Recycling is thought to be a modern way of doing things, returning plastics and paper to be turned into something new, instead of filling up landfills.

I don’t know about other people but I was brought up with the habit of recycling, in those days it meant being poor.

My grandma was one of the best recyclers around, nothing was ever wasted and one of her favourite phrases was that to waste anything was a “sin”. My gran was very big on “sin” and it was a phrase used quite often.

Whatever the weekend’s meat was, it would appear several times in various guises. Monday it would be sliced and served cold, on Tuesday it would be made into rissoles, a kind of patty with all sorts of other things ground in to make it stretch. On Wednesday the bone from the joint would be made into soup which would last over to Thursday, when dumplings would be added to make it go further. As there was no fridge in grandma’s house, boiling the soup would kill bacteria, as we never got sick.

String was used much in those days and always kept for future use. As there was no tape around, string would be used for fastening up all parcels from the butcher, who tied meat in brown paper and string, as did the grocer with the butter he formed into blocks with his two wooden paddles. Brown paper was smoothed and neatly folded for future use and string rolled into small balls and stored in THE DRAWER.

Every home had the drawer, it was the catchall of all household necessities. The hammer, the screwdriver, the pen, thumb tacks, used and rerolled bandages and just about anything else in a household where there was just one of everything.

Bread, when not home made, came in white paper bags, which were neatly smoothed and folded, sliced bread came in wax paper which was always reused to wrap sandwiches for workers. Bread itself was always used to the last scrap, the first couple of days would be used fresh, the third and forth day was toast, left over crusts would be cubed and made into pobs. Pobs was a disgusting mixture of cubed bread, a knob of butter and hot milk. Grandma and most of my younger cousins thought this was a delight, I thought it was second only to offal, another of grandma’s gourmet offerings, on my list of disgusting foods.

Grandma’s home knit sweaters were handed down from myself to all the other girl cousins, when it had done the rounds of all the family it would be unpicked and re-knitted into something new. Clothing would be cut up and made into new clothes for smaller family members. Luckily, I was the oldest girl and had nobody to pass down to me so I enjoyed being the first person wearing grandma’s creations. When coats and other heavy clothing items were definitely not fit to be worn, they were cut into strips and made into rag rugs for the floor.

Sheets were used and constantly laundered until they wore thin. They would then be cut down the middle and the two outside edges would be sewn together. This would mean a less worn area would now would be in the centre so the resewn sheet was good for another few years. Worn collars on mens’ shirts would be unpicked and resewn onto the shirt, with the worn side now underneath.

In those days many grocery staples were delivered to the store in bulk and bagged for re-sale. Sugar, rice, dried fruits and most other dry goods were packed in blue paper bags with a cellophane window, to view the contents. All were in one pound bags and the bags emptied into various jars and tins, once taken home. Clean bags and jam jars were taken back to the store to be refilled. A penny would be knocked off future purchases in return for the recycled bags. Vegetable peelings were given to a neighbour who raised chickens, he in return would knock a couple of pennies off the price of his eggs.

For some reason, these were called the good old days. Recycling was not done to keep garbage from growing into enormous piles, but because it was the only way many people could survive. In today’s world of plenty, we waste so much, grandma would shake her head in dismay and declare it a sin. I think she is right.