Line Drying and the Non-Technological Solution

The Guardian front page is headlined this morning ‘Sustainable’ bio-plastic can damage the environment.’

The article goes on to notes that bio-plastics made from maize, sugar cane and wheat are not only hastening a food crisis (in the race to make bio-fuels), but that the bio-plastics give off methane at landfill sites.

So the technology that figured bio-plastics would be a ‘sustainable’ solution to our packaging addiction have found that they have only added to the problem.

The other worry is that the maize-made bio-plastics are devised from genetically modified corn. As a firm supporter of both bio-diversity and organic horticulture I have to say anything with the GM label on it is anathema to me.

Perhaps we have been pinning too much hope on the technological fix.

And it is back to looking at no packaging or the brown paper bag that will compost down!

In the meantime, and on a happier note, the springtime has brought rain in the night time. This is good for watering my seeds. And we have sunny, breezy days that are renewing the joy of line-dried clothing. You need add no essential oil to scent your clothing. The cleanest breezes in Europe blow in off the Atlantic and over the meadows; they give my clothes and bed linen the best fragrance ever. It’s not one money can buy. Nor is it a terribly technological answer to drying my washed clothes.

But it has the aesthetic satisfaction as well as being sustainable in the truest sense of the word. Plastic bags or plastic of any sort is neither sustainable nor particularly aesthetic.