Less Landfill - result!

With Beryl’s creative solution on how to compost the cat litter now in place I was interested to see how much rubbish I would have this week. On Wednesday evenings we have to take our ‘Cavan bags’ – refuse bags that we buy in our local Spar – into the village for the county council to collect very early Thursday morning. These bags are 12.5-kilo maximum weight.

I went around the house and found that I filled a quarter bag.

And what am I filling the bag with these days? Most of the contents are balled up used tissue. I have always had dodgy sinuses. I was rather loath to pitch the paper hankies into the fire. I know! I know! It’s my own bacteria or viral stuff, but it still is creepy.

Now I am wondering if I need to surf the net to see if anyone is making organic cotton hankies. Although women of my mother’s generation who did hand washing – even of nappies or diapers – have said that washing the handkerchiefs was just too disgusting! They shudder as they speak of it. (It involved boiling it in a large saucepan with lots of salt to dissolve the snot. The interesting pieces of information I pick up along the way.)

I am not sure I would convert Tony to cotton hankies but I do think I will look into it for myself since I’m responsible for most of it. It’s either that or get over my squeamishness and start putting the tissues into the compost bin.

But as an aside, I read in Healthy and Organic magazine’s May issue that someone is now marketing a technique to get your cat trained to use the household’s toilet. I look at Zelda, who was a foundling lured in from outdoors with great patience, and her wildish offspring, Minnie the Minx, and somehow think that our felines may not be the most suitable candidates for that method.