“You seem unhappy, Dave” said my mother.
“Really?” I gazed out of the window at the freezing haar with only the prospect of a drafty grammar school where they could have filmed Harry Potter and two paper rounds to look forward to. “I can’t imagine why.”
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| Any chance of a lift to school? |
“It’s just something you said the other day in the kitchen”, continued my mum, clasping her hands in front of her as if she was about to read the evening news. “Made your father and I think that … y’know … you could possibly be … y’know …”
I didn’t dignify these ramblings with a response.
My dad cleared his throat and sat forward, almost dislodging a plate of bourbons. “Thing is, Dave – are you … I mean … do you have urges, call them tendencies … to recycle?”
“No” I said. “And how dare you, Sir.”
But it was too late. I was the last to know and suddenly everything began to click into place.
Years spent fretting over empty glass bottles of pop going to landfill - CLICK.
Inexplicable pining for newspapers I delivered at 6am that were never read and cast out in bin bags wrapped around old chips and deep-fried black pudding – CLICK.
Concerns over plump, organic piggies being denied my leftover Chicken and Cashew - CLICK.
“It’s just a phase” I said.
“Really?” said my mother. “Then why did we find six empty bottles of Malibu, a dozen cans of Tenants Lager and a bundle of undelivered Press and Journals in the basement?”
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| Where are you Beryl? |
They had found my stash, the crafty bastards.
“So what if I enjoy recycling?” I said, getting teary. “So what if I want my own complex bin system? I need to sort things into bags and boxes according to a strict regime that I barely understand. It’s the only way I'll find true happiness.”
My dad looked out of the window at the sleet. “Heaven is weeping” he said.
“No dad" I said, "It's just another freezing fog comin' off the sea without no warnin'." The final part of this sentence came out deep and breathy, like a pirate and you know to this day, I'm not sure why.
#
In retrospect, I was a thought-leader. That year, I set up a company that recycled glass and cardboard and ran it alongside an existing one that sold radishes exclusively to Mrs Benson at number six.
I would love to tell you about my huge entrepreneurial success but this was Aberdeen. No-one was interested. They were too interested in digging out oil and the company folded almost immediately like a large foldable piece of un-recycled cardboard.
It was only years later when I moved to London that I really found the inner-recycler in me. People would chat openly at dinner parties about recycling systems, laying their habits bare without fear of retribution. I was in seventh heaven.
“They don’t take lids in Lambeth” they would say.
“Do you have a food-bin system in Westminster?”
“Do you rinse?”
“Yes I do, I always have” I would reply proudly.
At last, I was among friends.
I began to understand why we needed four hundred and thirty-three slightly different recycling systems in the UK. We needed them all and they all needed to be slightly different because that was the most efficient way to do things. They also needed to change frequently. But just slightly.
The thing is, even though everyone on planet earth is doomed to die of heat exhaustion, huddled around the North Pole gasping for air, it feels good to recycle. “But Dave, we’re saving the planet” I hear you cry ...
In answer to your cry, I suggest you look east. Anyone who has been to Hong Kong will realise the moment they step off the plane that our little boxes of organised crap are about as hopeless as going into a den of hungry lions, naked, covered in prosciutto, holding up your hand and shouting “STOP”.
But it’s about doing our bit. It’s about knowing the system. I know where that goes.
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| Entrepreneur: it should have been me |
Left unchecked, my obsession with recycling became increasingly debilitating. When people came to stay or the cleaners were coming, I would feel a surge of anxiety. They don’t understand the system, I would think to myself. They’ll take shortcuts. They think dead flowers are food. They won’t rinse. I would creep around trying to catch them black-bagging recyclables and jump out to surprise them.
Unbeknown to my parents, both my sister and my brother also have their own recycling-related anxiety disorders and I am officially outing them on this blog.
Clara Vanderpump suffers from a very serious condition known as Premature Recycling Deconstructionism (PRD) where, in her mind, the food represents an unwanted and unnecessary barrier to her being able to recycle the packaging. “When that’s finished, it will go in that blue box over there. It’s not finished yet though. Do you want to eat some more so that it is? Or I can just put it in the food bin now? That's the small caddy bin.”
My brother, Gavin Vanderpump, has a more private obsession. He recycles alone, in the evening, down the side of his house in Surrey, with the aid of a headlamp, where he polices a huge array of coloured boxes and bins that are obviously too complex for his wife to understand. “Surely the green bin is for recyclables?” she will say, to which he will scoff loudly. “No, no, no. That’s the blue bin. The green one is just for card but just white card. Not paper. Knowing when paper becomes card is a considerable gift."
He admits to neglecting his young children and I wonder how much longer he can hold down a full-time job as well. When I visited him recently, he proudly showed me their new nappy-recycling box which still had some of the original complimentary bags. I needed some CK-One on a towel jammed up my nose in order to get near it, but I was impressed. Jealous almost.
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| Sorting things into huge wheelie bins is FUN. And you know what else? They look GREAT. |
“I want a separate dog shit recycling bin for Giggy” I said. “It’s speciesist not to have one. He needs to be recognised, he has recycling needs.”
Just as I said that, Giggy trotted up to us, tail wagging and began settling down to gnaw on a dead, decaying blackbird he’d just found in the garden. My brother and I didn’t find that unusual at all but spent a good amount of time considering which bin it should go in. We had to agree to disagree in the end as it was just getting bitter.
That night, I had a dream. I was at a huge clanking recycling centre that had giant boxes for everything. It was based on the recycling centre at Wandsworth but there were more marshmallows dangling from the ceiling. Small creatures a bit like oompa loompas in high-vis jackets were sorting through objects and playing a sort of recycling bingo. Like “Sale of the Century” except with bits of stinking rubbish on a conveyor belt and not live from Norwich. The oompa loompas would determine each item’s fate.
“Empty milk bottle, not rinsed, lid on, plastics, bin 1. Baked Beans can, rinsed, lid removed, metals and tin, bin 2.”
But suddenly, I was on the conveyer belt too. Paralysed, I was moving along towards the oompa loompas. I was about to be recycled.
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| Step away from the polystyrene, bitch. |
“Useless, late-forties-investment-banker coming through” shouted one of them.
“I beg your pardon?” I said. “Early forties thank you. And I was very good back in the day. If you forget Enron. Oh, and that Scottish Equitable thing. And those mortgage-backed securities - they didn’t work out. Pretty good otherwise, apart from Parmalat, that was a total fucking disaster…”
“Shut up, shut up Dave, no-one’s interested” said another, poking me with small fingers like raw chipolatas straight from the fridge. “What do you want to be, Dave? What do you want to be recycled into?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know!” I screamed. “I’m trying to find my way as a househusband in VNEB but it’s hard.”
“What's VNEB?” he asked.
“Oh, it doesn’t matter”
“Ok, I get the idea. General waste” shouted the oompa loompa.
“No! I’m recyclable, I must be recyclable, I must be, I must … I must"
That’s when I woke up. And that’s when I realised.
I must recycle myself. I must get a new job.
“I’m going to be a success” I said to Hubby. “You’ll see.”
Hubby looked at me over his coffee cup. “Isn't that what Muriel Heslop says right before she steals all her father’s money and goes on holiday to Hibiscus Island?”
“Well, I’ve never been.”
