Building Bridges

As I am more in the habit of burning my bridges before I get to them, it is nice for a change to see some valuable construction work bear fruit.

Yesterday I was strolling back through town when I chanced upon an expo (well, a few stalls) in the Market Square, one of which was festooned with 'recycle now' banners.

Now, as may be recalled, I am a little chary of some from this sector, having felt Junkk.com to have been at best poorly served, and at worst rather dubiously treated by a couple of dodgy dealers of theoretically green-promoting largess in the past.

Anyway, fresh from swallowing my pride at Total Packaging, and with luck forging new and useful bonds with a WRAP big-wig, and having found a new soulmate at Eden Project (whose previous PR director treated me and our lovely Head of Prose and Comms Anita so shabbily a few years back) the other day in London, I decided to see if the magic may apply on a more local basis.

Well, fingers crossed, it looks like it may. I had a very nice chat with Jeremy, the officer of the day, and as a consequence ended up talking with the head bod for Hereford and Worcestershire's enviro efforts. And, thanks to this, we should see a whole new level of synergistic bonding taking place. For a start, they were happy to have our stuff on the stand, so I dashed home to get a standee and flyers to them asap. And these will now be touring around, much as the Junkk.com demo kit is currently doing in Cumbria. They help me; I help them. How sweet is that?

And to kick off from our side, I am happy to share what they were doing there, which was promoting a kitchen waste sink macerator device, with added grant. And very nice both look too, both environmentally and financially.

I initially had my doubts, and expressed them rather starkly by asking 'How the heck does flushing pureed waste down my sink help the planet?'.

Well, the answer was simply and convincing, if disappointing to learn that (as is too often the case) it is not applicable in very many other places.

Because it seems that our local water guys have in place a system to collect biogas from the sewage system, and better yet then recover the resulting dry matter for use as fertiliser. And that makes for a 'win win' in my book. So I will be applying and installing asap, as it is also not beyond the ken of a fair DIYer... apparently.

I'll still be using the compost bins for most organics as I think I can find uses for this at home, but as this machine will chew up the rest and squirt it to enviROI+ nirvana, it gets my full endorsement and with-feet vote.

Nice one council, water board and others! Let's hope such an initiative catches on everywhere.

For those in the relevant areas, once they give me the PR and details I'll upload it.