I met some more members of the team at the Recycling Centre today and we had some really good Rubbish Conversations.
I asked them what the strangest thing they’d had thrown away was. After a bit of thought, the strangest thing one of the team said was money. People throw money away. Not just by accident, which does happen, people throw foreign currency away too. Even current GBP is thrown away in house clearances and such like where people don’t have the time or inclination to sift through everything. Jewellery gets chucked away too – gold in amongst costume jewellery. They try to sift through things like boxes and bags to retrieve valuable materials that can go in the Revive charity shop but it’s not always possible, and depending which skip it ends up in, might not be retrieved in the materials processing either.
Today there were a lot of items thrown away that were outgrown and out of fashion. This mirror was no longer wanted due it’s dated look. It’s 50 years old and was bought in a second hand shop originally, 50 years ago, before they were called charity shops. It will go back into the on site charity shop for resale:
These modular shelving units were thrown away because they’re not on trend any more, again retrieved for resale:
A daughter’s roller skates that have been outgrown:
A daughter’s desk who has finished her full time education:
I love collecting the stories behind these rubbish objects and finding out why they are now ‘rubbish’. It would really interesting to follow the items through the recycling shop and find out where they end up going and for what reason.
I also had a delivery from a lovely women off our local trashnothing! network of magazines to use in upcoming workshops and collages and gleaned a shiny bin lid from the skip.
