Recycling

When you meet someone new, you try to accept their little foibles, see them as a feature rather than a fault.

- Bernadette James

It started off fine. Lisa was keen to do her bit to save the planet, and the weekly paper and cardboard collections gave her the opportunity to do that. It was rather satisfying seeing the big pile of recycling that meant fewer trees would need to be chopped down and less space taken up by landfill. Win-win.

That was several years ago and since then, two important things had changed. Firstly, the council had expanded their recycling efforts. Secondly, Geoff had moved in with Lisa.

Lisa met Geoff in the supermarket; not on one of the new ‘singles’ shopping nights, but just by chance. Geoff had been muttering about excess packaging on a toothbrush and Lisa had concurred. She found the stiff plastic shrink-wrap packets difficult to get into and assumed Geoff felt the same.

They bumped into each other again at the fruit and veg, both buying loose apples. Lisa always bought loose so that she could choose the nicest fruits. It was good to see a man doing the same. Not that Lisa had a bad opinion of men, but previous boyfriends had been ‘grab it’ shoppers (and rarely bought fruit anyway). She liked seeing someone take trouble over what they were going to buy and eat.

She also rather liked the look of Geoff – tall, lean, a little bit intense. Here was a man who cared about things other than football (it was 3.30pm on a Saturday and they would already have kicked off) and beer (she had clocked the mineral water in his basket).