RECYCLING

The past few years we have heard all sorts of systems for recycling.  Blue bags, blue boxes, one bag for newspaper, one for cardboard, one for shiny paper, another for glass.

In Oliver we really make a half hearted attempt at all this, in Maple Ridge, they have seven different bags to sort their recycling into.  At my daughter’s home, their recycling takes up half the garage.

My grandma had recycling down to a fine art.  Nothing actually went out to be collected, everything had a use.

Newspapers…first these were read by grandma and her two sons who came for lunch on most days.  For some reason, the newspapers were then put under the chair cushions and kept there until the pile of newspapers made the cushion uncomfortably high to sit on.  This was a habit widely used in our area, most families stored their newspapers this way, why…who knows.

The newspapers were used for several things, as kindling for starting the coal fire, cutting out sewing patterns, wrapping garbage in before putting in the bin.  Many newspapers were put down in gardens, between rows of seeds, as a weed preventative and also a mulch.  Many went in the compost between layers of vegetation.

Bundles of clean newspapers were taken to the fish and chip shop where they were wrapped round the fish and chips to keep the contents warm on the way home.  Very few chip shops were designed to eat in, most people took them home for the family meal or they were eaten in the street, on the way home from a movie or a dance.  This was the era of walking everywhere and what a nice way to end an evening, walking home with your sweetie, sharing a bag of chips.  Made for a greasy goodbye kiss, but it was nice.

One of the most common uses was to cut it into six inch squares and use it in the outhouse..  Grandma would make a real job of this.  Each newspaper would be cut into the correct size square, bundled into packs of maybe twenty pieces then, using a metal skewer, she bored a hole in one corner of the  pile and threaded a string through.  After a knot was tied, the neat little stack would be hung behind the door of the toilet.  There always seemed to be a story that you had missed, written on the paper you wanted to use, so many times I would look through the bundle for the continuation of what I was reading.  This made the job at hand more interesting.

In the ten years or so after the war, fruit was still not too plentiful in England.  We had lots of apples and pears but citrus and tropical fruits were rare and expensive.  Oranges and tangerines were shipped in coloured tissue paper to keep them separated.  This was a treasure to be carefully straightened and smoothed before it too went to be hung on the nail behind the toilet door.  It’s softness was much appreciated..

String was carefully wound into little knots and stored in a drawer, for later use.  Every house seemed to have “the drawer”.  This was a designated kitchen drawer where every useful thing in the home was stored.  Need a  screwdriver?  Look in the drawer.  Do we have any duct tape?  Look in the drawer.  Where is my pen?  Look in the drawer.  Everything that didn’t have a designated place in the home was to be found in the drawer.

Those were the days of one screwdriver that would turn any screw in the house.  If it was misplaced, a table knife could be substituted, but the screwdriver could usually be found in the drawer with the pen, the paper clips and the dozens of balls of string.

The most enjoyable of grans’ recycled items were buttons.  These were stored in a big jar, hundreds of buttons from every piece of clothing that had been discarded.  On a rainy afternoon, I would spend hours looking through gran’s button jar.

She had every type of button imaginable, it was a treasure chest of pearls, gilt, rich coloured metals, wooden ones and small white ones from discarded shirts.

Almost every sweater in the family was hand made and when they sprung holes, they would be darned in the same wool as the original garment.  If a cardigan  had been darned too often to be fixed yet again, it would have the buttons cut off and the yarn would be unpicked ready to reknit into another garment.  This was quite a time consuming procedure but gran would work away at the task, unpicking and rewinding the yarn.  Very little would be wasted.  A new garment would be knit, different buttons would be stitched on and “Voila” a new sweater would be available for next person in line needing one.

Grandma taught me to darn but my work quite often had to be unpicked two or three times before it was considered good enough to pass muster.  I hated wearing darned socks as I could always feel the darned bit, it felt different and not as soft as the rest of the sock.

Any ripped article of clothing would be mended or patched, if something was ripped beyond repair, it to would be unpicked at the seams and a new garment made from any large pieces.  Anything small would be made into baby nighties and passed on to family or neighbours.  Pieces smaller than this would be made into strips for rag rugs.

Rag rugs were very common in our area, they were made of strips of all sorts of fabric that was knotted into a backing and made nice warm runners for the side of the bed or in front of the fire.  The rugs were very heavy as they contained so much fabric.  To clean them they were dragged into the yard and shaken or beaten.  Rugs too heavy to shake were hung over the clothes line and beaten with a carpet beater.  This was a heavy cane, pretzel shaped, head on a stick.  Beating the rugs was a nasty chore as you had to stand close to the rug and so got covered in dust and grit.

The only bottles in regular use, at that time, were soda pop or medicine bottles.  These were returned to the store for a deposit or, kept  and used for almost anything.  We bought vinegar from the chemist store, or pharmacy as called in north America.  An empty pop bottle would be taken to the store and the chemist would refill it with either white or malt vinegar for a few pennies. The contents would be transferred to a smaller vinegar shaker, for table use.

Medicine, either cough syrup or other liquid medication would also be dispensed at the chemist shop.  The pint or half pint bottles were usually flat sided, rather like a whisky flask, and had a cork stopper.  The bottles were all recycled back to the chemist for future medication.  If a doctor’s visit required a urine sample, it would be taken at home and put into a medicine bottle so it was quite common to see people waiting their turn in the doctor’s waiting room, holding a half pint bottle with six drops of urine.  By the time I was going through pregnancies, the sample bottle would go with you to all appointments for testing.  On site toilets and collection bottles were a thing of the future.  There was always the story going round of the lady who could only manage a few drops, so her husband helped her out by donating his sample too.

There were no grocery bags offered in those days.  Each household would have several shopping bags or baskets.  One basket was usually kept for potatoes and root vegetables as these were seldom washed before sale, so would be very dirty.  Eggs were either delivered by the milkman and placed in a bowl you had left outside for this purpose, or were purchased at the grocery store and placed, very carefully, in a paper bag on top of the groceries.  Egg boxes were not seen in our neck of the woods until after I was married, in 1964.

Milk was dispensed, by the milkman, into your own jug or container of your choosing.  Sliced bread was sold in a wrapper made from a flat sheet of greaseproof paper folded in to contain the bread.  This same sheet of paper would be used to wrap sandwiches, for workmen to carry their lunch in.  Unsliced bread was sold unwrapped.

Department stores offered bags for their wares but these had to be purchased and advertised the name of the store.  A bit cheeky to charge people for free advertising, but that is how it was.

Jam was sold in jars, but these were never thrown out.  Most people made there own jam and didn’t think of ever buying jars to put it in so, they were always on the lookout for jars to reuse.   Most other grocery items would be sold in a paper bag or a can but I don’t remember any cans being in gran’s cupboards, everything was home made.

There was hardly anything that got thrown out and any electrical appliance was expected to last for ever or it would be fixed for a very small amount.  In today’s world, it costs far more to get something fixed than it does to buy a new one, so we expect to replace our microwave oven or toaster, even computers or televisions, which are expensive items.  Is it any wonder that our world is filling up with junk?

I find it appalling that big cities are transporting their garbage to other places which are glad to take it for a fee.  Something is wrong with our world that we think it alright to make huge piles of garbage without thought of what we are going to do to get rid of it.

The archeologists of tomorrow are going to find some very strange things on their “digs”.  The joys that our historians are finding in discovering shards of pottery or carved stones are going to be replaced by digging up old diapers or  toasters.  Grandma would shake her head in horror at the wasteful society we have become.  She certainly would not think of it as progress.