The Need to Recycle

Everywhere we turn these days we are lectured to save resources and recycle, something I to be honest could not be bothered to do. Yes I know I should be ashamed. Of late though I have become very self-conscious of my ignorance and so started to recycle my domestic waste and it has made me feel really good. Every week in my household of two adults one dog and a cat we put out on average four bags of rubbish for collection. Now we have storage boxes for plastic, metal and glass with the residues of kitchen waste and paper going into the compost bin and we now put out just one bag of rubbish for collection a month. No more cats and foxes wripping open our rubbish, no more rushing out at 7am to beat the bin men and a much cleaner conciense.

On Wednesday 13th June 2007 however I went to Gardener’s World live and had the pleasure of talking to Charlie Dimmock who is clearly passionate about recycling and being environmentally aware. She showed me many products that are available using recycled plastics, rubber tyres and much more and showed me that recycled products do not mean ugly products.

You might then think that it stops there and there is nothing further you can do, but there is another hotly debated topic that affects our environment and that is the use of peat based products. Having worked in the Garden Centre industry for several years I have seen the glutenous demand for peat by gardener’s and their refusal to use alternative products. Their reason? Alternatives are not as good, they dry out too quickly or they just don’ look the same, I’ll stick with what I know works. Again Charlie Dimmock explained that yes, a few years ago this was possibly true, but in the last three years peat free products have improved and in test trials they level peg with peat based products in the properties they offer the garden. Therefore the only thing that is holding us back from moving away from peat based products is our ability to change our opinions. What about the price I hear you say, peat is cheaper! If you look around it isn’t really that much cheaper and alternatives are pretty much the same price as ordinary compost products, however, I will leave you with this thought. If we were to put in a pot the money we saved buying peat products instead of peat substitutes, would it be enough to undo the damage peat extraction has done?

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Written by Day Lily on 2007/06/13 | Permalink to this article