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Self-Sufficiency in Style 

the dustbin challenge

 

This is not a scheme for feeding pigs by delivering one to each and every residential home

although the idea does have merits.

 Go and look in the bin.

Go on - do it!

Go and look, turn it out.

Examine exactly just what you are throwing away.

 
You can ignore the filthier items, we are actually looking at the paper and packaging.

Put it to one side, if you can.

Don't get dirty.

We are not masochists, we are not trying to humiliate you.

Ah! you think.

"I know what all this is about... ecology, waste, saving the world..."

Err... No, not exactly.

Recycling?

Waste Paper and bottles?

Rainforests!

No!

 Saving the world by visiting your local bottle bank once a week, no doubt, seems very worthy, especially if you drink as much as some of us.

Like so many things in life, it is not quite what it seems.

If you didn't consume so much, wrapped in expensive packaging, you would not have the chore of driving to the bottle bank using expensive and polluting fuel in the first place.

If you become Self-Sufficient with Style, the bottle bank won't ever see you.

Let's get back to the packaging.
The real interest lies in what it says on the packaging.

Read the list of ingredients.

Almost every item has quite a list - ranging from the mundane "starch" to the seemingly unnecessary "colouring" to the, frankly sinister, "E123" or "permitted flavour enhancers."

Most of it was the debris from the last trip to the supermarket.

More than half packaging, but it is not the packaging itself that is so interesting.

Ah! Now I have the picture...

We are in for yet another food scare.

 

No.

Wrong Again

 You probably are wrecking the world by excessive consumption.

The rain forest is disappearing through your unaided efforts. Your trips to the bottle bank and the way you save the newspaper for the Boy Scouts are pathetic attempts to salve your conscience.

You are being poisoned by the meat, vegetables, fish and fruit produced by unscrupulous mega-global companies. Organic food is an expensive confidence trick.

Your car is too big, your alcohol consumption excessive and you take too little exercise.

Now, all this is possibly quite true, or not, according to your view of life.

It is time for a story... and the answer to the reason why you rummaged through your packaging.

The Answer to The Dustbin Challenge

...and we hardly need a refuse collection

- the doubtfully named Hangman's Cottage, just to the south of Misery Corner.

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