XS4all

At my last place of work we had a Box. The Box was the general repository for all ‘unwanted valuable items’ and its invention was one of the best strokes of genius I have come across in a long while. Sadly, now I have left that place of work and moved to another location and the Box is no longer available to me.

I could really use that Box now! The idea was that anyone on the 400-strong staff could deposit their unwanted books, CDs, clothes, household goods, Christmas presents and ‘excesses’ in the Box and be rid of them without guilt or waste. Someone else always wanted and appreciated them and bore them away, rejoicing at their good fortune. Problem solved! No blame, no shame. A win-win situation.

But now I have no access to the Box and the post-Christmas blues have set in. The fridge is too full; I didn’t need that extra tea cosy – I already have three; I don’t like rum-flavoured sweets; I’ve already read the book I was given and I’m sick of mince pies! If I could just gather up all these unwanted leftovers and well-meant gifts and make someone else happy it would make my Christmas complete: giving and receiving, recycling and redistributing. No-one need know. No-one need be offended. Win-win all the time.

I have a plan. At the moment it is ill-formed and incomplete but it is turning into a campaign – a New Year’s Resolution of grand proportions. I shall institute the Neighbourhood Box, to go alongside the Neighbourhood Watch in my street. Maybe the idea will catch on. Maybe in this age of electronic mailing we could recycle some of those redundant red letter boxes and develop a recycling box on every street corner. We would be free to post our unwanted items in the top and each resident would be issued with a key, like the postman, to help themselves to whatever they fancied or needed.

 

Maybe next year my idea could go global. However, there would have to be a few rules about what could be posted, however much we would like to be rid of them and no matter how guilty we felt about the waste. No yapping dogs, no irritating teenagers, no cast-off spouses and, above all, no leftover turkey or brussel sprouts! Some things just can’t be boxed. But some of us have so much and some of us have too much, so why not spread it around and benefit some of those who have too little? One man’s poison is, after all, another man’s meat.