Recycling

I have no problem with recycling - I was brought up to do it.  Rather like taking your rubbish home with you after a picnic (or whatever).  I religiously re-cycle everything I possibly can, taking it to one of the local charity shops or, if it isn't reusable, finding the appropriate skip.  And, like everyone else, I keep a bag beside the front door for all that junk mail!

Unfortunately I recently had a big problem.  When taking my junk mail and other appropriate bits and pieces to the skip I discovered that someone had dumped about 200 books (paper and hard backs) into the four skips.  I managed to retrieve about 100 but couldn't reach the others.  I left a note for the maintenance man and the next morning he managed to retrieve the rest of the undamaged books.  In total we saved about 200 books which are now stored in his shed.  Why stored there?  Because I cannot find a charity shop willing to come and collect them.

I'm still wondering what part of "Can you collect them?" they don't understand.  The popular reply is "Could you bring them?"  On one occasion I ironically replied, "Two at a time?"  "That would be fine," she responded.  I don't think so.  Think how many journeys that would be and I wouldn't do them all in one day and not necessarily more than one trip a week.

Forgive me for my naivety, but charity shops are operated by volunteers some of whom have cars.  What is the point of volunteering to help if you can't go and collect at least a few of the books?

Plastic bags:

So Europe is trying to dictate again on the subject of plastic shopping bags and saying that shops should charge us for them.  Bearing in mind that most of us use them as bin bags instead of wasting money on buying bin bags, that seems counter productive unless....

those politicians have shares in the companies that make plastic bags, of course.

Hey-ho!