Wednesday night. Sorting through the recycling. Bin day tomorrow. I couldn’t help think about Dubai, where stadia are air conditioned and they manufacture snow for an all-year-round ski slope. What, I wondered, am I doing this for? Is it really going to save the planet if my baked bean can gets into the green bag and the cardboard packaging it came in goes in the ‘paper and card’ box?
There were slugs too, today. They were sort of curling around each other at the bottom of the glass box, where two empty ginger beer bottles rolled around. I just carried the whole thing to the front of the garden and dumped it by the pavement.
It’s always such a sticky, icky job. You have to rummage in bags of old packaging and tins, plastic bottles and ring pulls - just to separate them. Everything’s cold and congealing, and it smells horrible - like all of last week’s dinners suddenly swilling in your face. Urgh. Dubai. I looked up at the clouds. Sunlight was pooling through them, just gilding the soft edges and falling in gentle beams.
“Whatever you do,” said a voice, deep within, sweet and strong as the Spring, “Do it with all your heart. Do it for me.”
I had a little smile to myself. I can’t change Dubai. I don’t live in a world where I can pay someone else to do all our icky stuff, like Taylor Swift and Beyoncé do. I don’t even know if the recycling makes it to the recycling centre without it being needlessly jumbled and sorted at the depot, or whether it’s really worth sticking my hand in a grotty bag and pulling out dripping bits of stinky cardboard plastered with raspberry and nine-day yoghurt. I don’t know. I guess I know what’s in my heart though, and whether it’s effective or not, I do want to make a difference.
Perhaps I’m making a difference to me. Golly, that’s pretentious. Moments ago I was grumbling, now I’m treating the recycling like some sort of holy sacrament? Well, anyway, that’s that job done for another two weeks. Plus I saw the sunset! They have that in Dubai?
Yeah I know. Of course they do. Well, good for them.
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