Rubbish-free year: Week 37

On the odd occasion that Waveney and I go out for dinner we can generally be found at a Chinese restaurant imaginatively named The Great Wall of China.

When we went a few weeks ago we ended up with a lot of food left over and were about to ask for it to be packaged up to take home when we spied the styrofoam takeaway containers.

The ethical dilema of whether it is best to have perfectly good food thrown out versus utilizing non-biodegradable or recyclable containers was easily solved in light of our rubbish free year.

However, the experience obviously made an impact because returning last Sunday, we were about to walk out the door of our house when we remembered to grab some containers and consequently we both had our lunches catered for the next day. It has made me wonder whether it might be a good idea to keep some containers in the car for such situations - but of course we should be on our bikes

Speaking of cars, ours has finally added an item to our rubbish bag. On a hot norwest day here in Christchurch our car decided to overheat. It soon became apparent that the top radiator hose had perished. I attempted to shorten the hose but this was unsuccessful and so a new one was bought and the old one added to the bag.

I'm not sure what alternative uses exist for a reinforced perished rubber hose, so if you have any suggestions I would love to hear them. In the meantime it has been added to our rubbish pile which has just pushed us out of the shoebox we have been storing our rubbish in for the past nine and half months.