Dump of the month #4

A poignant whiteboard, party table potential and the tragedy of trashed chairs

Unpalletable: Delivery pallets are among these cast-aside items recently dumped in a flytip hotspot documented in an earlier post. Photo: Kate Burt

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1. Whiteboard list
   There can be an unbearable intimacy about certain things you find discarded on the street; I’ve been stopped in my tracks by a crumpled hand-written letter dropped in the park, a lone page from an essay blowing about on a pavement or, as here, a teenager’s meticulous to-do list written neatly on a whiteboard – and thrown out with a chipped grass strimmer.

   

   Photo: Kate Burt

   It floored me at every turn: the childish wording of “go into the bath”; the dutiful “get started on cooking”; the list of dates with corresponding ages stretching to the futuristic-sounding 2032, when its author would be just 23; the poignancy of that note-to-self to “chill”; the tender age of the author at the time of list-writing (13). I felt like I was flicking through the pages of a private diary, yet here this all was, dumped on the street for all passers-by to read.
   
   Many years ago, I interviewed San Franciscan writer and (now) executive coach, Sasha Cagen, who’d spent nine years collecting other people’s to-do lists and had just published a book of notes-to-self ranging from ‘Baby names’ to ‘Santa list’, ‘To do before I die’, ‘Books to read’ and ‘Things I like and hate about my lover’. Get car headlamp fixed, mop hall, call cat psychic, reads one, while the classic Girls I’ve kissed list (complete with names, descriptions, nationalities and the year the kissing took place) is reassuring in its familiarity. “It felt as though I was getting insider information on how other people managed their lives,” Sasha told me back then. “Lifelong hopes and daily tasks mix together, and ‘Organise sock drawer’ is on a par with ‘Get teaching credential’, which is sometimes how life feels.”

   
   A list on the back of an envelope that had been unpinned from a noticeboard or pulled off a fridge door would almost certainly have been more sustainable in this example, cast out next to some bins. Whiteboards are not readily recyclable (though there’s a trade company you can buy them from that runs a take-back scheme and transparent whiteboard paint is also a thing and easily google-able, though it’s insanely expensive).
   

2. Wallpaper tables
   Back in about 2009, I grappled with the only surface I’ve ever wallpapered in my life. (It was a wall onto which the previous owner’s late husband had painted a life-size replica, and I use that word lightly, of Rembrandt’s The Blue Boy. Haunted by the way the large eyes of the eponymous child watched me, and his eerily long arms, it had to go. But I was equally haunted by the emotional story the owner had told me about how her long dead husband had painted it for their now adult son when he was a child. ‘I’ll preserve it,’ I promised. And so my wallpaper debut and finale came about: The Blue Boy was gone, but only lining-papered-over. For a long time I was sure his eyes still burned through the now painted surface). My point is that I’d wager a vast percentage of others have had similarly scant need for a wallpaper table in their lives: someone fancies a bold feature wall, enjoys a trip to B&Q to buy the paste, brush and table, then chucks the whole lot in the attic after the job is done and forgets about them all until each time they have a clear-out. “That might come in handy again,” they might think. After the fifth clear-out when, of course, it hasn’t, it is abandoned. Perhaps on a flytip near you.
   
   My 2009 version is still going strong. It didn’t come in handy for many years, during which I was single, got married, had children, multiple clear-outs and still never wallpapered another thing. Eventually, on our first child’s fourth birthday, it came in handy – draped with a tablecloth – as a lightweight, easy-to-transport party food table. It’s come out every party since. Try it!

   

   Alternatively, if you have one that really must go, swerve the trip to the tip and give it away on somewhere like Trash Nothing (my favourite app for passing stuff on – I’ve successfully parted with anything from a partially-used bottle of specialist floor cleaner to a bag of unmatched locks and keys) or make a few quid for it on Marketplace. You could earn enough to almost buy yourself two bottles of Lidl prosecco.
   

3. Pallets
   Did you know that, of the 20 million+ transportation pallets distributed and manufactured in the UK each year, less than 10% are reused? And that it’s estimated that around 6,000 acres of forestry are harvested to create them. Yet where do most end up? Chucked on the street like these ones or, after just one use, thrown in the scrap wood bin at the tip to be incinerated.
   
   There’s not loads we, as domestic consumers, can do about this. However, you might be interested to know that a pioneering company called Scott Pallets has created The Pallet LOOP (TPL), which makes and distributes significantly more durable-than-average pallets using an utterly ingenious returns scheme and electronic tagging system to keep them circulating and accounted-for. They are also all painted green, so you can’t miss them.
   
   The way it works is that the end-user – retailers, generally, who are typically burdened with the responsibility of disposing of the pallets – can benefit from a £4 per pallet reward for “returning” them - which is made easy because, often within just 72 hours, TPL will collect, inspect, repair and put the pallets back into circulation. Sounds niche, but British Gypsum, about as big a name in the construction industry as you can get, have signed up and, as referenced in my interview with Mitchell Platt of YoYo Groceries, the Extended Producer Responsibility tax fully kicks in this month. There will be big-business loopholes, squirreled out through the thirst for bigger profits, of course, but it’d be nice to think we’d notice a reduction in throwaway packaging.
   

4. Chair
   I’m going to do a chair special soon. I see so many of them flytipped and 90% are totally re-useable or upcycleable.
   
   These specimens, sadly, probably weren’t salvageable. I’d guess they’d been left out in a garden for several years and that the seats aren’t solid wood, making them even harder to rescue.

   

   By way of inspiration as to how transformable almost any wooden chair can be, if not left out in the rain for years, check out the colourful beauties below.

   

   Sitting pretty: The 2016 Ahwa Collection by Reform Studio, an award-winning Egyptian design brand renowned for its innovative recycling of plastic bags employing traditional weaving techniques Photo: Reform Studio.

   Next time you’re short of dining chairs, start collecting any abandoned ones you see on the street. Get some tester pots by expensive paint brands (then varnish, as testers generally only come in matt finishes) or use up leftovers if you have any good ones. Even the issue of a blown seat can be rectified – if you are game for full commitment – by adding a padded, upholstered replacement. These chairs have cushions covered in Plastex, a woven textile made from old plastic bags developed by Reform Studio, an Egyptian design brand.

   
   
   Feel inspired by these chucked-away objects? Do you have a story about a discarded note, to-do list, diary page or similar? Send it to me – directly or in the comments, below. I’d like to feature some of your stories.