One facet of Falkland life which is distinctly different to much of the UK, is what people do with items they no longer want or that are a bit broken or worn.  They do not go straight in the bin, recycling or to the tip.  Partly that’s because there isn’t much opportunity for recycling in the UK sense – tins are collected, and go back to the UK on the military supply ship; glass is collected and is crushed and used in roads and pavements, but that’s all the formal recycling there is.  So what happens to everything else?

The longer you live here, the more you see.  Milk is sold by a local farm, they don’t have a supply of standard milk bottles so instead milk is delivered in used spirits bottles.  If you see several empty spirits bottles outside someone’s front door, it probably just means they’ve left their empty milk bottles to be collected.  Lots of families have hens and sell eggs, which means that people are very appreciative if you give them surplus egg cartons, they’ll be used over and over again.

Vehicles are all imported and most of them are used when they arrive – my trusty Pajero is a 2010 model and seen as pretty new.  There is an annual road worthiness check that you need if you want comprehensive insurance, but you don’t have to have it and cars are kept and used until they are really old and completely dead.  Even then they have value and will be stripped down for parts that can be used elsewhere.

Part of the incentive to reuse items is that it’s hard to get them here.  There’s no such thing as fast fashion.  Very limited amounts of new clothes are for sale on the Islands but most clothing is mail order or bought when people are abroad.  This means that clothes are well used before they’re disposed of and that there’s a healthy market in secondhand clothes.  Enter the Bring and Buy group on Facebook, aka Chebay – where you can sell your surplus items such as clothes, DVD box sets, used tyres, children’s clothes, furniture, hoovers.  You name it, it’s probably been for sale at some point.  And if you don’t want to sell an item, you can put it on Free Falklands and let people know that you have old doors or a bath or metal panels, free to whoever collects.  Or you could donate it to the Charity Shop. 

All of this means that what has to go to the tip is far less than in the UK and that seems to me like a very good thing.