Recycling isn't just good for the planet, it's good for the soul. - HeraldScotland

And so the other day I went into the attic and fetched down our old travel cot. I took it downstairs, unzipped it from its snug carryall, cleaned it, and admired its functional simplicity for the last time. Then I packed it up and shoved it into my car boot, for its day was done. 

This piece of kit had once been very dear to my heart. It had unfailingly answered the question which has dogged worried, wayfaring parents since our cavemen days: where will the children sleep tonight? Whenever we holidayed, the answer always was: the travel cot.  

The cot was an engineering marvel. In a life littered with frustrations and dotted with disappointment, it always held up its side of the bargain. Folding up like an anxious octopus into a crack, it took up far less luggage space than a cot has any right to. It survived bumps, scrapes and baggage handlers, and always delivered a good night's rest for its pint-sized sleeper. It even doubled up as a playpen.  

But it had been years since it had sheltered a slumbering infant, and it was time to part ways. This brought a dilemma  - dump an item which had served me loyally for years, or find it a new home? I cast around for someone, anyone, who could take the cot, for it still had many years of use left. And I found a taker in Kinder Handl, a charity on the Southside of Glasgow which recycles the various detritus of parenthood.  

I probably scared the assistant a little, holding onto his arm just slightly too long as I explained the various ways in which the travel cot excelled at its job, boosting its CV for prospective owners. And then it was gone – heaved into a back room to presumably be prepared for its new life. 

You'd think I would be sad at this, the ending of a chapter. Having no need of a cot is a milestone in any parents' life. But I was delighted. Overjoyed. The travel cot would ride again. Maybe even fly again. Another parent would enjoy its simple unfolding mechanism, its satisfying clicks and clunks, and its unparalleled status as a place for little ones to snooze in. 

It's good to give things away if they can be used again. Uncluttering is cathartic. But Scots are not great at it. The most recent statistics show that less than half -  just 42 per cent - of the 2.4 million tonnes of waste created by households last year was recycled.  That's actually down on 2020, and though the pandemic may have hurt rates as recycling centers closed, it's barely an improvement on the 39.5 % recorded in 2011, more than a decade ago.  

Flytipping, which blighted Glasgow horribly in the run up to COP26, remains a perennial problem. This usually isn't household waste, but big, bulky items – kind of like my travel cot - which require more action than simply chucking into a bin bag. So many things which could have a second life, from garden waste to rubble, end up left by the wayside. 

Not only is this lazy, it's stupid. My decision to pass on the cot was part of a larger exercise in clearing out the house. Items held onto long past their point of usefulness, or kept for an emergency that never came (why did I possess an old pedal bin that lost its inner bucket?) all had to go.  

So it was off to Glasgow's recycling centre at Polmadie, where, along with dozens of other people, I wandered among the various skips, hurling away the junk which had bedeviled the storage spaces of my home. 

And it was great – like casting off a heavy weight. Everyone else seemed to be having the same feeling, moods lightening as their cars emptied. Clothes, wood, metal, garden waste – all ditched in the appropriate skip and destined for another purpose, not landfill.       

Recycling isn't just good for the planet. It's good for the soul.