Plastic, Cardboard and Bottled Beer.

I have just spent an hour at the local re-cycling facility following rather an elongated 21st birthday bash. The environmental fall-out has been huge....bbq smoke burning off the ozone layer, young people pickling their livers and laying down NHS overload problems in years to come and the older population hardening their arteries on a diet of sausages, burgers and ribs, with similar NHS implications.

The recycling challenge is geared to helping the environmental challenge surrounding green house gases and global warming. You would think the process would, therefore, be fairly standard, but not so.

Up on t'Wirral we can pop all sorts into our fortnightly collection bin, paper with cardboard, glass and plastic bottles, plastic containers with tin foil. Strangely though at the re-cycling centre you can't deposit cardboard anywhere, nor is there any place for plastics to be deposited.

Contrast that with the Hounslow collection policy in West London. A green box allows card, paper, glass, clothing, foil and batteries to be collected weekly, however, all plastic must be taken to the re-cycling centre.

So as a party location both places have their advantages, but as for disposing of the environmental fall-out Hounslow probably edges it.

Cash in the Attic

My e-Bay rating has now tipped over the 300 mark.......my next star rating kicks in at 500 so I still have a way to go. Given though, that one in four people leave feedback I have shifted quite a bit of stuff. "Its to declutter", I tell everyone at home. "Why does the house still look cluttered then" they reply, cheeky gits.

I have sold an eclectic portfolio on e-Bay. The fire-escape from the Scouse House has to take pride of place, closely followed by a brand new hot water storage tank. Most of my sporting memorabilia has gone, together with many clothes I have grown out of ( or have they shrunk in the wash!). LP's, books, old electrical appliances, cartoons, and general bric-a-brac have all found new homes in the UK and beyond.

I have a very simple philosophy, it goes on e-Bay twice and if unsuccessful both times it is consigned to the car boot sale box. This weekend saw the first attempt to empty said box, and Chester Rugby Club was the preferred venue.

Our last attempt at car bootie was at Chiswick Community School, at which you would expect a high class of punter, but no, the Eastern European community from Hammersmith, and the Asian population of Hounslow seemed to make up the vast majority of 'bargain hunters', and boy did they want bargains. If you dare to ask more that 50p for a designer jacket retailing at £80 they looked at you as if you had two heads. Needless to say we did not have the greatest of days.

Sunday, however, restored my faith in this tremendously effective recycling process. We sold broken computers, unheard of LP's, dogeared paperbacks, magazines, bags, shoes, bangles, golf stuff, stamps, just about everything we took. The joy, however, was that people were prepared to accept the real value of the items and battle hard to negotiate a good price......that's the real attraction of the day.

Job done, we repaired to Bistro Jacques in Hope Street, Liverpool and got nicely mellow over Sunday lunch, paid for by a bunch of strangers.