Leftovers

Our local council has a resonably sane approach to recycling and rubbish collection. We have separate bins for
- recyclable waste (plastics, metals, paper and card)
- garden waste (we have to pay to get this one collected - fair enough, I think)
- land-fill (anything not in the other two, mostly packaging)

We have to take glass to a recycling point in the village

This seems to me a resonably workable compromise between putting everything in one bin and the systems I have encountered in other places, with up to seven separate containers for waste and recycling, where I fear the best might become the enemy of the good

Quite recently the council have introduced a small container for food waste, including cooked food. This arrived with some of those green bags made of cellulose, so that they decompose. They are putting the food waste in an anaerobic digester, where it breaks down into methane - to be used to create 'biogas' - and leaves a residue of compostable material

We have trouble finding much to put in this container. We compost most of our uncooked vegetable peelings. One of Mrs M's superpowers is turning yesterday's leftovers into today's culinary masterpiece, so nothing from that source. We don't eat meat, so no bones, carcases, gristle etc. Mainly, it receives things we don't like to compost: tea bags, egg shells, tomato skins and citrus peel, which looks a bit meagre in the bottom of even a small bin

We have heard that the digester is having trouble breaking down the green bags, so we are anticipating amended instructions at some point. Biological processes are harder to manage than incinerators or holes in the ground

Recycling is the sine qua non of an ecosystem - there is no such thing as waste, only the feedstock for the next process in the cycle. A woodland walk today; plenty of fungi, plenty of lichen and moss, all doing their bit to keep the cycle going. These chestnut shells (mast?) are still lying in the grass, more or less where they fell, but the nuts are long gone - squirrels, other rodents and maybe badgers, I guess - food waste then but, nevertheless, a pleasing colour combination on a rather grey day. I was surprised to find the shells so intact and undisturbed at the end of winter - I wonder what fate awaits them - insects and fungi when the year warms up, perhaps

The extra is more of a mystery. We think these are wild cherry stones, but you can see that each one has had a hole nibbled in it, presumably to remove the kernel - again, squirrels or other rodents I assume, and again leaving behind their food waste. But I don't know how they all became collected together in a pile on the surface, or at what stage, how, or by what, the flesh of the cherries was removed. Scope for a woodland fairy tale