A Day In The Life Of a Land Pirate - Living Free!
This is a big part of my lifestyle and I havent really shared it on Steemit yet..
RECYCLING!
img-wikipedia
As an introduction, I want to use a memory that has just popped up in my head related to the word recycling.
I was in Bern, Switzerland with a friend and we had just got some re-useable things from the trash, what I cant remember exactly now and then we came across a long line of people (really long around 15) all queuing up in the sunshine to put bottles in a bottle bank that sat on the street.
Me and my friend was laughing at how people recycle by putting stuff IN the trash, when a women came and asked if we knew what everyone was doing and started to tell us about recycling. We found it quite ironic that people were so eager to put bottles in a bottle bank and so joyus that they were recycling, the atmosphere was immense from the group of strangers all doing the same good deed, the sun was hot and so we went on our way to find the next dumpster and some shade.
I had forgotten that this is actually the only known way of recycling in the mainstream, and if one does research on this "second hand plastic thing" Like me you might have read about countrys selling off this plastic to china all done by private companys, thus none of the recycling money goes back to the people who did the recycling.
Come to think of it, I havent really ever recycled like this since leaving society, and now I only ever take things OUT of the trash, which has to become the normal way to actually recycle something.
Id like to show you a day that I took photos of recently, just an average day for me here in Oslo-Norway, living a not so "normal" lifestyle which means I have a lot of free time.
An average day of what im doing that I documented, it was the first day of real spring!
Ah yes this was the day after my first Stackitus had set in, I woke up feeling very sick from it but had to go to work anyway. It wasnt even 24 hours since it had set in and it already needed healing. I finished work and happened to just past by the coin shop to get some more when it was opening in the morning. Dam it feels instantly relieved, and to make sure it would stay away for a week or so,I had to have a sneaky peek..
On the way to the office from the coin shop, where I would buy more magerzines, I came across a container.
Its one of the best places you can happen to find a container for trash - Outside of a hotel. I have recycled lots of things from various hotels since in Oslo, they are a great source to get things from anytime of the year if you can get access to their trash cans. You will always find these in hotel trash:
- Quarter used toilet rolls (because they get a new roll each time a new guest arrives in the room)
- Bed linen (cleaned before thrown out, usually "old stock")
- Things people leave in the fridges (half bottles wine and food examples)
- Horrible soaps and Flouride toothpastes, shampoos etc, oh and new toothbrushes! (If your smelly from travelling and desperate!)
- Meat for dogs, usually fish!
When there's a huge container parked out the front, you can expect great things to be getting thrown out.
Carpets, furniture's, kitchen equipment , sometimes whole kitchens! Mattresses, random decorative pieces.
The worst thing you can do is to go in a ask " Can I take some of the trash there, or look in that container?"
I jumped up and had a look and saw there was around 12 huge black sacks and had to check them out, below was what look liked wardrobes. In the black sacks were Duvets! Clean and almost new, must have been winter ones and used for half the year. i threw one sack down on the ground and then saw at the other end of the huge container, something that Ive been looking for , A new compost toilet! It was perfect a bin, didnt manage to get a photo of it though because a women came out and told me that I should put it back in the trash.
Brainwashed
She came out and told me to put it all back and, Like I always do, I tell them that it will be reused. I told her that there are around 50 duvets here that I could take for example to the Blue cross for next winter to be used when homeless people and drug addicts are on the streets and that the big plastic bin was to be my new compost toilet.
Any NON Brainwashed human with any kind of reasoning and logic would agree that these two thing that were to be buried or burnt, would easily be recycled.
Anyway she threw it back and that then gave me the chance to ask her some things and tell her some things also. Starting of as to why we should be recycling more and getting to the question of if she had any children, at that point she looked shocked and replied "NO"
Then I asked her,
" Do you plan to have children in the future?"
-"No" she replied.
I then said "Thats great then because do you know partly why the world is getting fucked up? because of people like yourself being ignorant". Im harsh sometimes but I dont really care. Actually I hope that women had thought long and hard about or interaction. Oh and just as im leaveing, 2 phillipino guys walk out who work for the hotel (taking out the trash) and I had to say "These guys would know what its about, the Norwiegen consumerism mentality is fucked up! Have a great life anyway!"
After loading up on magerzines, it was around 11am, great time to go to work at a shopping center that I had never been to before. I took the tram 30 mins away from the city and arrived to scope out what would be the best entrance to stand at to sell them. I came across this car , parked on steps and at first was thinking that it was some lads trying to see if thier bmw 4x4 could go down them but then i realise that they were trying to push the car back up the steps.
I had set up the magerzines and sold a few but then of course the security came out and said I was only allowed to stand with one magerzine on show and I had to stand across the street. I told him that I had already sold some and would go to enjoy the sun anyway, i fucking hate people who think they have authority over me. Plus he proberbly stood and watched me from inside make more money in the time they had pulled the car up from the steps, than he makes in 2 hours. People get pissed off at that sometimes, but its my choice to work on the streets, and if ive done it for a long time then I must be able to make money from it. Here I earn commision on each magerzine which a small amount here in Norway, it equals like half a beer in a bar or a third of a packet of ciggerettes say, so its up to me how hard I work to how much I get from this.
Heres just as I was leaving the rescue truck left (a passer by) and the BMW right!
I went to look around as I was never in this area before
Not so far away I found a supermarket that was quite busy and decided as I was here and it seemed quite with not even a begger sat there so I set up the magerzines and relaxed some in the sun and got some water for me and the dogs as the sun was hot! The trash was inside so no dumpster-diving opportunity but it was nice and chilled and the people where happy to see someone there and some even brought a magazine.
This day felt like the real first day of Spring/summer.
I got home to go take a Siesta and I could see the pallet bridge for the first time as it receives no direct sunlight to melt the ice! Went up to take pictures of the other things that I have found since in Oslo in the trash, and so here are just many photos of the randomness that can be found if one has the time to look around.
I think soon I shall do a contest to give a first and second prize of SBD or STEEM to people who do a "walk with me" post, and the mission is to see what cool things you can find in trash that people have just thrown out. The one who find what everyone thinks is the "best" find, most usually being the most valuable of finds, will receive the prizes!!
Heres a more recent post showing how a land pirate eats for free
One comment ... there is a big difference between "recycle" and "reuse"! Recycling means you take the old things and use it as raw materials when manufacturing new things. Reuse means ... reuse.
With typical bottle recycling, the bottle breaks into fragments as it's being thrown into the bottle bank, those fragments are then used for making a new bottle. The process is quite much inefficient, it consumes big amounts of energy, and the new bottle will never be of the same quality as the first bottle, there is always a limit for how many times things can be recycled like this.
When I was a kid, glass bottles were typically reused. We delivered it back to the shop, got our "pant" money back, the bottles would be sent to the bewery, washed there and used again. (the washing process caused some wear to the bottles, so eventually there was a limited number of times the bottles could be reused. Also, even though they had quite much quality control systems, including an employee that would watch the bottles passing through, I have experienced buying a new bottle with cigarette butts inside.
We used to return just the milk bottles I remember in UK when I was a kid, but long gone are the days of the milkman! There was a survey done (cant remember details) but they were asking kids where milk comes from and they said the supermarket :(
Reusing sounds like your about to start heroin again hahahahahahaha, in english atleast to "reuse" is only for people who relapse back onto a drug :) Much better to use the word Recycle hahahhahahahaha
edit- I think every country should do the "pant" but I know that countries wont all do it because it gives a chance for homeless and beggers etc to make enough money to stay in the cities
Oh, never knew that "reuse" had such a meaning.
In Norwegian we have "gjenbruk" (literally, re-use) and "gjenvinning" (re-winning? More like re-newal than re-cycling). From an environmental point of view, re-use is (almost) always better than recycling. Our local school fleemarket has just gone through a rename, now it will be "gjenbruksmarked" instead of "loppemarked".
I'm often quite concerned about "green-wash", ideas that are sold in as "environmentally friendly" may not always be that environmentally friendly when looking closer at it. The whole word "recycle", with those green arrows indicating a circle, it's quite far from the truth. It's more like a "loop" than a circle ... just like the metro line 5 in Oslo (I heard rumors they had to make the London yellow circle into a loop as well, to be able to throw out people settling down on the metro) ... because the things produced from "recycled" materials are seldom recycled, and in any case they can only be recycled some few times.
About the pant, I do like the idea and think it can and should be extended to more products than only drinking bottles and cans ... and as we've moved from glass bottles to aluminium tins and PET-bottles, the system has also moved from "gjenbruk" to "gjenvinning" - and I believe at some point they completely stopped with pant on glass bottles.
The pant system is not without negative effects, it involves quite some overhead for one thing - particularly when we end up sort bottles after country of origin at home.
We had "Brødboksen" for a while, but they eventually went bankrupt.
They were delivering bread, juice, milk and other breakfast products to the door, in the early morning, internet orders could be made all until midnight for next-day delivery.
The milk was the typical pasteurized and homogenized stuff delivered in the typical milk carton, but the juice was freshly made and delivered in milk-style-bottles, and the bottles was supposed to be returned by placing them outside the door (inside their thermo-insulated delivery-boxes).
We rarely used it because it was expensive and because my wife typically would haul things from the shop, but I loved the service, it was really nice to get fresh bread. I miss the service, and I'm quite sure it will reappear. Indeed, the brand was bought by a competitor "Morgenlevering", but last time I checked them out, they were missing the most important thing in their assortment - milk!
So I believe on the return of the milkman, just a slightly more modern variant, delivering more things than only milk (particularly freshly baked bread and juice) and accepting orders all until midnight.
I just rememebred I was an "assistant" milkmen for some months around the age of 12 ('96) must have been, and i guess that was the last milkman eras in Uk until like you say it become "expensive" (thinking now, the wages proberbly just didnt go up) and then suddenly there were supermarkets!.. That sounds great with fresh bread every day, hey wait this is still running in Norway?! anyway time I watch some documentry and relax.. tec 7 tomorrow?
In Norway the milkman was gone long before my time, and Brødboksen got bankrupt, so they're not running anymore.
I was in Russia first time in 1998, and then they still had another kind of milk delivery service - every morning people would be queuing by the milk delivery tank truck, with their own containers! I believe this service lasted into this millennium, maybe it still is a thing on the remote country side.
I think the thing that really killed daily milk delivery (and the tank car delivery) was not the supermarkets, but improved hygienic conditions at the farms and good pasteurization at the diaries. It's no point with daily milk deliveries when the milk can stand for two weeks in the fridge without getting bad.
The flipside is that one cannot easily make sour milk at home anymore. The milk from the diary doesn't go sour, it goes bad. Milk directly from the farmer is a big no-no here in Norway due to laws and regulations, one has to know a farmer (or be a farmer) to get real, fresh milk.
According to wikipedia, "reuse" is about using something again. Even when I google for "drug reuse", I find articles on how to put unused medicines to good use.
Great :) Well you might have already known that English people speak the worst English ever available! Hahahaha 😂
Great read bro 😊
Wishing you smiles and blessings
thanks man!
Always many blessings your way dear brother 😊
manager at walmart told me i couldnt take their old cardboard boxes for reuse because they "recycle them themselves". how much sense does that make? i waited til he was around the corner and took them anyways. have you ever seen the show Money for Nothing? This woman goes dumpster diving and upcycles trash into really cool pieces. She then sells them and returns the profit to the original owner of the trash. i think you might enjoy it!
Hi @madpotters!
haha I love it , peoples reactions when they come out to smoke a ciggy and im hanging half in the dumpster.. the mind must be so confused hahaha.. and they cant even take the waste food or they get the sack, but they need the job to pay for food.. poor fuckers!
That show sounds great! Happy to know its being broadcasted.. are you in the states?
I am! In San Diego :) Its on netflix, from the BBC channel, I believe. I also saw an awesome show about dumpster diving specifically for food - people were able to create some incredible meals all from untouched, still in the wrapper, still perfectly good food from the trash barrel.
Ah, its a paradise really! Eating like royalty, all the expensive things that dont get sold !
Hi Mr Adam Kokesh. . I resteem post
ill give you an upvote just because although its not really a valid comment, but maybe your getting confused so benifit of the doubt given :)
I just love reading your stories and the great life you are leading.
Keep them coming. They brighten my day.
:) Welcome!