Your Pot balcony

Work on cleaning up the back balcony has begun, and the first job had to be making enough space to move around. I knew that this had to be the year that I finally decided to throw away some of the plastic pots that had been accumulating in the cupboard - and recently overflowing out of it. Why? Because I hate throwing plastic away and for 17 years, since we moved in, have been keeping them to reuse. And of course, I have re-used them. However, it was getting to the point where I had enough to open a nursery - and no more space to store them. So out they went - well, half of them at least - off to the recycle bin.

But while I was clearing them out of the cupboard, I kept coming across something else. These ...

Plastic spray bottles. Nozzleless or with nozzles not working. Of course - because whenever have you bought a spray bottle whose nozzle worked for more than about three months? So you have to throw it away and get a new one. Because the makers couldn't possibly sell nozzles that work, could they? Or if that's too great a technological challenge, at least sell spare nozzles, so that you could keep the bottle and just fit a new one on. It drives me up the wall. Why do I absolutely have to buy a new bottle every time the nozzle stops working? Why doesn't every spray bottle come with five nozzles? Why can't I buy spare nozzles in packs of ten and keep the same bottle for ever? The amount of plastic saved would be enormous.

Yes of course, they go to the recycle bin too. But we all know that recycling isn't nearly as good an option as not throwing the stuff away in the first place.

Maybe it's just here. Maybe everywhere else in the world nozzles work for years. Or maybe your bottles always come with a large pack of spares. But I suspect not. I suspect profits might be seriously hit if we didn't have to throw the whole thing out every few months and buy a new one. Well, I for one would happily pay five times as much if the makers would just provide one that could be guaranteed to last five times as long. I mean - a nozzle. It's not really rocket science, now is it?