OK, so we all want to do the right thing with the packaging and so forth that we bring home. But confusion reigns. The War on Waste programs a few years ago (the third season of which was shown on ABC TV in Australia recently) highlighted the lack of clarity at the household level around recycling practices. Are plastics that spring back when you scrunch them up treated differently from those that don’t? What about “recyclable” coffee cups?

Fear not. A recent guide was published in a free online magazine that takes you from the soup to the nuts of household recycling. I printed this out to put on the fridge. Then the thought occurred to me: other people might want to do that too, without the fiddling around that is involved with printing a web page. So, to be a good greenie, I have pasted the text from the original document into a Google Doc, taken out excess line breaks, and added a bit of content. (The guide is in two parts. I haven’t interfiled the new content with the old, so you will just have to live with that.) The new document is unimaginatively called Recycling, and is available here until I get a take-down order.

I’m aware there is a controversy about whether plastics recycling, in particular, is responsible for much of the microplastic pollution currently occurring. I don’t know enough about this to comment. The collapse of the Redcycle plastics recycling scheme has left us, like everyone else, having to put our plastics in the general waste bin, thus eventually into landfill. It is all rather depressing.

We returned a few days ago from two nights in Hepburn Springs. The place we stayed was new to us, and much less expensive than our usual villa in Daylesford. The only negative for the property was that it was on the side of a hill, and thus down about five steps. However, it was very neat, well appointed, and snug inside. We had the facilities for cooking breakfast; this is a must on account of my beloved’s food intolerances. Going midweek was definitely less stressful than on the weekends, when half of Melbourne seems to flock there. Of course we chose to go a few days before the winter solstice, and thus the true depths of winter — down to about two degrees overnight. Melbourne was discernibly warmer!