Amizon

Recycling…recycling….hmmmm….such a big thing in Germany. Being a household, handling rubbish is not as easy as you think. It has become a habit for me, my husband , the whole family to put rubbish in its own right place.

I was never a recycle-o-mania even before in Malaysia. Such a shame as I call myself a chemical engineer, knowing certain things are not biodegradable like plastics etc. Even scientists do try to find replacement to plastics or maybe even better a biodegradable plastics. But does not mean in the meantime, we the consumers/household,the permanent producers of rubbish to simply throw things irresponsibly less considering how hard the disposal of the rubbish. Have you ever thought how these rubbish being handled in Malaysia,how piles up of rubbish in landfills keep piling up waiting for disposal in incinerators then would lead to major pollution.Despite the claim that the process could be clean, not polluting the environment, but still, that does not mean,we can continue not trying being a recylist, or at least to try to be one!

Do you know that, Germany was the first one in the world to start with an intensive program of recycling rubbish. In 1991, the green dot program was launched. Read more: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1568/is_n1_v26/ai_15382445/pg_1

Simple slogan!: "Germans wanted waste avoidance," says Helmut Fischer of Procter & Gamble. "They wanted to achieve avoidance of landfills and incinerators at any cost. This is ideology, not science."

Another excellent achievement of the recycling program of Germany: " In July 1993, Environment Minister Topfer proudly announced that Germans "are the trash collectors of the world."

This take-back policy has been working since years. Even I teach my both sons to do the same. Look here:

What are the yellow bags in the pictures? They are meant only for metals  containers, plastics containers and packages. No glass and paper should be in there. There are special rubbish containers for glasses/bottles according to their respective colors like green, brown and white bottles. When disposing these bottles, the caps must be separated and thrown accordingly.

Read this blog that describe how recycle-o-mania she is in Germany like the rest of the inhabitants of Germany and how the typical recycling program is run all over Germany: http://bloggingmone.blogspot.com/2007/08/recycle-o-mania.html

These are some pictures of rubbish containers for example Brown dustbin(for biodegradable), Black dustbin(for non recyclable), Yellow Bags(for plastic-based,metal-based and packages) and Blue dustbin (for papers and cartons).

This is how it looks like every week,the rubbish waiting to be picked up.

The glass bottle collectors were well known in Malaysia like 20 years ago, but now, the idea of collecting glass is likely to extinct due to the wide usage of plastic bottles. Not to our suprise, that the recycling booths grow rapidly all over the nations and now depending on us to decide to be reyclists or not. Do you do it? Have not? Not too late to change! Teach our friends and families, insist on recycling, never wait for the rules and regulations to teach us to do it. Let the future generations appreciate nature in the sense of recycling, the least one can do to be called as environmentalist!

Naturalist, environmentalist, unpollutionist(if this word exist), and recyclist could be synonyms in a defined definition:

Liebe Natur.

Appreciating nature is not new to me I guess, considering, trying to define what appreciation is. Growing or planting plants is absolutely, no question about that,  also a sort of appreciation, as pretty much I do it.

Since we the whole family moved into a new apartment, I have no more garden, but a small balcony. I could not plant any more plants on ground but only of course in pots. Then, I realised, even if I have no more garden, the temptation was still there. Now, I may say it is a sort of a peculiar temptation, to me at least, or maybe it suits to be called as a new hobby rather than temptation in this year’s Fall season 2007.

How and why I discovered this new temptation?. Lets start by looking how beautiful Fall is:

First left: path to my office on foot (in the direction from my new apartment). The leaves turned yellow before falling off the branches. Unfortunately, I have not discovered and learned the names of the trees yet except for Maple of course, since Maple is so common.

Second left: a scenary from a different path also on foot to my office(from my old apartment).

Loving Nature is a norm to German kids, once in every fortnight, in my son’s (Faris) Kindergarten, there is a trip to forest or any kind of Nature with wild trees, the so called "Waldtag". They are taught to love nature and take care of nature even at early age.

Shots taken by Faris with my camera (not intentionally) at the Kindergarten tells the story.

Look at these: Pine cones, chest nuts, leaves were collected by the children at the Kindergarten,appreciated,exhibited and decorated.

That was how I started doing the same thing!  Look what I did with the idea.

Those are the first frame decorations out of nature that I did this Fall. I did not actually preserve the leaves and fruits, but I glued in frames right away after plucking them from branches and trees,letting them dry in frames. To make them lovier,I added some artificial stuffs like butterflies and lady birds as decorations. However,letting them dry naturally in frames exposing to light,actually caused the colors from the nature to fade away. They looked even prettier in the beginning in contrast to the pictures that I snapped way days after the making. The last image I personally called it as the "Ring of Nature",with my sons and me collecting nuts and other stuff (dropped from trees like chestnuts, kastanien, pine cones) since September/October when they started to drop and covering the grounds. This idea was inspired by just observing how the Germans having the ring decorated at the front door especially nowadays, I guess celebrating the upcoming Christmas. I just did it for fun and decorated my wall, appreciating nature in my own way.

Now look at my next framework thing with nature:

My temptation seemed not to stop or become stagnant! Whatever I saw pretty enough,ideas just came out. Craving ideas with nature just came out naturally!

I plucked and plucked more leaves from trees and let them dry in books.  Disregarded what I thought people would think of my doing during plucking and collecting stuff, my mind kept jumping for creative ideas. Just love it!

For fruity stuffs and also roses, I hung them in closet and let them dry without being exposed to sun but with good ventilation, the point was to preserve the natural color out of them. Now see what I did just yesterday in new other frames.

My heart just burst with excitement now looking at the framework thing that I came up with this Fall season. Unbelievably astonishing and relaxing too!

I cherished Spring remarkably with joy and happiness looking at the plants with flowers and buds, with lots of beautiful colors and shading, giving me splendid pleasure and unbelievably happy emotions, smiling all the way walking on foot to my office. When summer comes, the colorful sceneries were still in view but towards, Fall, the emotions were totally mixed with sadness and gloomy. I tried to find something that would create another kind of appreciation towards the falling of leaves and the revealing of brown and naked branches. The scenery turned from colorful to brownish, yellowish and reddish view.

Now I discovered my emotions towards Fall season! I love Fall.

Subhanallah!… Creations by Allah are unbelievably incredible. Let man wonders how great He is. Just deal with it and pray a lot for his forgiveness and seek for blessing! Alhamdulillah!

Can’t wait for whity snowy season now! Winter. Then explore a whole new version of emotions with Nature!

Liebe Natur!