Kicking Pies and Licking the Sherbert off Cola Bottles
Apparently just as we are to get a new recycling system in our
village, it is all set to change again – packaging that can be eaten…
For years we’ve been diligently separating our rubbish: cans
and plastics in one bag, paper and cardboard in another, only to see the bin
men sling them into the truck alongside the black bags full of my cottage pie and
dirty nappies. Apparently someone separates them again at the point of
discharge, after they’ve trundled along being churned up and squashed together.
I cannot imagine how much those poor souls have to get paid as they ease a
plastic cup from inside a chicken carcass.
I’m quite interested in waste, being a crusty kind of
person. I would like to think I don’t generate as much as everyone else, but of
course I do: piles and piles of it and I know that to reach my moral high-ground,
I need to reduce the amounts.
Therefore I’m quite looking forward to the food waste bin,
after the Mouse Man knew my voice on the phone before I said my name. After
many visits and explanations of how I could try and keep the bastard mice off
our work-surfaces, he lost it and told me to just STOP BLOODY COMPOSTING! I quoted
the council targets of waste reduction, but his withering look put paid to
that.
So the new industry of edible packaging seeks to end all of
these problems – tomato membranes around soup, chocolate membranes around hot chocolate
and grape around wine. The trouble is, I’ve worked in shops. I know that people
sit on stacks of boxes before they are put on the shelves. I also know that
they kick pies along the ground before piling them into the fridge and (if I’m
honest) know that they lick the sherbert off the Cola Bottles before they go in
the pick’n’mix. Can’t you just imagine the young shelf-stacker juggling these
wobbly balls? Banging them on the inside of his elbow before catching them
again – putting them in a microwave…
I therefore cannot understand who is going to pop to their
local shop and sling a tomato filled with soup into their basket and not expect
something terrible to have already happened to it.
Saying all this, I bought a sandwich the other day that was
so bad, I chucked it in the bin and ate the box…
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