Complete with ‘power disc’ – ideal for office relaxation. Simply tighten for more strenuous activities.

Classic simplicity, elegantly babouched to display a comely ankle. Plant pot featured in the foreground is part of the B&Q Basics range.

The current hysteria threatening to overwhelm us by sheer weight of media is sickeningly green in flavour: Recycle. Save the Polar bears. Only flush your toilet once a day. Turn off your computers and printers at night. Use energy saving light bulbs. Make a compost heap and dance round it to keep warm. Cycle to work. Holiday in eco lodges and grow your own tomatoes by eating salad and shitting in your own back garden. The options facing us all can sometimes be bewildering.

In my quest to ‘do my bit’ for future generations I have been recycling shoes. Finding a matching pair for under £1 has proven difficult but with persistence and a bit of compromise I have been blessed with a result that is not only functional but extremely stylish too.

If we could all lower our footwear standards, perhaps there would be no need for shoe banks or fuel guzzling cargo planes full of old sandals making return trips to Burkina Faso or wherever they are eventually dumped and set upon by famished natives who are ignorant of Western shoe fashions.

Let’s stop these wasteful exports to ungrateful third world countries and in doing so save our planet, our conscience and our exquisite shoe design heritage.

“When your surroundings are a filthy mess someone is responsible” reads their website header. At least we are in agreement there, although I fear we will always be sitting on opposite sides of the table. I feel my fingernails digging into sweaty palms.

I decide to contact the editor of the website and do so as follows. Please note the deliberately friendly tone to catch him/her off guard:

“I’m thrilled to find this website!

It never occurred to me that I would find fellow afficionados of such a specialised subject. My own humble work in this field can be viewed here:

http://myfilthylife.wordpress.com/

Exposing this mess is absoultely essential.

Keep up the good work,

Frank Lee Mesi”

And their reply?

“This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification. Delivery to the following recipients failed…”

Whilst I am naturally disappointed by a missed opportunity to spread the gospel, I chuckle to myself as I picture their website collapsing under an avalanche of hatemail. I close my eyes and imagine the entire world’s waste, pouring out of a sluice pipe onto their shitty little website and it’s scrawny little editor, his eye sockets, emptied by rats, filling with the slime and bile of a million putrefying abattoirs.

The swiss roll. After it was relocated I buried it at sea. Well, actually in a cup of water inside the air-conditioning unit.

The only sweetener to be had here is that the arrangement  around the general bin area hasn’t been meddled with. Teabags, chewing gum and sweet wrappers are still arranged tastefully on the stained wood block flooring. The only sensible course of action comes to me in a flash. I will bypass the office refuse system altogether.

The beauty of this new sign is that it’s easily removable – simply held in place by several bits of Blu-Tack. I’m excited because if it works in the office as predicted, I can take it home and try it on my dustbin there. I am the proud creator of a portable solution to unwanted waste removal intervention.