It's Official - I'm Good for the Environment!

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This morning I was dead heading my dahlias in my front garden when a lady from up the road passed by with her Jack Russell. I often stop and talk to her and make a fuss of the dog and this morning, while we were talking, our bin men turned up to empty the bins. We have four bins in total - a large grey one for recycling, a large green one for rubbish which isn't recyclable, a small green one for compostable waste such as bones, meat, tea bags, ground coffee, egg shells and of course fruit and veg, and then we pay an extra £50 a year for a brown bin which is for garden rubbish. Our grey recycling bin and green non recycling bin are emptied on alternate weeks. Today we had out our brown bin, small green and our non recyclable stuff green bin. The bin man said hello as he came to take the bin but as he pulled it away from my front lawn, I heard him say a surprised sort of "oh". Both the Jack Russell's mum and I looked at him and he smiled back and said "I thought it was going to be a lot heavier than that!" He then looked into the bin and discovered we'd got about half a dozen plastic bags and nothing more. He commented that we were the most eco friendly people in our village as every other house had at least half a bin full of rubbish. He asked how we managed to get away with so little non recyclable stuff. I told him that if we did have non recyclable plastic we kept it and used it several times over before we threw it in the bin. I wash out plastic bags and use them for keeping food until they split or even use them out in the garden if they're big enough to cover tender plants in the winter. They're great for placing in the soil if you want to plant moisture loving plants. Same goes for bubble wrap - it never ends up in the bin until it's been well used. Both he and the lady with the Jack Russell were impressed. I'm just hoping that Mrs Jack Russell will pass on the tip to her friends.