We get milk delivered. And have been doing so for so long, that I can’t quite remember how we got started with this. Hubby and I come from the generation who remember the milk delivery from the milk float to almost every home in our street: glass pint bottles left on doorsteps, used, washed collected and re-used, with minimal wastage of resources.
When I realised that a milk delivery in the locality was a possibility, I mentioned it to my husband and we set it up. Yes, it is more expensive per unit – this tends to be a recurring theme in living more sustainably – but our household waste no longer includes plastic milk cartons, which require to be rinsed, flattened and put out for collection, and which tend in the meantime to leak their milky residue everywhere.
We do have marauding seagulls, cats, dogs and foxes hereabouts, but we deal with them. A seagull was piercing our milk bottle tops and smashing the glass, so now the delivery chap leaves the bottles at the top of our internal staircase for us. We have cats, but food waste recycling left out for recycling is, if double-wrapped, almost impenetrable to them. And we have foxes, who particularly covet chicken remains. Instead of trying to fend them off – they will find their way to food waste with unerringly accuracy – we now simply take our finished chicken carcass – and I mean finished! – to the foot of our hill out the back, where doubtless the local wildlife fall upon it gratefully. A bit unorthodox, perhaps, but then, all of “ethical living” might be seen as an attempt to refute our current orthodoxies for more sustainable, long-term solutions.
A thing done once is seen as challenging and daring, unusual. A thing done twice becomes easier, and a thing repeated becomes part of a new, emerging orthodoxy which will, naturally, have to be modified with time. The trick is to start somewhere and keep trying to make a difference.
February 12, 2020
Get milk delivered
Fran Macilvey Fran's School of Hard Knocks, Happiness Matters 0 Comments
Get milk delivered
We get milk delivered. And have been doing so for so long, that I can’t quite remember how we got started with this. Hubby and I come from the generation who remember the milk delivery from the milk float to almost every home in our street: glass pint bottles left on doorsteps, used, washed collected and re-used, with minimal wastage of resources.
When I realised that a milk delivery in the locality was a possibility, I mentioned it to my husband and we set it up. Yes, it is more expensive per unit – this tends to be a recurring theme in living more sustainably – but our household waste no longer includes plastic milk cartons, which require to be rinsed, flattened and put out for collection, and which tend in the meantime to leak their milky residue everywhere.
We do have marauding seagulls, cats, dogs and foxes hereabouts, but we deal with them. A seagull was piercing our milk bottle tops and smashing the glass, so now the delivery chap leaves the bottles at the top of our internal staircase for us. We have cats, but food waste recycling left out for recycling is, if double-wrapped, almost impenetrable to them. And we have foxes, who particularly covet chicken remains. Instead of trying to fend them off – they will find their way to food waste with unerringly accuracy – we now simply take our finished chicken carcass – and I mean finished! – to the foot of our hill out the back, where doubtless the local wildlife fall upon it gratefully. A bit unorthodox, perhaps, but then, all of “ethical living” might be seen as an attempt to refute our current orthodoxies for more sustainable, long-term solutions.
A thing done once is seen as challenging and daring, unusual. A thing done twice becomes easier, and a thing repeated becomes part of a new, emerging orthodoxy which will, naturally, have to be modified with time. The trick is to start somewhere and keep trying to make a difference.
Thanks for listening.
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