Day 30 - "Artistic Waste"

So, here we are. The last day of the 30 day challenge. I can't say it has been easy, but it has stretched my imagination to have to relentlessly keep coming up with ideas on the same theme. I have tried to explore the subject in a different way to I normally approach my photography. I have worried less about creating technically perfect work and tried to focus more on the issues. Some days this approach worked better than others. Overall I hope that the complete collection can be viewed as "art" even if each individual photograph would not normally be considered to be anything special in its own right.

I am ending the series with a photo taken on Troon beach of what some kids managed to create from the flotsom and jetsom brought in on the tide. If this had been produced by a famous artist it would probably find its way into the Tate Modern. As it is I see interesting shapes, lines and colours arranged in a pleasing way. Art? You decide!

Finally I want to take this opportunity to applaud everyone from Worth1000.com who took part in this challenge, whether or not they made it through the whole 30 day marathon. The standard of work created has been extraordinary indeed. Well done everyone!

Day 29 - "Batteries"

It is estimated that in 2000, almost 19,000 tonnes of waste general purpose batteries and 113,000 tonnes of waste automotive batteries required disposal in the UK.
Currently, only a very small percentage of consumer disposable batteries are recycled (less than 2%) and most waste batteries are disposed of in landfill sites. The rate for recycling of consumer rechargeable batteries is estimated to be 5%.

Wider use of rechargeable batteries would reduce the number of batteries being disposed every year and therefore reduce the number that find their way to the landfill sites. Ultimately even rechargables need to be disposed of. This should be done in an environmentally safe manner - batteries shouldn't just be thrown out with the household trash.

Day 28 - "Animal Feed"

What do you do with your waste veggies? You could compost them, or perhaps a better option would be to give them over to someone who would really appreciate them!

Day 27 - "Plastic Bags"

I mentioned these the other day in conjunction with the proliferation of plastic food packaging. We try to reuse ours by storing them in this neat holder. Whenever you need a bag you can just pull one out of the holes in the side.

Day 26 - "Waste of time?"

I took this photo today from a two-seater Piper Cub light aircraft over some of Scotlands most beautiful countryside. These monsterous wind turbines are sprouting up all over the place and are rapidly becoming a blight on the landscape. And all for what? A few extra mega-watts of power when the wind blows. Even if every hill in Scotland was covered in the things they still wouldn't produce enough power to meet demand; and even if they could, on still days we would need conventional power stations to plug the gap!

Day 25 - "Refundable"

When I was a child soda/pop came in glass bottles that you could return to the shop, when you had drunk the contents, in exchange for a penny. Needless to say you NEVER saw bottles littering the streets, stuffed in bushes or smashed in playgrounds. Every self respecting kid would trawl the neighbourhood collecting any that had been discarded in order to make a bit of extra pocket money.

The situation today is very different. Most bottles are now made of plastic; the sort that takes hundreds of years to biodegrade in a landfill site.

However, one Scottish drinks manufacturer, Barr, still operates the refundable bottle scheme. My photo today shows that you can get the princely sum of 20p for your empty bottle. This is the best type of recycling because it is 100% re-use with virtually no cost and a financial incentive to the customer.

The photograph today is taken with my new toy, the manual focus 35mm f/2.4 Carl Zeiss Flektogon lens I purchased on Ebay for ~£80. The bokeh (out-of-focus blur) with this lens is beautiful, especially when you make use of its ability as a 1:2 macro lens. It is fully manual and probably over 20 years old but it is a joy to use. Precision machinary at its best.

Day 24 - "Energy Saving Light"

Ah Ah! I discovered today that I do have one of these new fandangled fluorescent light fixtures in the house. Well OK, it is actually outside the house just by the back door, which explains the spider webs and other "stuff" you can see on this photo :-)

Day 23 - "Old fashioned lighting"

I was reminded the other day by Northman in a message at Worth that there are new, much more efficient, lighting solutions available to us now. I must admit to being far from the cutting edge when it comes to energy efficient light bulbs. My house is largely lit by traditional tungsten light bulbs (like the one in today's photo). Although these are very cheap to replace when they burn out, they do use much more energy than the equivalent Compact Fluorescent Lamp.

Compact Fluorescent Lamps are sold by the wattage, in much the same way as normal bulbs. However because they use a lot less energy, a lower wattage bulb will be needed to give out the same amount of light. Although CFLs cost more to buy, they save money because they use less electricity. The cost of a low energy light bulb can be as low as £2 and they are now available in most retail stores. A CFL will typically last for a total of 8,000 hours, compared to only just over 1,000 hours on average for the best conventional bulbs.

Guess it's time I started to convert!

Day 22 - "Green Brown Blue"

I told you about our three garbage bin system a few days ago. We have a green one for general waste, brown for garden waste and blue for plastics - with a wee black one for glass.

Well here they are in all their inverted glory!

Day 21 - "another litter bin"

Yeah - it's another litter bin today. I have tried to jazz it up a bit for you though :-) with a subtle (?) little stained glass filter overlayed onto the original. I couldn't really see it working that well in a church, but you never know - let's all sing the praises of waste disposal!

Day 20 - "The Recycling Depot"

Only 10 days left to go now and I have to admit that I'm begining to find it hard going. Trying to come up with original subjects each day is not at all easy!

So, I'm afriad for this one I took another trip to the local recycling depot. It was a beautiful day in Troon today and I though the bright blue sky would complement the various deep blue containers. The little green one adds just enough difference to make an impact.

No great moral to today's message - just the usual recycling mantra!

Day 19 - "Packaging"

Everything you buy these days seems to come encased in plastic packaging. Most of the time this is out-and-out waste. Do we really need our cup-cakes supplied in a plastic tray? Surely an old fashioned paper bag would be sufficient.

And it's worse than that. After we fill our shopping carts with plastic encased food we take it the checkout and transfer everything into several disposable plastic carrier bags. Reusable cotten bags would be a much better idea.

Recycling helps of course - but we wouldn't have to go through the rigmarole of sorting and collecting all this stuff if it wasn't used in the first place.

Food for thought? And why do the BBC keep nicking my ideas?!

Day 18 - "Turn that light off!"

I obsess about switching lights off when I'm not in the room. I can't help it. The rest of my family drive me crazy because they just don't seem to care! Everywhere I go in the house I find myself having to switch the lights off because noone else remembers to do it.

You'll notice that this picture shows a British light switch, which to my amazement I discovered works the opposite way to North American light switches. I spent nearly two years living in Canada recently and I don't think I ever got used to their upside down switches.

Day 17 - "Blue Bin Day"

This is a photograph of my street taken this morning. Our rubbish collections are now on a four week cycle...

Week 1 - Green bin - General household waste

Week 2 - Blue bin - Paper & Plastics + Black bin for glass

Week 3 - Green bin - General household waste

Week 4 - Brown bin - Garden waste

It means you have to be really careful to recycle otherwise your green bin gets too full too quickly.

Day 16 - "down the plughole"

It's a really bad idea to keep the water running while you brush your teeth. Don't waste water!

Day 15 - "Sawdust"

There is a large lumber yard at Troon. Large quantities of lumber is imported, kiln dried and then cut into timber. Sawdust is a very obvious by-product of the process. Waste sawdust can be processed into fuel pellets, pet bedding or have uses in pottery.

Day 14 - "Doggie Do Do"

Another great idea which has been well implemented by our local council. Many dog owners do now use these bins to dispose of their dogs' waste but unfortunately many still do not.

Also of note in this photo is the line of concrete structures going out to sea. They mark where there used to be sewage outflow pipes. I am so glad that is one feature of the local coast that has long since disappeared!

Day 13 - "Beach Litter"

According to the results of a survey published today the amount of litter on Britain's beaches has increased by more than 90% since 1994.

I can't say I have noticed much more waste being washed up or simply left on the beachs at Troon. However there is still an obvious problem with some people thinking it is perfectly acceptable to throw their garbage into the sea.

This photo was taken today along the rocky section of beach at the Ballast Bank in Troon not far from where I took Swallowed by the Sea. Why does it always seem to be a Coke bottle or can?

Day 12 - "The littlest room"

You knew I wouldn't be able to go for long without picturing the most essential waste disposal device in the house. Don't worry though, for the sake of this blog, this will be as close as I will take you to one ;-)

Day 11 - "Dripping Tap"

In North America it's known as a faucet. In the UK we call them taps.

Accordining to Wikipedia...
"Access to unpolluted fresh water is a critical issue for the survival of many species, including humans, who must drink fresh water in order to survive. Only three percent of the water on Earth is freshwater in nature, and about two-thirds of this is frozen in glaciers and polar ice caps. Most of the rest is underground and only 0.3 percent is surface water. Freshwater lakes contain seven-eighths of this fresh surface water. Swamps have most of the balance with only a small amount in rivers. The atmosphere contains 0.04% water."

It is pretty obvious that we actually don't have easy access to an awful lot of the fresh water we all take for granted. You turn on the tap/faucet and there it is - life sustaining H2O. But will it always be like that?

If you have a leaking tap then it could be wasting 40 litres of water each week. I can't even begin to imagine how many leaky taps there might be out there - but I'm sure it all adds up to a hell of a lot of wasted fresh water.

The photograph today is low DoF (f/1.8) high ISO (1600) pic of the tap in my utility room. Don't worry though, the leak was simulated ;-)

Day 10 - "Labelling"

There are about 50 different groups of plastics, with hundreds of different varieties. All types of plastic are recyclable. To make sorting and thus recycling easier, the American Society of Plastics Industry developed a standard marking code to help consumers identify and sort the main types of plastic. In this example the PET label shows the bottle is made from Polyethylene terephthalate. PET is the most easily and widely recycled plastic in the world.

The other icon shown on this packaging is simply a reminder not to throw the bottle on the street (or in a bush!) when finished with. Using a garbage bin is definately preferable to littering the environment but the bottle is still likely to end up in an land fill site somewhere where it could take decades to bio-degrade.

Day 9 - "Recycle Recycle"

Back to the local recycling centre for this one. This sign says it all, so I'm not going to add any more.

Day 8 - "Emissions"

Car drivers around the world are having to come to terms with increasing petrol prices (although as a percentage of earnings gas is as cheap as it has ever been).

I am not sure what side of the global warming debate I sit on. I can appreciate the arguments both for and against man's effect on the climate. What I do know is that oil prices are unlikely to come down.

So, is the onus on us to ensure that we don't waste this precious commodity? Whether we like it or not, it is highly likely that the average punter is going to be priced out of being able to drive cars like my father's Jaguar XJ6 4.0S pictured here.

Day 7 - "On Standby"

Today I'll simply quote from the BBC News website.

Britons waste the equivalent of around two power stations' worth of electricity each year by leaving TV sets and other gadgets on standby.
Last June Environment Minister Elliot Morley, responding to an MP's question, revealed that electrical equipment in sleep mode used roughly 7TWh of energy and emitted around 800,000 tonnes of carbon.

Day 6 - "No dogs on the beach!"

A slightly different sort of waste management today! During the summer our wonderful sandy beach is cleaned daily to remove the debris and litter that invariably washes up with the tide. The council also has a "no dogs" order to supposedly prevent dog owners from allowing their pets to soil the beach during the summer months.

Of course this week has been unseasonably warm and the crowds have flocked to the beach, many accompanied by their four legged friends. It's not just the fouling of the beach that is a concern but many families with young children visit the beach. Some of the dogs are pretty big and they charge around scaring the little ones half to death.

There's not a lot to be said about it in April, but even when May comes along a lot of owners openly flout the ban and, from what I've seen, are rarely if ever challenged.

The photograph is simple and to the point - you can see the sign and the sand sort of gives away the whole beach thing ;-) I'd have loved to have had a dog sitting next to it but they were all too busy chasing toddlers and crapping in the sand.

Day 5 - "The Coke Bottle Bush"

You know that recycling facility I was telling you about yesterday? Well this is typical of what the nearby bushes along a scenic seaside path look like. It is shocking that a large section of our population (and it's not just the kids) think it is ok to behave like this. It sickens me.

I couldn't do much artistically with this one. I just wanted to make a point. I guess in some sort of contorted way the Coke bottle looks like it might be "growing" out of the chaotic tangle of branches.

Day 4 - "Throw-away Society"

My local council has a fantastic recycling facility only a few miles from my house. One of the new additions is this container for old TVs and computers. Only a few years ago it would have been more cost effective to repair or upgrade these devices rather than to throw them away and buy new a new one. However TVs and computers are now cheaper than ever and no-one can justify repairing them when they are out of warranty, so they end up discarded.

Photographically the container immediately caught my eye with its painted blue stripe which so strongly frames the vivid red interior and the little collection of electronics nestling inside.

I was again reminded of the work of Richard Wentworth and especially his quote about whether a TV remains a TV outside of its usual context. I also stopped to consider all the things that these machines may have witnessed over the course of their, probably short, working lives. How many happy family times spent watching TV? How many heated arguements and fights in the front room? Perhaps these things will be recycled into shiney new machines that will go on to bear witness to the secret life of another family.

Day 3 - "Kerbside Bin 55"

Oh be quiet! No the contents of this glass recycling bin do not represent the average weekly beer and wine consumption of the SigloV household. It has actually taken over a month to get it this full - and once again I forgot to put it out for collection this morning.

On matters photographic, it was a real challenge to take this shot without getting my feet in the frame :-)

Day 2 - "Pottery Bin"

Rubbish bins don't have to be really ugly. OK, they're never going to be pretty, but a lot can be done to make them more asthetically pleasing. This one was on the wall of the Weatheriggs pottery near Penrith. I liked the way the wire mesh echoed the geometry of the wonderful red brick work. Also, if you look at the large version of the photo, you can see the rust of the wire neatly complements the red brick. I love seeing details like that in my photographs (even when I didn't notice them at the time!)

Day 1 - "Garden Waste Only"

Whilst spending the Easter weekend at my inlaws in Cumbria, I noticed that they had a green garden waste recycling bin - whereas back home in Scotland ours is brown. Also theirs is very clearly labeled so you don't forget!

This one needs to be looked at closely because I think it is the little specks of dirt and mud that rather nicely supplement the rather obvious written message.