There’s a recycling area in the village of the French farm. I went with farm mistress Jeanette one day when she was taking some stuff there. She found pots of chrysanthemum left at the place that were not totally dead, so she picked them up to take back to the farm, saying, “I often go home with more things than what I’ve come here with!”
This reminds me of what I used to do when I was working at SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London) on two Chinese computer research projects.
They’d set up recycling bins as academics get through a lot of paper.
My paper is always used both sides before I bin them.
One day, when I went to give the bins my used paper, and saw that people had thrown out paper that had only been used on one side, I fished them all out before I threw in my own sheets. So, even worse than Jeanette, I always (not “often”) went back to my office with more paper than I’d gone to the bins with.
On that note: when I started doing a part-time MA a few years later, all the note-taking at my lectures were done on the backs of paper that had been used on one side only.
(France, 2007; London, second half of 1980s / 1992–94)
