The footpath on my street is littered with the discards of the white van people. It's inorganic collection time and the neat piles of old junk put out over the weekend have been ferreted through and spread about. Sure, it's an eyesore, but I don't mind that much. Just think of it as annual community recycling, rather than out-of-suburb casing of your neighbourhood.
Over the years, I've salvaged the odd thing myself, although I don't cruise the streets with a trailer. But I do look when I drive by because the inorganic collection is a great chance to check out what not to buy if you want your garden, office and house furniture to have any longevity.
Amazingly, our household hasn't put out anything out this collection, mostly thanks to a whopping clean-out last year. The suitcase with the dodgy lock will doubtless have to go next year, but I'm hoping it will hold together for a bit longer.
Week-by-week I contribute more than my fair share to the council recycling collection. I blame my job as beauty editor, which involves plenty of deliveries in large boxes of bubble wrap. Perhaps because I feel guilty about this, I take a benign view of the roadside scavengers. Although they are often needlessly messy they must surely cut the amount the council has to haul away and dump. Better to re-use than discard, as we all too often do.
As New Zealanders we could definitely do more to cut back our household waste and the littering of our landscape. I'm not getting all preachy on you, it's the guilt talking. I don't compost, I don't take enough re-usable bags to the supermarket and every fortnight a stack of flattened cardboard boxes and branded bags hit my patch of pavement.
