Recycling, Zero Waste and Wine

Recycling in the Zero Waste Challenge

Actually, it’s rather embarrassing.

When our (decidedly erratic) waste collection arrives at my home (a cause for celebration and considerable relief, due to the dintinct lack of alternative disposal points) (yes, small tropical islands are delightful and there is a wonderful quality of life, but not everything works like clockwork), my bin bags go into the truck with much clunking and clinking.  Moving on to our neighbour’s home, their bins are emptied silently.

The difference?  My best guess (as I don’t go through my neighbour’s rubbish) is the wine bottles in my rubbish.

Either my neighbour runs an alcohol-free zone, or she drinks things not contained in glass bottles.

By this time, you’re probably gasping in horror – not at my drinking habits, but at the fact that I don’t recycle my glass bottles.

It’s not through lack of trying.

We don’t have a kerbside pickup for recycling.  No problem, there used to be a centre about a half-hour’s drive away.

But it stopped accepting glass.

Actually, I don’t know what’s worse.  Recycling the glass but knowing it would be sent on a two-week cruise to another country where it would be land transported and then eventually recycled (with all that transport it’s not exactly an eco friendly process), or not being able to recycle it at all.

It still feels horrible throwing bottles into rubbish destined for landfill.  Old habits die hard.

But now I’m faced with another problem as I look at my rubbish bin.

It’s the Zero Waste Challenge.  It encourages global reuse, repair, recycling and composting so that ultimately there will be ‘zero waste’.

Is there ‘one more thing’ that I could recycle in order to reduce my landfill waste at home?

How am I going to have Zero Waste this week?

Now in fairness, there’s not a lot of waste that I send to landfill.  The vast majority of my rubbish is composted.  There’s hardly any food waste – we’re a small family and we plan our menus and shop accordingly, eat most leftovers or compost them and feed dogs and birds and whatever-else-comes-along-out-of-the-sugar-cane-fields that surround us.  There’s a small amount of non-recyclable plastic, and occasional empty tins of insect spray (it’s a tropical island – there are one or two bugs around.  Some of them would like to take up residence in my home – most are OK, some are definitely not).

It’s not zero waste, but it is little waste. So it’s decidedly difficult to find that “one more thing” to keep out of the rubbish.

Except…

I’m looking at those wine bottles.

Sigh.

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