Not Easy Being Green

Welcome here. I've just arrived myself, and it's all looking a little bit bare. Needs furniture, photos, some personal items, that sort of thing. Much like my new house, in fact. If I was a proper blogger, that would be a link. Give me a little while.....

Ta-daaaa:



The idea of having a blog came initially from the fact of having a house. My blog was initially to be called Not Easy Being Green, and it was to address the challenges of living a vaguely right-on life in grimy Dublin 8. Challenges like finding FSC certified wood, and convincing a very good builder to use it. Finding interiors guides that are budget-conscious and earth-loving, but don't assume everyone's wild about hemp. The discovery of the flaws with dual flush toilets (less water = less clean... gluey builders' pee clinging to the basin flush after flush); the trouble with energy saver light bulbs (uuuug-leeee; don't work with dimmer switches); the challenges of finding non-fibre glass insulation in Dublin - or Ireland. The reality of an entire country without a single Ikea store. You can't begin to imagine. No, don't even pretend.

The final straw came once we'd moved in - and I still hadn't set up my blog - and we wanted to ditch our recycling in a local bring centre. I had been gathering a lot of material for recyling; more than the nice Oxegen people with their green bags were going to accept from the doorstep in a billion years. Simp, my beloved, liked to point out that my waste management policy was unsustainable, consisting as it did of not throwing anything away. Fair enough. So we who don't drive bullied our friend Sho, who does, into driving us and 8 black/ green sacks to the nearest open bring centre one Sunday hangover.

All the bins, large industrial metal skips, were stuffed full. The slots were sealed up with waste, so there was no forcing any more in. The man in the high viz jacket took one look at us.
"Ah, they're all full up," he stated obviously. "Youse can put them over here".
'Over here' was the skip-free corner of the yard, sectioned off in time-honoured fashion with plastic tape and traffic cones, and piled high with sacks spilling paper, tins, clothing, electronic goods, nappies, coffee grounds, eggshells, toilet rolls, drinks bottles, batteries... in short, pure and unadulterated rubbish. Unadulterated and, I emphasise, unsorted.
I asked what would happen to the stuff.
"Ah you know, it'll be recycled".
I asked how it would be sorted - I knew that the contents of our bags for example needed sorting.
"Oh it will be, yeah, definitely. Course it will."
Simp and Sho were edging away, thrilled to be rid of the stuff. Come on Chispa. Don't quarrel. This is a bring centre, and we have brought. The beach awaits!

I know, I know for a fact, that those 8 bages of disparate, but recyclable, items were destined for landfill. Calls to the council the next morning did nothing to undermine my certainty.

That's what my blog was meant to be about. Living ethically in my gorgeous house that me and Simp made and we love. Then I found out I'm moving to Honduras. So that's what it's about instead.