I’m getting with the zeitgeist and going green this year – Nuala McCann

When it comes to saving the planet, I’m a little late to the party.

That’s me in the corner wearing cheap, unsustainable sparkle and wielding a disposable plastic cup… or maybe it was.

When you’re married to someone who cleans the beans cans like he’s Mr Heinz and folds up the old paper to use again, then you let him get on with it.

He is the one who rifles through the bin and tells you gently what can and can’t be recycled. Exhibit one, yer honour... “This plastic container really belongs in the recycling bin.”

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In the end a marriage can whittle down to his and her jobs. Me: chicken curry and fresh, crisp beds; he: dishes and bins.

So I abdicated responsibility for the planet to him. There was even a slightly smug feeling that our black bin – for ordinary, everyday waste – was usually empty whereas our blue recycling bin was full to choking.

I once thought that was a good thing. But not any more. And as the babe of Year 2024 arrived yelling and puking, I started to think and I waved goodbye to a year of way too much.

I looked at our blue bin and our black bin and remembered seagulls diving and plunging over piles of stinking rubbish at Belfast Lough... oh the smell. Somewhere far away a glacier is melting drip by drip and a penguin has no home to go to.

I went into the supermarket and wondered why potatoes and apples and bananas had to sit on neat little cardboard trays and be packaged in plastic.

This year, I’ve even vowed to give up buying new clothes. The joy of retirement is that you don’t need them. My uniform has shrunk to jeans and tee shirts

It was Christmas that really swung it. Boxes and cardboard and plastic and wrapping… what was it all about?

So I took a leaf from the book of my friend who has been using eco-friendly washing up liquid all her life, collects rain water in a butt for her garden and practises but never preaches.

Her present to me came wrapped in newspaper – “Read great feature on this wrapping,” she wrote on the tag, which was cut out one from an old Christmas card – and indeed there was a great feature, even if it meant battling with my basic Italian.

I’ve gathered my old Christmas cards and decided to re-use them as tags for next year.

And as the New Year struck, I resolved to cut back on my consumption.

The other resolutions about weight and health are fading away with each dismal January day and the final sticky slices of the Christmas cake.

But the reduce and recycle message has hit a nerve. We’ve already been to the refill shop – bring your own containers, ditch the plastic.

We’re trying laundry sheets in place of washing gel – no more big plastic bottles. My shampoo and conditioner come in bars now and my deodorant is in a refillable “forever” glass bottle. The refills arrive in a recyclable paper carton every four months.

Just as I thought about this, I noticed for the first time a whole aisle in a local supermarket offering cereals and rice and dried fruits. Just bring your own container or use a paper bag – re-use it too.

It brought me back to the long-ago grocery shop at home, where the ham was cut with the slicer and wrapped in paper and where in those first heady days of supermarket life, one of the shop assistants took your basket and ran round doing your messages for you. Them were the days.

I haven’t ventured to the butcher’s yet with my own container to fill with meat, but that day will come.

This year, I’ve even vowed to give up buying new clothes. The joy of retirement is that you don’t need them. My uniform has shrunk to jeans and tee shirts.

These changes are small. I remember reading a newspaper feature about an Irish family who fitted all their paper and plastic waste for a whole year into one small glass jar. We are miles and miles from that.

But the times are a-changin – we’re getting with the zeitgeist.

I know I’m late to the party. But I’m here now and I’ll dance to this tune.