Recycling (2)

The epic 'redd oot' (clearing out) in our household has coincided with a strike of the city's refuse collectors. It's not cause and effect, I hasten to add. The solution was a visit to one of Edinburgh's recycling centres (known locally and less politically correctly as 'the dump'). We had already taken furniture to the Bethany Christian Trust the previous weekend, so for this trip we were left with the normal household recycling that isn't being collected just now, and rather too many bags for landfill.
I'd never been to the dump before, and it was a revelation. I loved it! There are stations for offloading still-working electrical goods, and furniture. There's a station for chemical disposal, and since the European Union has banned many commonly used UK garden pesticides this should be well used. I'm sure it's not. Then there's a series of bays for different categories of waste: solid wood, laminates, cardboard, garden waste and of course landfill. Containers for different colours of glass are further along, together with bins for paper, plastic, aluminium, clothes and shoes. (You can tell I'm enthralled by all of this). I didn't see anything for battery recycling - we're not very good at this in the UK. It was one of the happiest moments of the summer for me - a guilty pleasure, as I flung black bags into containers destined for landfill. Now that I know the array of possibilities, I'll do more pre-sorting next time, so that less goes into landfill. And there will be a next time - we haven't even started on the loft yet.

Along one edge of the 'facility' is this carefully tended garden. Bright annuals, hanging baskets, tomato plants, various ornaments and statues, topped off by tiki torches. I would love to visit at dusk when the torches are lit. Perhaps the bistro tables will come out then, and a barbecue. I'll have to time my next visit carefully.