Yesterday I met someone at the library and we got chatting about walking. He admitted to he had driven to the library because he had glass to drop off at the recycling! What a missed opportunity for a short local walk - with the added bonus of working the arm muscles! Of course the trick is to recycle fairly often, so it doesn't build up to be more than it is possible to carry ... 

I often take my glass to the bottle bank on a Sunday evening, although if there is a lot to carry, I do make a "rattle rattle chink chink" sound as I walk along!

Out of interest, once I read an "Environmental Impact Assessment" about recyling glass in the UK. In fact, driving to the bottle bank effectively does away with any environmental benefit, especially if you make a special journey for it. This is because glass is quite heavy, and using the car for such a short local journey is when a car pollutes the most (it takes about 5 miles for the engine to warm up). The other interesting thing I remember is that in Britain there is a demand for clear glass for uses like jam jars or pickle jars, whereas we take to the bottle banks far more green glass than there are uses for. This is because of imported wine bottles! 

I've also noticed people sometimes go to extraordinary lengths to get the car as close as possible to the supermarket entrance, or will drive round a town twice looking for a close parking spot and later go back out to move the car even closer! Call me mad, but my favourite parking spots are furthest away, hopefully a "roll on roll off" (or "RoRo"!) space which avoids reversing! Yes, even if it is raining!

So, let's all make at least one walking trip to the bottle bank this week, and park furthest away at the supermarket!