21 Feb 07

Today Keely the York Rotters worker phoned first thing and asked if I'd go to St. Nicks and present some composting info to a group of kids from Harrogate who were coming over to visit the Environment Centre. Keely was unable to do it as her son was off school ill, so I agreed to be there for 12.30 and do three 15 or 20 min spots. I do a compostables colletion on Wednesdays so I cycled to town at full speed, trailer rattleing, and went to Out Of This World, just one potato sack of biodegradables today, perhaps 20 kg. I popped into the shop too as my wife wanted some vegan pate, and OOTW is just about the only place I can buy this. I could go to Alligator but although it's nearer, it's off my usual route, and I'm a shareholder in the Creative Cooperative Ltd, who are the parent company for OOTW, so I don't have a problem buying stuff there.

Came home via Oxfam, who have the cheapest 600g 'fair trade' coffee, one of my addictions. I'm not sure how 'low carbon' one of these tins is every 8 weeks or so, but the fair trade-ness makes me feel better about drinking coffee. I've tried two other brands and definitely prefer Cafe Direct.

Home just in time to say bye to my wife who's off to Scarborough by train to see Uncle Tom who's had a fall and is in hospital. We're both very fond of him and hope that if he has to move out of his current housing, because of his increasing care needs, he'll be able to come to York.

Made the usual large pile of sandwiches for lunch and quickly gathered my composting stuff together; a bag of finished compost, an old duvet cover to riddle onto, and my Rotaseive. Kids love having a go with the Rotaseive, a circular riddle which has a handle to move a bar over the top surface of the mesh, allowing the small composted particles fall through, leaving sticks and larger bits in the riddle for putting back in the compost heap, or using for mulch. The 3 talks went well, the groups also having a talk about the wind turbine and the recycling work that St. Nicks does.

Home in time to cycle to school and pick up my children, and we all cycled home after I had collected fruit skins/cores from the playground bins and popped them in one of the 'dalek' bins I've installed at school. I do wish the school had a proper system for collecting this material seperately. I'm sure the children would be willing to put the materials in the correct contaainer if only they were labelled correctly. I am loth to hassle the school AGAIN about this... so I just get on with what I can do.