When is Paper not Paper?

Every so often, of a hot evening, I like to fire up the charcoal grill. It makes for a pleasant outdoor experience and saves an already hot house getting hotter. People tend to be a tad different when they’re in a garden (even such a tangled one as mine) and that adds to the relaxed feel.

Now, I used to happily crumple a single sheet of newspaper into the chimney device, pour charcoal in the top, and with one match and that paper I could start the coals.

This is not possible now.

The same trick done today produces merely a charred outline of the paper, which then extinguishes itself and fails to light anything.

The reason is that paper is no longer what it was. Instead of wood pulp we now have some sort of clay material which does not burn, and – so my recycling friends tell me – is really hard to recycle.

We may want to let that thought sink in. We try to be recyclers, but the game has changed, and what we’re recycling isn’t now amenable to the process. Now, I like trees, and I want to save them. What I don’t like is the creation of yet another substitute material which seems to be every bit as noisome as plastic, and every bit as hard to deal with. This is not progress, my friends.