Our Earth

I’ve found out that there are HUGE differences in the world, when it comes to recycling and stuff like that, and a lot depends on where you live. How and what we recycle depends on where we live, and it differs a lot. Here's a funny-ish story to show how different it can be even in the smallest of things.

At 20 I went to Ireland, and to be specific I went to a town 12, 5 miles west of Dublin, called Celbridge. I loved it there. But, back to the story; I have always drunk a lot of diet cola or Tab X-tra, which is its own black drink. Living in Ireland made no exception, and after a few weeks I had bags and bags full of empty bottles. I had kept them under my bed, as there was storage under it. (The bed was built for the room especially...) Then one Saturday I came downstairs with a gazillion bags in my hands, all ready to go and “pawn” the bottles for money at the local supermarket. Or so I thought... My “family” all stopped what they were doing and looked at me as if I was insane, and asked what I was doing with all the bottles. “Pawning them” I replied. Still no understanding to gain from my bystanders, and as it turned out; handing in your used bottles, be it glass or plastic, was never heard of in Ireland. I don't know what the situation is now though.

In Norway on the other hand, this has been normal practise for as long as I have lived. It actually started in 1902. For the small bottles you get 1 krone, and for the bigger 2, 5 kroner, which is approx £ 0, 10- 0, 26 and $ 0, 15 -0, 38. We also return aluminium beverage cans and bottle crates for moeny. And it works well. 93 % of all bottles are returned into the recycling system. So, that helps mother earth a little! Plus, if you drink quite a lot, returning the bottles add up to quite a few bucks too. Almost every supermarket has reverse vending machines that look kinda like this:
In addition to this, we also recycle a lot. In my municipality each household has four large bins outside. One is for paper, one for plastic, one for food waste and then one for “the rest” of the garbage. Not including glass or canned goods though. There are collective bins for this sort, close to your local supermarket. Here are my bins: Sorry for the bad image quality, and also; this picture was taken before we painted the house beige.

I am not implying that I am the Goddess of Green, and that Norway is the King of this, as it clearly isn’t, due to oil and gas drilling for instance. But at least I try my best to my abilities, as do many of my fellow Norwegians.

It was "Earth day" this week. I spent the day trying to educate myself on the whole topic of global warming and all that. I found this cool site where you can test your own impact on the earth. Please check it out, be honest, and tell me what your footprint was. I urge you to do the more thorough of the two... You’ll see what I mean... Find it here.

Apparently it takes 3, 1 planet Earths to deal with my use. Yikes! Despite the fact that I am so cautious!