Plain crazy

I've been kerb crawling round the industrial estates today, looking for stuff for the Scrapstore. It's very sad that such a lot of warehouses and factories lie empty, with For Sale or To Let boards on the front of them. The way this recession is going I can't see them being occupied ever again. Such a waste and such a shame that they are left to crumble into disrepair, and become derelict. No wonder people's moral is low when they have to pass these eyesore buildings, day in day out.

I visited eight businesses with my begging bowl, and managed to fill my car with cardboard tubes, offcuts from two sign makers, massive rolls of paper, and loads of plastic buckets with lids, from a food processing factory.

I am going to take a small step ladder with me next time because I nearly fell into a skip. Also, when I get the litter picker I will be able to use that to retrieve items I can't reach. I had to rummage around amongst a lot of disgustingly smelly plastic and carboard packaging, to reach the large buckets which were near the bottom. Some of them had pieces of cooked potatoes in them, and no I didn't bring them home for my dinner, ha ha. The food comes into the factory in these buckets, they repackage it into small portions, and the buckets get chucked. I thought that was terrible, what a waste of perfectly good buckets.

I must say a lot of firms are extremely good at recycling their waste, especially if they can sell it on. But some can't be bothered and send it to landfill in a skip. I heard a story from one guy at a kitchen and bedroom furniture maker, which really annoyed me. Apparently they had been giving their wood offcuts to someone for their wood burner, and someone from the council had seen this person collect his firewood. The company was prosecuted and taken to court and fined.

He didn't say why, but I know our council is very heavy handed where rules and regulations are concerned. I had a few discussions with them when I was starting a business, about how I was going to dispose of my trade waste. I wanted to recycle my very small amounts of tins, cardboard, glass, and plastics in the appropriate bins at a collection point. Shock horror, you can't do that. You need a trade waste bin which will be emptied every week, the contents will go to landfill and you will pay for it! I told them where to stick it. In the end I didn't start the business it was far too much hassle.

In fact I am sure that if the council found out that I am removing stuff from skips, (with the owners permission of course), they would find a way to put a stop to it. Waste from business premises is dealt with in a completely different way to household waste. The council are always on our backs to sort our own waste and recycle everything, because of the cost of putting it into landfill. Yet they think nothing of chucking whole skip loads into a big hole without sorting it out. It is just plain crazy to me.