The other day, when visiting my bride of nearly 50 years, now so sadly wandering, or worse – lost – in her limited world of Alzheimer’s dementia, I happened upon an activity in which I had not previously participated: lid-sorting! It was fun. It helped pass her time for her. But above all, it helped to stimulate her. It proved an excellent exercise that aided in: identification – sorting of lids into separate colours [blue, black, red, yellow, green, and white]; dexterity – picking them up; decision-making – apportioning correctly by colour into containers.
While these tasks might seem simple enough to most, to those unfortunate enough be to living through this and other debilitating illnesses of old age, they can present a set of quite complex tasks. But, if guided with humour and patience, they clearly prove to be an excellent way to stimulate the mind and encourage companionship amid a burble of conversation and mirth around the table.
More strength to their arm, thought I, as – yet again – I mumbled my gratitude to these wonderful people who, day after day, care for ‘my bride’ and her co-dwellers at the Lorne Residential Aged Care home. What a wonderful place, I mused on my way home! What a stellar staff! More: I mused, how ‘mis-representing’ our unthinking media-jocks can be as they carelessly hype and sensationalise ‘the horrors’ [as they portray them] of care in Aged Care. Few have spared a moment’s thought for the morale-sapping effect their ill-informed reporting has on the job satisfaction, work ethic, and good humour of the myriad good, committed, dedicated, and compassionate women and men who unstintingly care for the aged or infirm who depend upon them.
For sure, there are some shonky for-profit outfits out there that demand regulatory attention. But Lorne Aged Care is absolutely not one of them. While it is quite an exceptional care facility for which I give daily silent thanks, their work – and the work of dozens of good, humane facilities like it – goes without reporting, without recognition, and that’s wrong. So, please all you sensation-hunters out there, spare a thought for the harm you do to the great battalions of the good, as you pillory the platoons of the poor. But … enough of my hobby-horsing or my specs will fog up … back to lid-sorting!
Not only was lid-sorting a good, fun exercise to do with my beloved, but it made me think a little more about the whole recycling process. I turned to my Surfcoast ‘SCRRApp’ App – and for any who might read this and ‘dwell’ or ‘own’ on the Surf Coast but have not yet downloaded SCRRApp, do so. It is a very useful little tool. Not only does it tell you when to put each bin out, but it lists what should [or should not] be put into the multiple bins. And – believe me – it can be confusing… unless you consult the App!
One stand-out confusion and – if I am to be truthful – annoyance, is the handling of ‘lids’. Lids are an issue! Lids are a bother. Lids shriek: ‘what the …. will I do with you’? It seems that lids are somehow ‘unwelcome’.
My SCRRApp App tells me that beer bottle lids [or lids of any metal that will adher to a magnet] can be red bin recycled. Corks – though now far fewer – can go in the green garden bin. Wine bottle tops – now my most numerous lids – aren’t magnetic and thus must go to land fill – or be collected in a large aluminium container in which they can be recycled. But plastic bottle caps and tops are too small for plastic recycling – they jam up the sorting machines – thus should be sent to landfill though it seems such a waste to toss them away. [1] they are quite pretty, [2] they are made of (usually) good quality plastic (either plastic grade #2 = high-density polyethylene or plastic grade #5 = polypropylene), and [3] they are nearly – but not quite – as numerous in my waste as wine caps!
Enter the concept of ‘Lids4kids’. Have a look here. It seems that a couple of years ago, a Canberra family [the Millers] floated a program to collect non-recyclable bottle caps to help disadvantaged kids. They called it ‘Lids4kids’ and asked people to ‘send us your lids’. They had arranged to partner with a program [Envision] that was making prosthetic limbs for children
Oops… good idea, but bad call for the family home! The idea ‘went viral’ – a saying now applied to anything that becomes suddenly popular [or, in the context of a real virus like Covid-19, unpopular!]. Indeed, Lids4kids went so ‘viral’ that the family home in Canberra was literally inundated. A pause had to be called until a nation-wide collection program could be put in place. Now, Lids4kids [Mark II] is up and away with multiple collection points across the entire country. As of April 2021, there were at least eight drop-off sites in Geelong alone* though as best I am aware, no specific drop-off site is yet available in Lorne. Perhaps it is time to talk to Jonn at Foodworks… as if he hasn’t enough on the Foodworks platter already!
Recyclers will periodically pick up the #2 or #5 caps from the collection points, shred them into flakes, then melt them down to pellets from which new plastic caps, storage containers, or reusable plastic bags are made. But there is a catch. The caps must be washed, rinsed, and dried first – and those little squidgy discs that some caps have inside them to resist leakage must be also removed using a pointy-tipped knife… an entertaining exercise to enjoy during TV ads or, far better, instead of watching the news.
I now have instigated ‘a system’: [1] cut the top off a 2L plastic milk container [see photo]; [2] pop in all the lids – the squidgy bit first removed; [3] when full, spread the caps out in the cutlery basket of the dishwasher to wash and dry; [4] for the dry cycle, turn all lids face down so they don’t hold water. Finally, [5] sort into colours and bag – again instead of watching the news.
From there, just as happens from the Aged Care home, off they go to a collection point. At present, Aged Care take them to ……………. but, if Foodworks was willing to provide 6 or 8 colour-coded boxes/bins, it might be possible to set up a collection point there [NB: yet to be advised].
Above all, and just as it is for our aged or afflicted folk, collecting pretty coloured caps is therapeutic. Moreover, it is environmentally helpful. And, perhaps to ‘cap’ all, it provides excellent occupational therapy during a lockdown!
* https://geelongaustralia.com.au/recycling/reduce/article/item/8d9094f00f7bf6f.aspx
John Agar
