Don’t Chuck It. Use it. Before You Buy Again.
We are a throw-away society. From the day the wars of the last century drew to a close to the present day, we have abused the resources gifted to us by the planet with increasing relish and abandonment. The fact that there is minimal mention of our impact on the environment in the run up to the UK General Election on 4th July seems to demonstrate how little we care about what we’re leaving for our children and grandchildren.
I am of course using ‘we’ in the widest possible sense. I doubt that many of the people reading this will be any less appalled than I am. I also doubt that many of you will have too many solutions to this continuing slide into a dystopian future. I find it alarming that people don’t think they can make a difference. We all can. The truth is that every small step you take in the right direction has a benefit.
Just over a year ago, we pulled down two enormous garden outbuildings. I will openly admit that our initial plan was to bring in a contractor to do the job for us. Knowing the rates for contractors in these parts, my guess is that it would have cost somewhere between £8,000 and £12,000. Astonishingly, we couldn’t get anyone to do the job, so when our ‘children’ not only offered, but showed distinct enthusiasm for demolition, we couldn’t refuse.
Had we been able to appoint external contractors, I doubt much of that material would have been recycled or re-used. We ordered one skip last year (a standard 8 cubic yard skip) for the material that was either rotten or otherwise un-usable. We are likely to order a second one this year for the remainder. In total, the waste material accounted for about 30% of the total volume from the two outbuildings. The rest has been re-used.
Re-use doesn’t need to mean ‘imperfect’, ‘tatty’ or ‘a bit crap’. You can do amazing things with wood, brick and metal with just a little imagination. So far, the wood has been converted into ten different planters around the back garden, a flower bed boundary, sturdy plant supports, and a radiator shelf in our hall, with several longer planks being given away to allotment owners in the area. The brick created two more planters, with what’s left having been reserved for the eventual construction of a set of steps up to the formerly obscured stone summerhouse. Some of the metal roofing sheets were re-used within the family for a log store roof, the rest were taken along with the longer lengths of wood by the guy who runs the Radio Rooms in Berwick to build an outbuilding for his farm vehicles.
Our garden is now alive, when two years ago it was barren. The recycling efforts continue. The latest innovation is to re-use supermarket fruit trays as mini-propagators. At various stages since we moved here in January 2022, we’ve planted two apple trees, one crab apple, two espalier plum trees, two pear trees, a cherry (of the edible kind), two blackcurrant bushes, one redcurrant, two blueberry bushes, a dozen raspberry canes, and a dozen strawberry plants. It will be a couple more years before we get enough garden produce to eat fresh or freeze for a more sustainable lifestyle.
In the meantime, our only option here has been to buy soft fruit in plastic containers. Initially we populated our grey bin with them, but then started to collect them because binning them felt fundamentally wrong. We noticed some of the containers had holes in the side and base to allow the fruit to breathe, while others had no holes at all. It dawned on me that we might be able to put soil in the base for growing seed and use the un-holed trays as covers to aid germination. We’ll have to see how that works, but there’s absolutely no reason it shouldn’t.
I still have a lot of wood to sort and either scrap or recycle. The summerhouse is full of the stuff. It’s fun sifting through it all to see what can be made useful and what is of no use at all. I still have a lot of plastic containers to find uses for, although I know within the next two to three years the need for further accumulation will pass. Between our own garden and the fruits of the trees and bushes in the local area, our chest freezer should enable us to become self-sufficient in fruit and about half way there with vegetables.
Only two of these improvements took a gargantuan effort to achieve. After those two outbuildings had been removed, everything else has been done at a leisurely pace over two or more years. There is still much to do, but as my official retirement birthday has now arrived, I know that physically we’ll be in a position to manage this insane garden on a slope for many years to come.
Peace.
John