We've been on the road for three weeks now and after a quiet few days in Swan Hill we're now camped on the banks of the Murrumbidgee in Muthi Muthi country, several hundred kilometres upstream from Canberra. It's wet and cold so we're huddled inside.
I thought it was about time to report on our sustainability efforts, but it's a bit of a mixed bag unfortunately.
My grand plans to have my own colour-coded rubbish sorting bins was trashed even before we hit the road. Nice idea but impractical and took up too much room in Loretta's limited storage spaces. I still sort, of course, just not in the structured way I had hoped. The dogs are dutifully filling their biodegradable "Oh Crap" poo bags and I continue to enjoy my eco-friendly fully biodegradable coffee pods. There's another development on the eco-coffee front, but that'll be the subject of a separate post.
Green waste continues to be a conundrum. There's just nowhere to dispose of it in caravan parks, so unfortunately it has to go to land fill until I can come up with another solution. Caravan parks are generally well set up for basic recycling and have separate bins for recycling and general waste. So when I depart I deposit my recycling in the bins provided and other small biodegradable bags of rubbish in the general waste bins, comforted by the thought that my waste will be dealt with appropriately. Or so I thought...
But in Swan Hill I was horrified to see an employee sorting through the recycling and chucking everything that didn't attract a 10c refund back into the general waste. All the paper, cardboard, hard plastic, wine bottles, egg cartons that my fellow campers and I had carefully sorted and deposited in the recycling bins was being sent to landfill. I don't really care if the caravan park keeps the refundable cans and bottles to make a few extra dollars (I'd prefer it if the proceeds of all that recycling went to charity, and maybe it does...) but sending all that recyclable waste to landfill makes me really cranky. It might be illegal - I guess it depends on local council regulations - but either way, I say "Boo!" to the caravan park management. Poor form!
Here's a photo of the rubbish I collected on our walk by the river - I didn't bother taking a photo of the stinky bin (yes, there was only ONE set of bins for the entire park, catering for around 60 caravans, several cabins and half a dozen permanent residents!)
Comentarios