Junk for Jesus

We had some friends round for food last night. It wasn’t exactly a success.  I attempted to do one of Jamie’s 30 minute meals and... well...I didn’t quite cook the chicken properly. Thankfully I was the one who discovered it and so far I haven’t heard of any incidents of food poisoning from our guests.

Not only that but Mhoni came into the room and got over excited as she tends to do with lots of people.  She peed on the shoes of one of our friends

 I certainly know how to throw a party.

Today I’ve spent most of the afternoon clearing up.

It’s funny but I get a strange satisfaction from cleaning out all the plastic bottles and tins and putting them in those red boxes the council have generously supplied us with. Not only that but we now have a brown ‘caddy’ for all our food waste too.

It really makes you feel like you are saving the world.

I started thinking of how I was giving the council all this rubbish which was in fact mine. Surely I could be creative and find ways of using it.

For example:

This year I took a step towards self sufficiency. I grew a crop of strawberries. Well I think at the most there were ten. If I used the food waste as compost I could have tenfold, twentyfold, hundredfold. I could diversify into rhubarb, lettuce, potatoes, and carrots. We would never have to cross the doors of Tescos ever again.

Then I woke up and realised how crap a gardener I am. I would just end up with a huge pile of steaming compost which would do nothing other than annoy the neighbours.   

 I lived in Africa for a short time and my boss out there used to complain about what he called ‘Junk for Jesus’. They got sent out the most useless items which weren’t good enough for the First World but could surely be used by the poor in the Third World. He told me this story of a charity who asked for used tea bags to send out to Africa. They were amazed at how many they received.

I suspect that the council makes a tidy sum from all our waste. I’ve a feeling that used tea bags are more lucrative than my boss in Africa thought. So here’s an idea:

Imagine that all the churches, community organisations and charities got together and gathered all the recyclable waste from their members and sold it to these recycling companies. They then took the money and gave it to a worthy cause.

I’m sure the council wouldn’t be happy.

They have EU quotas to meet.

But surely it’s our waste.