Moving on!

I have stopped being a Plastic Free Community Campaigner with Surfers Against Sewage now so I can concentrate on other things in life that I am also passionate about.  even this blog was subsumed with the anti-plastic message and here in Cornwall it is truly getting through – which is wonderful!

So now I can turn my attentions to other things that interest me like foraging and living off what is all around us.  I love making my own bits and bobs and am a complete tinker.  Any rubbish I happily scrounge and try and turn into new things.  I sell my crochet bits and am also selling some of the hedgerow food I find – making sure of course that I am not plundering the local environs!  there is a bountiful harvest this year and so it is a great one for a first time forager like me 🙂

Some of this food and the bits I make with tat I will also be selling.  This isn’t my day job – I am actually a copywriter specialising in eco, sustainable, environmental and political writing and research – but it fits in neatly around it.

I love living in Cornwall and being part of the environment here.  I find that as I get more into this way of life my hair has got more unkempt, my nails are shorter and in need of more of a scrub than a gentle clean and I am totally behind on all things telly.  I am in wellies more than heeled shoes and my jeans stay clean for all of five minutes.  I am easily the scruffiest mum in the playground!

And I couldn’t be happier 🙂

BAGS

Bags!  They are everywhere!  Plastic bags for everything!  Some of them are reusable bags for life.  Some of them are recyclable with carrier bag recycling at large supermarket stores.  A lot of them are thrown away while new ones are bought for a single Special Purpose.  Let us think harder and stop using flimsy little bags with special names 🙂

What am I talking about?  Well, I am talking about sandwich bags!  Nappy bags!  Dog poo bags!  Fruit and veg bags!  Freezer bags!  Silly bags you usually buy, use once and chuck away.  Let us put our wallets back in our pockets and be a bit more thoughtful about this.

Sandwich bags

Daft.  Save your old bread bags.  Start saving them now if you have kids that need packed lunches in September.  Chop the top off them if you think they are too unwieldy and put that part in with your carrier bag recycling stuff.  Use them, tip out the crumbs and then recycle them.

Nappy bags

So daft.  Even if they are only a quid – seriously, why are you buying a plastic bag for a nappy?  For your nosey?  Fine, I understand.  But hang on, look around you!  If you are as posh as me (!!) you can use that pouch from your fresh coffee to put it in.  Seal it up as when it had coffee in it et voila!  Stink-free, straight in the kitchen bin never to darken a door or olfactory sense again.  Hurrah!  Alternatively, you can use old frozen fruit/veg bags – they are great as they are thick and fold over so again, no stink.  Some even have ziplock tops!  😉  Some thinner, more stretchy frozen food bags are recyclable though so do weigh up what you think is the best use of that bag 🙂  you can use bread bags, plastic cereal inners are GREAT, thick porridge bags also great.  These solutions all work really well as wet bags for reusable nappies when out and about BTW 🙂

Dog Poo bags

UG.  So pointless!  These can range in price from a quid to £7 for fancy ‘biodegradable’ ones (not biodegradable unless composted in an industrial unit).  Don’t bother, crazies!  Answer?!  Poo IS biodegradable!  A) if out and about flick it if it is on a path.  We don’t want to walk in it but I really don’t mind if you flick it into the woods/fields.  Nature will take its course.  Truly.  B) If you need to pick it up, which often we do, use a bag you have already used at home for something.  You don’t need a special bag!  How many poos does your dog do on a walk that you need special rolls of bags?!  A dog may do one or possibly two.  Don’t sweat it.  Use an old stretchy bag without hols in it – lots of veg comes in useful bags for this though so does have holes in so be careful 😉  Or use kitchen roll bags or loo roll bags.  These are all great when out and about too.  These can be recycled so it’s up to you if you would rather recycle these instead of dog pooing them for landfill/incineration 😉  If you want to use stiffer plastics like cereal bags or freezer bags, dog food/treat bags then maybe take some kitchen towel with you to pick it up then pop it in the bag and the bin.

Garden dog poo

Definitely don’t use a new bag for this!  Get a plastic pot/bucket and line it with with a used plastic bag.  This can be any heavy duty bag from frozen fruit/veg/chips or dog food or bicarb bulk package.  Anything.  You will find that you have lots of lovely, heavy duty bags you can roll down to size so when it is done with you simply roll the sides up and ta da!  Pop it in the local dog poo bin or wherever you chuck your normal poo bags.

Fruit and Veg bags

Get little crochet ones and take them shopping with your other bags.  Or reuse any translucent bags you have kicking about (see above).

Honestly.  It is a kind of blindness that we specific uses for specific household items.  but actually, we really don’t!  Get some little drawers – dunelm mill or the range have lots of fabric or rattan or plastic or wicker or metal filing wotnot drawers.  Pop them in your utility room or kitchen and put your used bags in them.  Tip out crumbs etc, flatten them and grade them according to thickness and you are ready to go.  No more buying silly lilttle plazzy bags for no reason other than to chuck ’em away.

Laters!

The Party!

We had the party!  Lots of 4 and 5 year old children came, saw, and conquered…  But how did my plastic free attempts go in the end?!

Well, it was OK!  Actually I am pretty pleased with the results 🙂

• I managed to use decs that can be re-used or recycled
• All adults and children had cups that we washed up
• We had minimal food left over – enough that it was clear the kids had had their fill, but not throwing away plates of manhandled sandwiches etc.  This was wonderful – I hate food waste when people around the corner have stamps for a food bank 😦
• We dusted off the paper plates and they are in the recycling
• We laid out birthday banners along the middle of the tables instead of tablecloths which was much easier.  Tablecloths are such a faff although the tables were a bit brown and ugly.  But no child complained or cried about it (to my face) so I think it was OK!
• I made lots of the food that we might ordinarily buy in plastic packets like biscuits, cakes, snacky things.
• We made paper aeroplanes – they LOVED this and coloured in their planes.  All very civilised for ten minutes 🙂
• The party bags were either a paper bag decorated by the Birthday boy (bless) or cotton bags (£1 each, bargain) with a book in and a little kit I made to grow sunflowers seeds.  Little wrap of seeds (no tape required, it is just a little pocket envelope you make) tied with cotton to a single egg box carton with a cotton wool bud in it.  And a spiderman cake and rubber pencil.  It was nice – not great shakes from a five year old’s point of view I know, but nice enough and a bit different so next time the kids get their plastic fantastic party bag they’ll appreciate it 😉

Issues?

• Having a recycling bag when there isn’t a recycling bin means that people instinctively want to just put all rubbish in the general waste bin.  This is a habit we have in the UK – if there’s just one bin available we don’t question it and happily put all our rubbish in it.  So I was lucky that my friends and fam were on point when it came to recognising what was recyclable/reusable and what wasn’t!  It’s so weird but we still have to think about it, and when you are frazzled hosting a party/wedding whatevs it is hard to remember to do the right thing.  One day it won’t be the right thing, it’ll be second nature, but for now we have to work at it.  But we did and I am so very happy about this!
• We did use a LOT of stuff that came wrapped in non-recyclable plastic 😦  Last minute biscuit purchases, the reusable decs, the cupcake toppers, the chocolate for the brownies…  all in plastic, plastic, plastic.  So while the party itself was remarkably plastic free the prep for it had involved a LOT of plastic waste.  We did make up for this though by making sure all wrapping paper, cardboard and plastic trays from pressies were put in the recycling and not just shoved in the bin.  (I know it sounds bad but that is what we do in this country.  We think ‘I am TIRED and you can’t recycle it with SELLOTAPE on!’ and sneak it all into the bin).
• FYI a little bit of what recycling peeps call ‘co-mingling’ is a-ok.  I love this term co-mingling.  It sounds risque and devilish.  So plastic sellotape can co-mingle with paper but only a LITTLE bit.  It is probably the recycling equivalent of keeping one’s feet on the floor when entertaining a gentleman caller so the chaperone can tell one is not co-mingling too much…
• The party involved a lot of prep.  I cannot lie – it is a LOT easier to just open packets of plastic and shove little bits and bobs of bright, fun plastic into party bags.  It is easier to have party rings and mini gems and celebrations sweets for prizes.  It is easier to have pots of bubbles and glo sticks.  But it is not kind and so we won’t go there.
• I also cannot lie and say that it does not feel good to have taken the long way around even though it was a pain in the bum.  It won’t be a pain in the bum for long as we all catch on though.
• The balloons were great and I really like the fact that they have nearly all deflated now.  This means I can put them in the bin properly.  I can’t compost them all, I have thirty of them, but am trying with some of them!
• We didn’t have a ‘party teacher’ as my son calls them, so we didn’t need to negotiate with their plastic prize habits (they all have them!).  We just had a disco.  A very loud, crazy disco and lots of balloons and flammable superhero suits that are, incidentally, superb for sliding along a village hall floor in.

And I think that is it!  No plastic cups, plates, tablecloths, toys or sweets and they had a GREAT time.  It was so worth it.

Laters!

My Plastic (free) Party! Latest Update

So it is party day tomorrow!  This is a GREAT tribute to all things non-plastic.  It is a celebration of eco!  It is wood and paper and home-made cake, biodegradable unwasteful wonder!

Ahhh.  Is it bollocks.

So, the truth…  It is teeth-gnashingly, knuckle-gnawingly PLASTIC.  It is big fairy dance of wonder to all things wrapped in unnecessary amounts of non-recyclable plastic!  It is raining packaging from chocolate and butter and film coverings for spiderman rice paper faces!  It is crisps in single packets (blame the husband ;)); it is paper plates that are fun-sappingly plain and yet don’t say on the packet if they are recyclable though I am assuming they are.  It is sweets for prizes that are impossible to find wrapped, yes, (no-one wants to prize their flying saucer prize off the tissue paper from pass the parcel without a wrapper of some kind) not wrapped individually, then wrapped in small package wrapping and then wrapped in one big plastic bladdy covering.  So I have plumped for blackjacks and fruit salads like what we had stuck to parcels in the Olde Days.  And the main prize in pass the parcel?!  It is SO easy to just get a naff plastic toy.  So easy.  I haven’t, but don’t ask me what I have got because I don’t know.

‘What is going right then, you poor, anti-plastic Mama of the Earth!’ I hear you cry.

Well.

• I have got juice to put into jugs (standard tbh but hey, you gotta take the breaks when they rarely occur) instead of cartons.
• I have got some of my own reusable plastic cups to supplement whatever the community centre has, instead of single use disposable ones.
• I have paper plates and bowls instead of plasticky non-recyclable ones.
• I have (*cough*) biodegradable balloons instead of the usual, utterly plastic ones.
• I have gone for reusable decorations instead of using them once and chucking them away.
• I have got proper tablecloths, not plastic chuckable ones.
• I have paper, card, pens, stamps and playdough from our craft cupboard for the chillout craft table.  No glitter, no glue, no sellotaped stuff.
• I have paper bags for party bags 🙂
• I have made cakes for party bags in paper casings.  I have got a lovely book for each childer person, some sunflower seeds and a wee bit of egg box casing to grow and plant them on in; and am trying to crochet enough balls for each kidling (am a third of the way through…  I might give up and give out some rubber pencils instead ;)).  The crochet plan is a killer because the stuffing is polyester which is plastic.  And I ran out of cotton and have had to use acrylic which is also plastic.  FAIL.
• Am using my own platters etc from home to serve stuff instead of chuckable ones.
• I baked all the biscuits, brownies and cupcakes myself instead of having foxes party rings or chocolate fingers and all the non-recyclable black plastic waste that comes with them.  It has also meant the kids have had several bowls of cake mix to rub over their faces today which, I think we will all agree, is a very wholesome activity.  I have also shouted at them a lot for trying to talk to me when I am baking my head off.

So there we have it.  I am waiting to see what the husband brings home next for the pass the parcel presents.  Probably a box of individually wrapped kit kats or haribo packets.

We can but try!  I must remember that this is not a life spent trying and failing to be perfect.  It is all a process, a journey of knowledge and mistakes and being wonderfully imperfect.

I’m off to roll around in some plastic packaged ham and plastic sheathed cucumbers and just be chuffed with myself if I manage to pull all this off and continue to avoid clingfilm.

🙂 laters!

 

Update: My Plastic Free Party

#firstworldproblems alert 😉

Ahhhhhh!  Having a plastic free, superhero disco party for a five year old is so hard!  And so easy…  But so hard!

OK.  Firstly, a disco party for a boy without balloons is virtually a fun-free zone.  I know I want to trailblaze but he does NOT want tassley ribbon sticks or pom poms instead.  He wants balloooooooooons!  And he has a hard life this wee poppet, and it is his first birthday party (and mine!  Am terrified!).  So I am killing two birds, as it were, with one stone and getting biodegradable balloons from little cherry 🙂  I have messaged them about the viability of their ‘biodegradable’ balloons because I am incredibly sceptical about this claim not least because of the Hold Tight movement telling everyone that latext ‘biodegradable’ balloons still cause a lot of damage and can take up to four years to actually degrade :(.  They say, very reasonably, that they do not condone mass balloon releases and that they encourage their customers to dispose of their balloons carefully in the bin or compost.  I, obviously, (!) need to try this out for myself so yes, I am getting some biodegradable balloons for my son’s party and I shall see if they work in my compost.  It is not scientific though, just for fun and actually, I love Little Cherry and what they do so am not interested in badmouthing a lovely little company trying to do a bit of good in our world 😉

I have ordered lots of superhero decorations, which were really easy to get online everywhere.  The only thing is that a lot of paper decs like honeycomb balls and pom poms are made in soft colours and can be pricey.  Too pricey when you are just throwing stuff at the walls of the local village hall in the hope that it will suffice under minimum scrutiny for two hours 😉  I have got disco ball lights and blue and red fairy lights to decorate with 🙂  After the party I can hang these around my boy’s bunk bed for a super spidey bed!  He’ll LOVE this 🙂  I have got crepe paper streamers to hang around the walls for spider stuff and paper chains too.  Should be cool – everything is reusable or compostable.  I have also been thinking about whether we could make a party sharing something or other.  It seems daft us all buying cups and plates when if we got 30 of these things and put them in a shed we could all just share them for all our parties?!  And share themed stuff that you will only use once?  Hmmm, I can totally do this.  Though I could do with a shed… A shed of things.  I need a winnie the pooh style thinky-think 🙂

So, what else is there?  Well, there is food waste.  I wanted to have cardboard boxes with portioned food inside but have realised that 5 year olds are not just fussy customers but very vocal and emotional about it.  I don’t want any children crying because they have a cheese sarnie in their box and not a ham one like Maisy-Boo 😦  No crying!  So I will make extra sarnies ANYWAY, in which case why don’t I just make a platter like normal and then let them help themselves?!  Arf.  And it looks like rain anyway so we won’t be eating al fresco…

Which means I need cups and plates.  I want cardboard paper plates but getting these in colour and not non-recyclable, shiny and plastic coated is HARD.  Also, when one is perusing online there are no symbols saying that something is recyclable so I could open my package to find cardboard…  or plastic coating.  I can obviously have plain white ones and probably will…  but I want the red ones!  Cups are easy enough though, they will have stuff at the community centre I am sure and am confident they won’t throw them around or smash them…  Oh dear – am I going to need paper cups too?

Party bags I do actually have sorted 🙂 I have a book, crocheted ball made by myself, spidey cupcake and something else (though I can’t remember what…  prob food related!)  Nice things, all reusable/washable/non-plastic.  In a paper bag of course!

Anyway.  The party is on Sunday and am slowly warming up to full panic-mode.  I’ll update as we get stuff and I realise plastic really is the best and only way to do a party for a five year old boy…  EEP!

 

Bicarbonate Of Soda

Oh my.  It has taken me a while to get here – we all know that natural cleaning/home guru types use bicarb to clean their homes – but I have finally made it.  I have had THE best time cleaning my house with the absolute beast of all cleaning agents: bicarbonate of soda.  I kid you not, it is, hands down, the EASIEST, most wonderfully efficient, cheapest and most lung- and skin-friendly way *ever* to clean one’s home.  I am so happy!  No eczema break-out awaiting here.  No slightly stinging knuckles.  No chemical induced wheezing (I had ‘Cillet-Bang lung’ once.  I cleaned a house we were moving out of very thoroughly with it and couldn’t breathe properly for about two weeks).  No worry about the kids being around or the windows closed while I scrubbed at the hob.

So what complicated procedure did I go through?  How does this mysterious chemical work?  Well, lean in dear friends.  I bought a kilo of bicarb off of Amazon for about a fiver.  I bought some grapefruit essential oil off of Amazon for £1.99.  THEN:

• I sprinkled a teaspoon of bicarb onto a small plate
• I added four drops of the essential oil
• I dabbed my everso slightly damp cotton cloth into the mixture, getting a generous amount onto the cloth
• I rubbed it on the grease…

And?!  AND?!  The grease came off in grubby little balls of greasy grub, revealing super non-greased, non-scratched metal underneath.  It was clean.

I was very excited at this discovery.  And still skeptical.  I literally, dear friends, did not believe my eyes.  So I got more bicarb and more essential oil and dabbed again and rubbed over the splashback/board/wotnot behind the oven.  I have tried cleaning this with Method.  I have tried cleaning this with Flash.  I have tried cleaning this with Sainsbury’s own kitchen cleaner.  I have tried Fairy kitchen cleaner.  I have tried leaving cleaner stuff on it.  I even tried a real live grapefruit.  What I have found is that they just smear grub around and make my cloth/grapefruit unpleasantly sticky with grease while not looking at all clean.  So this was, for me, the Test.  And *whispers* – it worked.

I KNOW!  WTAF.  I just rubbed my bicarb and few drops of grapefruity loveliness over it and the grease rolled into dried up little balls of grossness and plopped onto the hob.  No water, the grease does not respond well to being wet (oil and water don’t work together – which makes me wonder about the wet solutions I have been sold by companies (Unilever, am looking backatcha AGAIN) that stare into my eyes to tell me that they ‘cut through grease’ when they CAN’T because they are WET).  And if it is a sticky patch, rub the bicarb over it gently so it sticks on the top of it then go back after a few minutes and it comes off.  It dries the grease up and de-sticks it.

It is truly wonderful.  I also did the oven air vent like I was on some magical advert from the 90’s, cutting through the grease and having a dance while I did it.  And my kitchen smells grapefruity.  It is so pleasing!

I also did the hob which was unpleasant after a few days of cooking cakes, fish pies and roast dinners for Easter entertaining.  This time I sprinkled the bicarb directly onto the hob and left it a couple of moments then went to work on it with my cloth.  I couldnae believe my EYES.  The grease and general food grub reacted in the same way and rolled into dried up little balls.  In fact they were all so dry I vacuumed them up!  Then I went over it with a warm wet cloth and it has come up beautifully.

What else do I use it for?

• I already use bicarb to sprinkle along the bottom of my bin to absorb smells and excess liquid that might leak.
• I can also dab bicarb under my arms for the same purpose!
• Half a cup of bicarb down the loo acts as a cleaning agent.
• Half a cup of bicarb down a plughole followed by half a cup of vinegar works as a deodoriser and cleaner.
• And a dab of bicarb on a cloth can be used to shine up your silver.  Or if you are me, your sink 😉  (As in shine up my stainless steel sink – not my silver sink!  I use brasso for that…  LOLZ).
• Pop it in your wash with your clothes as a stain remover, whitener and brightener and fabric softener!  Half a cup in where your fabric softener normally goes and a bit less detergent and it does all these fancy things without chemicals.  I know, you don’t believe me.  It’s ok.  *try it* 🙂 Great info from thespruce.com about how baking soda works

It is AMAZING stuff.  I am in actual LOVE.  No plastic bottles.  No dispensers.  No locks on the cupboard door away from little fingers.  No chemicals.  And I have barely made a dent in my supplies.  Flash is £1.75 for a standard 500ml bottle from Sainsbury’s.  Bleach is £1.  Sink plughole unblocker is nasty stuff and about £3.  Airwick/Ambipur refills are over £3.50 and aim to reproduce ‘natural’ smells like white rose (personal favourite), vanilla or citrus.  But you can make your own with the essential oil you use when you clean your kitchen and it will de-smell your house anyway, or put some on a cotton wool ball behind the radiator 🙂  Fabric softeners are about £2 a bottle and fancy laundry detergent that keeps your clothes bright and stain-free are about £5 a kilo…

My supplies were £7 all-in with no after effects for either my humans or our habitat.  They are also just two items rather than six that total £15: kitchen cleaner, bleach, plughole unblocker (single use), airwick refills, fabric softener and fancy laundry detergent.

Excellent wonderment.

 

 

 

A Third Less Waste to Landfill?!

I spoke to the Husband last night and we were both shocked and amazed to realise that as a family of five we are now putting out just two bags of general waste a week 🙂  This is down from at least three, sometimes four!  So, since starting this journey something has changed in my house and I thought I might work out what it is 🙂

Principle changes:

• Mugging up on recycling.

I thought that our council didn’t recycle things unless they were sparkly clean, didn’t recycle opaque plastics, didn’t recycle mixed materials (so plastic tabs on soy sauce bottles meant they contaminated the waste), didn’t recycle food packaging trays…  But they do!  They recycle all these things!  Now most of what we use goes in the recycling, rinsed out and squashed.  A bit of ‘co-mingling’ (LOVE that term) is fine so paper labels on tins and bottles is ok, as are plastic tabs.  I didn’t realise that Sainsburys recycle stretchy plastics like plastic carrier bags, bread bags (tip crumbs out), flimsy grocery bags…

• Making a bit more effort.

I have made more of an effort to learn about recycling (boring) and because of my blog people tell me where I can recycle more stuff.  Lush cosmetics take bottle lids so I am collecting them in a jar on my windowsill (although I just found out the council take them too so…).  Pens can be taken to terracycle collection points where BIC buy them off charities and schools.  My husband’s special milk is in cartons with a plastic lid so I cut this lid out and recycle them now too.  I am going to get a bin for my recycling as the bag off the back door is filling so fast these days!

• Shopping differently

I don’t rely on the Supermarket for my main shop any more, I get a family delivery box from the local farm shop instead.  I get meat, fish, dairy, fruit and veg and bread for a week for £70.  I top up with pantry goods from the supermarket as and when.  This food box comes free of so much packaging.  I bake a lot too so I am not buying so much nonsense in little non-recyclable wrapping!

• Changing habits

I have changed!  I don’t buy store deodorant any more, I LOVE my deodorant balm too much to change.

I have invested in a job lot of bicarbonate of soda.  It cleans me, is a scouring agent for round the house AND absorbs stinks if you pop some in the bottom of your bin.  There are more uses, I am not quite there yet though.

I am using reusable nappies more.  I buy about one new one a month and have about 4/5 now.  I still use disposables but am not dependent on them – I have more than halved my use of them and don’t use nappy bags at all.  I use washable wipes and my own homemade concoction of tea tree essential oil, olive oil and water to clean bums :).

I have crocheted myself funky washable cotton body and face cloths and make up remover pads :).  They are incredibly effective at getting off my daily grub with a slight roughness for exfoliation.  So am not depending on face wipes any more.

We are using soap more than handwash around the house now too.  I got some soap trays and they are actually easier for the children to use than the handwash gels.

I have planted herbs and am working out how to grow vegetables (I have fingers of certain death in the garden but I am trying).

We have a compost bin in the garden and use it for all our scraps!

My husband has stopped buying convenience food in single use plastic.

I think these are the major differences we have made!  What I LOVE is the effect on the kids.  They pick up all these messages in their everyday lives and respecting where we live and the other animals we share our space with is part of this.  We’re not perfect – we are all a work in progress.  I have also realised that this time last year, with a 3 and not yet 1 year old at home, I doubt I would have had the headspace let alone time to do all this.

Changing habits is a big deal.  But I am so happy and so shocked at the visible effect it has had on the amount we send to landfill!  YAY!

Balloons! What A Popping Minefield!

I have a 5 year old birthday party to organise so it is time for me to think about how to put all my new ethics in to practice.  I think parties are single use plastic heaven!  Cutlery, cups, plasticky plates, balloons, sweet wrappers, convenience food wrappers, party bags, party bag toys.

WAH!  I think my son is going to have such a worthy eco party that we will sat on hessian sacks in the rain eating apples and some kind of seeded wholegrain cake.  Poor boy.  So I felt we should have some time to do a GREAT non-plastic party!

To start with I found www.littlecherry.co.uk.  This is a lovely little company doing bamboo and palm plates and cutlery for one’s ‘do’, and little wooden toys or hair slides for party bags.  So cute.  I love this.  It is a bit on the expensive side though.  And then I saw that they do ‘eco balloons’.  Biodegradable balloons?!  WOW that is the party holy grail!  Not having balloons at a child’s party was stressing me out so I thought woohoo, this is the solution, obviously.

And then I googled ‘biodegradable balloons’ and found out that all is not as it seems.  As per blinking usual.  Balloons Blow are dedicated to telling us all how awful balloons are and explain that so-called ‘biodegradable’ balloons are still trying to degrade in their composting bin after 5 years.  That even when they pop the fragments take so long to breakdown that there is ample time for them to be gobbled up by some unsuspecting wildlife.  Sad times.

So I am not going to have balloons at all.  So I googled what to do instead and came across such lovely ideas, again from Balloons Blow, I just had to share them!  (Oh goodness, my 4 year old just came up to me telling me how much he loves balloons…)

Ideas:

• Tissue pom poms
• Yarn pom poms
• Crepe fans
• Crepe flowers
• Streamers
• Ribbons
• Ribbons on sticks
• Bunting
• Flags

Also you could use real balls and bubbles.

I worry that the list looks quite female.  It would be easy to do a girly fairy party with these things.  I have a boy who wants balloons!  So what I would do is make them rainbow colours.  Bright and brassy and FUN!  He would love ribbon streamers on a stick to run around with, and bubbles and pom pom to throw around 🙂  I could crochet some balls for them to kick about and then each can take one home.

Foodwise, in order to minimise waste I am thinking of doing individually portioned lunchboxes – you know the ones you get in cardboard boxes shaped like a train or whatever.  I would use big packs of crisps and portion out a handful each so we don’t have loads of crisp wrappers and can easily make cookies!  Drinks can be in paper cups.  Paper straws obvs…  YAY!

I think these are nice ideas.  Certainly a starting point!  Watch this space.

 

Inland Beach Clean #2

We had so much wind and rain over the past week that a fresh crop of plastic rubbish has adorned the trees and verges, gutters and puddles of my lovely rural, Cornish village.  Today outside the school I found this beauty:

A completely random chocolate bar wrapper that had Nov 2014 as its use-by date!  This would have been eaten and discarded (obviously accidentally) before I even had anything to do with the school which is so weird.  It has been blowing about for years, to land at my feet this morning.  The owner may not even be at school any more – they have moved on but left this imprint of themselves, to wash up on me years later.  This really shows how your environment, your personal space and ‘self’ is not contained but is actually MY environment, my personal space, my self.  My habits and sense of responsibility has a direct effect on you if it means that in years to come my chocolate bar wrapper will land at your feet; if it means my discarded plastic water bottle will be in your dog’s mouth; if it means my macdonalds take-away cup is stuck on the bottom of your running shoe.  What was mine long ago becomes yours now and it will tick you off.

So, basically, what I am saying is that when we make decisions about whether to buy a disposable cup over taking a reusable or compostable one; whether to mention to a restaurant that their straws are not friendly; whether to worry too much about all the individually wrapped lunchbox items we buy for our kids; well, the answer is to remember that someone else will be making that decision too and it will affect your life and your kids.  Their rubbish will be what lands at your feet years into the future, when they are long gone.  So make the decision you hope they would make for you.

Inland Beach Clean?!

Today is a glorious day.  The sun is shining, it is cool, crisp and bright.  Today was a day for our inaugural beach clean!

Inspired by the folks at final straw cornwall I endeavour to do a beach clean every week throughout 2018.  There is one on Saturday being organised by WAX on Watergate Bay, we shall be going to that – illness and weather permitting 😉  FYI They do a beach clean monthly and you get a free cup of coffee if you collect a bag full of plastic rubbish.  Surfers Against Sewage help organise this one too, which is pleasing.

So, anyway, I decided to go to a nice beach nearby and mooch about with a bag collecting plastic and feeling rather wholesome protecting my beach while also being nourished by its very existence.  But as I walked home from school I saw bits of rubbish so decided to pick up the bits I saw as I went home.  And basically did that for nearly an hour.  In half a mile of lovely countryside I found enough random non-biodegradable litter to fill a big plastic bag!

Spot the crisp packet!

I have said before what a curious experience it is picking up skanky litter in public and it was horrible again today.  It is definitely an odd thing to do by yourself, I felt like the local crazy lady.  (I am really selling this to you aren’t I?!)  But the thing is, by acknowledging it and picking it up am I not the LEAST crazy person in the village?!  Surely it is just no good walking past it.  And I picked up a whole bag full without even looking for it.  But this is the thing isn’t it – we are used to seeing the ingrained rubbish.  To notice it is to feel responsible for it and if you feel responsible then you might have to pick it up.  And picking it up is horrible and weird.  When did we become so disconnected from our stuff?  Our stuff became separated into stuff we want and ‘rubbish’.  And then rubbish became something we put in a bin and let someone else take away.  It became something to be forgotten, someone else’s problem.  And then, somewhere along then way, this forgetting was enough for us to imagine that we are clean and sanitary, thoughtful and civilised.  But as human animals we are mucky!  We leave crap wherever we go and, depressingly, in many places we haven’t even yet set foot.  Being thoughtful is, apparently, leaving someone else to clean the muck we leave behind.  Being civilised is being able to think away our stuff as ‘rubbish’ and when it is taken away, not ours anymore.  As someone who picks up our muckiness I am, therefore, the opposite of thoughtful and civilised.  I am behaving like someone who is dirty and weird, uncivilised and irrational, ergo, crazy.

This perception of us as sanitary humans and of us as ‘civilised’ beings needs to be challenged.  We need to accept that as a species we are mucky.  We need to accept that this is always our problem and our responsibility.  Our rubbish is still our stuff – it’s not the birds’ stuff, or the whales’ stuff, or even my stuff and your stuff.  It’s like when I am telling my oldest boy to clean up the toys.  ‘I didn’t play with that!’ He will wail.  And I will say, ‘But they are all your toys and at other times your siblings will pick up after you too.’  We also need to normalise picking up the muck.  One day, hopefully, I will not be the crazy lady but be just like you 😉

So, despite the beauty of the day we never made it to the beach.  We cleaned our little bit of countryside and that was enough for one day.  However, this was a beach clean of sorts because I picked up the rubbish that otherwise would have been blown into the rivers and the seas to be washed up in a storm and picked up by beach cleaners.

What I really need though is a hoody from Surfers Against Sewage that says #PlasticFreeCoastlines on it for when I am doing my lonesome litter picking.  Then I won’t look so bonkers.  On the outside anyway 😉