Non ethical living

[kerala]

Yesterday I met up with an old friend. Although a lovely person she is blissfully unaware (or just doesnt care) about green issues. She flies long haul every other month or so, every member of the family have a gas guzzling sports car (they are a very rich international family). She saw me changing my reuseable and thought I was crazy. She was convinced that it wasnt worth it and anyway you have to use tumble driers to dry the nappies - she had never come across the concept of a washing line.

I just despair sometimes. I scurry around with my composting, reuseables, mooncup, using public transport all the time, holidays in France rather than Mauritius, giving talks at the hospital about reusables. Yet a sizeable number of people do absolutely nothing. Why do I bother?!

In a way I am abit jealous. I sometimes wish I could be like that but I seem to be burdened by an overactive conscience. Does anyone else feel like this?

There's a lot of flats where I live (Bath - lots of huge Georgian buildings that have been converted into flats) but I have to say our council's wonderful.

They take rubbish and recycling every week. Cardboard isn't included in recycling, but there's a separate fortnightly collection for that. Have to say we could manage with fortnightly collections easily though - the bins are always less than half-empty when we put them out. We live on the ground floor so do have access to a garden if we need it, but never have to use it for rubbish.

there are some flats that have a collection for recycling locally, these flats are ones which have individual bin sheds for their rubbish. so are responsible for taking their rubbish from shed to the front of the block ready for collection. our block is not like that we have several large wheelie bins which are communal. i have suggested that they make one of these wheelie bins for recycling to be poo- pood and told theres no point as there is not the facilities to empty large bins such as this of recycling

A couple of weekends ago I had to go to a conference and decided I'd take the train - un-bloody believable.
I had to take a taxi to the station as there wasn't a bus.
When I got to the station I had to lug my case up the stairs to the platform to the other side. Once in London I had to change which meant lugging again up and down bloody stairs. There is no way anyone older or disabled could have managed.
At the other end I had to get another cab.
The journey cost me over 100 quid in total!!!!
No wonder people drive.
We have to make public transport better and cheaper.
End of rant.

I'm with you Litchick - had to go to London recently, DH offered to come to pick me up from the station. More fool that I am, I said no, I'll get the bus, it meets the train & its not much longer. And the bloody bus didn't turn up At least I could ring DH, otherwise I would have had to wait an hour for the next bus, which would only have gone half the way home, then another 2 hours for the 10pm bus back to our town. Next time I'll take the car to the station . . .