unfortunately, biodegradeable bags cannot be recycled into anything and they contaminate plastic recyclates making them unuseable. ‘Biodegradeable’ only breaks down if exposed to oxygen and our landfills are not known for their oxygen content. Landfills are anaerobic - that’s why they produce the greenhouse gas, methane. So the answer to plastic bags contaminating the earth is not to try to solve the problem by using a substitute plastic. Brown paper is at least compostable. We need lateral thinkers to solve this conundrum.