Is Recycling Really A New Idea?

in Silver Bloggers2 years ago (edited)

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There is no doubt that recycling has become a buzzword in todays society, and for good reason. We only have to look around at the amount of waste today's society produces, and its effect on our environment, to realise just how important it is for us to recycle as much as we can. Added to that, resources are finite. If we keep using resource at the rate we are using them, without recycling as much as possible, we will run out. So, all in all, recycling is important.

Image Credit Ivabalk -Pixabay

But is the concept of recycling really a new idea? Growing up in the 1960s and 70s there was actually quite a bit of recycling going on. Take glass for instance, if you bought a bottle of pop or beer you paid a deposit on the bottle which was given back to you when you returned it. My friends and I would often collect bottles to take back to the shop to get the deposits back. This helped to enhance our pocket money. In those days milk was delivered to your door in glass bottles, the bottles were collected by the milkman everyday, they were washed and reused. Even the transport the milkmen used was relatively environmentally friendly as they were, for the most part, electric vehicles. These vehicles, which were called milk floats, were a common sight in our streets. They weren't always popular as they were extremely slow.

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Image Credit Brian Snelson Flickr

We also had a pig bin to collect all our food waste in. A local pig farmer would called the contents of the pig bin and the contents were used to make feed for his pigs. I guess this practice stopped due to health concerns. But at least it meant food waste was put to good use. I'm extremely careful about wasting food to this day. I rarely throw food away, if something is slightly out of date I use the look and sniff test. So far i've come to no harm. then there is always the waste disposal unit called our dog!

The other thing i remember from my childhood was the Rag and Bone Man. He would go around the street in a horse and cart, yes this still happened in the 60s and early 70s, shouting "Any old rags", he would collect unwanted clothes, shoes, furniture, scrap metal - anything that could be reused. I think he used to pay a small amount of money for it. I can remember as a child people going out with a shovel to collect the dung his horse left to but around their roses!

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Tony 1212, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Most people in Britain didn't have much in the way of processions at that time, particularly working class people, so most people would make do and mend. Clothes tended to be worn until they were worn out. I can remember my mum patching my clothes and darning holes in my socks. Even when they passed wearable use they became clothes to use around the house. People tended to try and fix things rather than throwing them out. Nearly everything could be repaired.

The common narrative that is wheeled out today is that we are all responsible for the huge amount of waste we produce, and to some extent it's true. However a lot of the problems we have with the amount of waste we produce are down to business practices. Built in obsolescence, where a product is designed to wear out so it has to be replaced, became a common practice. Things that used to be able to be repaired started to be made so that it was either impossible to repair them or far too costly. Plastic bottles and packaging became increasingly used as it was often cheaper than using things that could be used again. These innovations had a positive effect in that the price of goods came down, but we are now paying the price in terms of damage to our environment.

Although I wouldn't want to go back to those times, as they were reasonably hard compared to today, we had little and so had to make the most of what we had. Also there were negatives sun as most people still heated their homes with coal fires, in fact coal powered most of our industries and air pollution in some places was as bad then, and even worse in some places, than now. Things were not all good then and all bad now. But there are things we can learn from our past when it comes to reusing things and repairing rather than replacing them. Recycling isn't a new concept, there has always been some recycling. If we were to use less and repair and reuse more, it would have a dramatic effect on our environment.

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