© Julia Welstead 2011

Way back in the halcyon days of early August (that whisker of a window of good calm weather) the boys and I moved into Edinburgh again. We had lived here for a couple of years at the nether end of last century, before chugging off around the world – Orkney, Australia, Dumfries (why? oh those are all very long stories) – in an eclectic range of vintage Landrovers, and BC (before children) I was born, raised, schooled and trained as a nurse here. Edinburgh is good: we all feel like we’re home again.

Yet Edinburgh seems, in our absence, to have become Edenburgh. This misspelling is writ large across bin lorries, council bills, litter bins and many other available surfaces. It’s hard not to notice, and therefore hard not to wonder – have I just been spelling my home town’s name wrong for all these decades? But voluble messages are also being loud-speakered through the ether on every radio station I tune in to. Carbon footprint, climate change, peak oil, fuel prices, food shortages, famine, war, world chaos, mayhem and havoc – is there an energy crisis on, by any chance? Are there too many humans for not enough resources? Is there something we should all be doing about it?

Of course this is all old hat, an ancient, nay vintage, chestnut. It surely just gets rolled out as news whenever there’s nothing else to report? After all, we in this green and (sometimes) pleasant land, still have plenty of everything, so why worry? And anyway, what can one person do about it? Can we really save the world by not taking a plastic bag at the checkout, whilst jumbo jets zoom relentlessly overhead?

Two pertinent meetings with old friends have changed my mind about that. Both are scientists: one in the business of assessing and predicting climate change, the other in the ecology of birds. Both are level headed and realistic and use cars and supermarkets and drink bottles of wine – just like normal. Yet both have comprehensively jumped onto the bandwagon of, ‘yes, we need to do something about this now, and fast’. And, after all, I’d be awfully sad if I hadn’t bothered to at least try to pitch in and help to save the world. My children would be disappointed in me.

Back at the kitchen table, I do a quick mental check of my own little carbon footprint. Coming from an ecological background, and having lived fairly frugally (for entirely financial reasons ;~) for most of my life, I would have automatically assumed that I’m striding across the world leaving pretty peedie footprints. But, having read some recent books, news and reviews on the subject, if there comes a day of reckoning then I’m not at all sure that that will prove to be the case. I fear my feet might be rather larger than I had conveniently assumed (especially if I add three huge and hungry teenage boys in to the calculation). Perhaps it is time to tot up what we use and what we waste, and try to improve upon the calculation.

My first task awaits me in the post. It’s a survey from the Energy Saving Scotland Advice Centre. I fill in the multiple choice questions about the type of building I live in (stone? brick?), how old it is (ancient!) and whether it’s insulated (don’t know!) and how it’s heated (gas) and so on. At the end I tick all the boxes asking if I’m interested in alternative technologies for heating my house – wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, biomass. Of course I’m interested, who isn’t? I am very unlikely to be able to install any of them in my current, rented, double upper, but one can dream. Learn and dream. I post it off and await advice from the advisors (which never comes).

Second, I unearth large red and blue plastic boxes from the under-the-stairs cupboard. They each have their very own little rain hood, how sweet, but no information as to what to put into them, and when and where they might be emptied. You Auld Reekies may well be wondering why I don’t know all this. Well out on the islands (Hebrides and Orkneys) recycling is somewhat, umm, bespoke (more later) and in Australia it’s, well, less advanced than here (they have a helluva lot of land to fill and are pretty relaxed about the whole thing) and Dumfries has its very own, brand new recycling system (again, more of this later). 

On the advice of our next-door neighbour (more of whom later as well, with regard to his vegetables) I Google Edinburgh (Edenburgh?) council and scroll down to a recycling button. All is made clear: blue for glass, aluminium, newspapers and junk mail (hurrah, someone has come up with something to do with junk mail!), red for cardboard boxes and plastic bottles. I’m bewildered by ‘tetrapak type cartons’ (answers on a postcard please) but otherwise pretty much wised up. A calendar of collection dates for my area is available to download, and I’m up and running.

Questions remain, of course. Plastic fruit punnets? Plastic or tin meat trays? Crisp packets? I ask a friend, who I know to be an avid re-cycler, about these and she rather trumps me by replying that their household uses none of these things. She is implying, I take it, that my family eats junk. Ach well, us and a few million other folk, hey.

The other question in my head, as I leave my first bulging red box at the road end on a windy Tuesday night, is where all this stuff goes (apart from possibly being blown across the road at any moment) and what happens to it. Does it end up back in our houses in another form? Could it be put to good use to help nudge along Edinburgh’s fabled new tram system from myth to reality? Or does it, as is rumoured around town, get all squished up and end up in landfill anyway? Lots to learn.