Plastic Free Hallowe’en

Oh it’s that time of year again.  The time of…  SWEETIES.  Sweeties everywhere!  In little metallic or plastic wrappers.  In cellophane.  And plastic pots for collecting treats, parties with disposable cups and cutlery and plates…  Balloons…

It is a single use plastic nightmare (or hell?!  Or heaven?!)  I cannot in good conscience keep watching blinking documentaries about plastic in the ocean and ignore this in my own life.  Plastic plastic plastic.  Plastic in gullets, plastic in nests.  Plastic in drains, in turtles, in ocean forests, on the ocean floor, in whales.

 

Sometimes I want to forget about it.  Sometimes maybe it has been a week or two since I saw anything that troubled me.  Sometimes I feel unmotivated.  And sometimes I just want my old life back!  The easier one!  The more fun one!  Being plastic free (or at least aware, if not free) can mean feeling like a fun sponge.  It means tutting at things that other people think are AMAZING or LOVELY or KIND or CELEBRATORY.  It means wondering why on EARTH those lovely people are buying plastic cups when they could have bought paper ones; how your friends managed to miss the memo about plastic straws; why your family walk around with takeaway cups of coffee and packet sandwiches.  It also means staring at balloons and just hating them – how grumpy is that?!  It means being agog when people let off chinese lanterns or clumps of helium balloons that will almost certainly litter the ocean until they break up into smaller, more edible yet still indigestible pieces.

Fun sponge.

And now it is Hallowe’en – one of my favourite times of year.  And you know why?!  Those wonderful little individually wrapped chocolates from cadbury’s that’s why.  I LOVE them!  And they are great for trick or treaters!  And I can take the best ones out first and eat them myself in front of the telly later!  YEAH, Hallowe’en!

But not this year, dear friends.  This year I cannot buy these.  They are dreadful pollutants, easily blown away in the wind and made of a material that will never break down, only ‘up’.  So I have not got any in.  Instead I have bought some big marshmallows, dipped them in chocolate and sprinkles and will be handing them out instead.  Of course, there is packaging with this but no where NEAR as much, and it is recyclable or reusable.  This is great for the world!  YEAH!  Imagine how much room in the world those horrible little chocolate wrappers take up between now and New Year?!  Unconscionable.

So, friends, do take a moment to try and think of an alternative to the usual.  Marshmallows are easy, fun, everyone likes them and they don’t leak or melt.  Big packets of things is also the way forward – a single big pack of haribo, for example, would be better than those multipacks.  Until we can all get to a refill store for our treats or pick ‘n’ mix isn’t absurdly expensive we have to make do as best we can.  Avoid the teeny wrapped chocolates (don’t get me started on the new kitkat variety pack being advertised.  What stupid timing to bring out a new individually wrapped single use plastic product!  As if nestle weren’t bad enough.  As if kitkats weren’t my favourite chocolate.  Sob).  Or get big packs of sweets and make twists of them in some tissue paper instead of giving out plastic multipacks.  (It would look more thoughtful too.)

Am hoping that in looking forward to what we can do (and be) we won’t have to keep looking back.  In the meantime I will keep staring longingly at the celebrations and heroes and quality street and roses tubs in the stores, steel myself and walk on by.  I got marshmallows dipped in chocolate at home, s’all good here 🙂

 

Life Hack: Cloths NOT Wipes!

This post is about how to swap-in cloths for wipes.  Slowly add cloths to your house in place of wipes and before you know it you’ll be off and running wipe-free!  Why?  Wipes clog up our drains, litter our beaches, and are eaten by sea creatures.  It also talks about greenwashing and microfibres and sponges and the beautiful nuance of choosing the right textured cloth for the right job.  Listen up, people! 🙂

How many wipes do you think you use a day?  One for the kitchen table?  Well, maybe two or three.  One for your face this morning?  A few on your baby’s/toddler’s nappy change.  One to clean that spillage on the floor.  One for a quick wipe around the toilet seat and another for the sink.  Ah, sod it I’ll just pop it in the loo.  Listen, people:  WE NEED TO STOP USING WIPES.  And we definitely need to stop chucking them down the toilet.  Even the wipe makers ask us to do that.  *No toilets for wipes*.  As my good friend who worked in a water company said, wipes don’t go through the filtration system properly.  They sneak through and clog up the filtration, then the pipes that lead out to sea, then the drains and finally, the gullets of birds that pick them up in the ocean.  The national marine and conservation charity, Surfers Against Sewage, have had a particular issue with this over decades: Think Before You Flush!

We DO need to start using cloths!  CLOTHS CLOTHS CLOTHS CLOTHS CLOTHS!

Let me show you how and why.  Cloths are amazing.  You can use them, then wash them in the washing machine and then use them AGAIN!  YEAH!  Now, when I made the switch I had one problem with cloths – I could never find them when I needed them!  But wipes?  Well, I would buy them in their specially labelled packets and scatter them around my house.  Kitchen ones for the kitchen; bathroom ones for the bathroom; dusting ones for the sitting room; floor ones for the floors (lovely apple smell); all purpose ones for anywhere; baby wipes for the babies bum/face/hands; wipes in my bag and fancy face wipes for my face.  That is a LOT of wipes!  Dear reader, I loved them.

But I realised that I couldn’t keep using wipes because they are not at all degradable (see here: Biodegradable? Sort of… Maybe… Compostable? Well, no. Welcome to Greenwashing.)  So I got rid of all my wipes and bought more cloths.  You can get a pack of about 5 BIG cotton cloths for the kitchen from £1 and, as I said, wash and reuse them forever.  Now, cotton is great.  Microfibre is not.  DON’T be tempted to buy ‘modern’ microfibre cloths because these are another form of pollution.  Microfibres break off when washing, enter the water cycle and are eaten by plankton, fish and us!  I know:  Microfibre Bad.  (And, while we’re at it, definitely, definitely never ever buy one of those ubiquitous green and yellow scrubbing sponges.  NO, no, no, no, no, no.  Not only are they criminally ugly they break up into lots of little pieces and never, ever biodegrade.  They degrade, yes, into teeny bits that are ingested by animals and simply pollute the land.  They do NOT ‘bio’ degrade.  Leave them well alone.  For super scrubbing replacements have a look at the home-compostable safix scrubbing pad and wooden, replaceable headed brush (see post: Scrubbing Brush!))

So, *cotton* cloths.  You can buy different coloured cloths for different purposes (like they do in hotels – I was a chambermaid once).  Have one colour cloth for the loo and another for sinks and baths.  Have more for floors (or use a mop.  Or even a steam cleaner – WOO)…

Baby wipes?  You can bulk buy special cloths or re-purpose old towels or flannels for cleaning babies’ bums (that have FAR more traction than wipes and so leave bums cleaner (oh, *and* you can use the homemade, antibacterial but oh-so-gentle wipe solution I use (see earlier post on Bottom Wiping 🙂).  I put the solution in a tub next to the changing area then lay about 10 wipes in it to use as and when – just like wipes.  Dirty wipes go in a mesh bag and at the end of the day they go – you guessed it – in the wash.

You can have beautiful handmade crocheted cloths for the house too (I make these if you want some!) that you can easily learn to make yourself or buy.  Because you will come to appreciate that not all cloths are equal!  (*geek alert*)  You can have knobbly bobbly cloths for cleaning kitchen ovens and hobs.  (Next step: dip into bicarb and grapefuit essential oil solution and job’s a good’un – see post: Bicarbonate Of Soda.) You can have looser cloth weaves with flatter textures for all-purpose cleaning.  You can have a medium textured ‘grippy’ weave for cleaning surfaces and toilets.  And then there are so many colours!    And then when you’re done… you can pop them in the wash.

You can have cloths in the kitchen drawer to grab when you need to clean dirty hands and faces.  No chemicals needed – the action of rubbing with a soapy cloth is sufficiently antibacterial in itself ( see this 2017 cleaning article on usefulness of wipes).

In place of face wipes I have a konjac sponge (info here) that, just like a wipe, needs no soap on it for a quick facial cleanse or refresh with a bit of water.  For more of nighttime deep-clean I have crocheted soft, textured cotton cloths for removing eye make-up, slightly bigger ones for cleansing my face, slightly rougher ones for washing my face and ANOTHER one for a flannel.  It is a lovely set!  I use them a couple of times and then… wash them.  I make these, ask if you want any; but you can also buy cotton cloth style bits like these from the Wise House that are just lovely!

For here and there you can also reuse old clothing for casual cloths.  Use pinking shears to prevent fraying.  Old muslins from babies are fab around the house, knackered cotton clothing, old flannels etc.

The clue is to have LOTS of cloths of all different sizes, colours and textures.  Have a lovely big basket with lots of different types and sizes of cloth in.  Don’t have one or two or you won’t know where to find them when you need them.  Just like wipes you can dot them around the house.  Or hang them up even – my crocheted cloths are pretty and I like to show them off!

So there you are.  Ditch the wipes.  Look around you with new eyes and see CLOTHS in old clothing, in cotton yarn, and from budget shops.  Wash them, pop them in your basket and you’re good to go again.

CLOTHS!

 

Back from my euro-walkabout!

Ahhh I had a WONDERFUL holiday!  We went to Paris – Strasbourg – Black Forest – Luxembourg City – Lille – Bruges – Home over two weeks.  It was fantastic and exciting and our brains are full of new sights and sounds and languages and smells and food 🙂  We have expanded our brains and our sense of who we are – mainland Europe is vast and full of opportunity to access the world compared to our dinky, inwards-looking and defensive island, surrounded by cold, tricky seas and the lands of Other, Foreign People.

We stayed in a few airbnb places, a lovely posh hotel and the main part was a static caravan on a campsite for a whole week with friends in the Black Forest.  So blinking beautiful.  We drove and drove along motorways and autobahns from Le Shuttle in Calais; we stopped at services and roadside picnic stops and sometimes didn’t stop at all. We went on the Paris Metro, saw the Eiffel Tower, the Sacre Coeur, hung out in a studio flat with a secret, vine-filled courtyard in Montmartre, climbed tree top walkways in the Black Forest, walked along the beautiful and carefully tended bridges of Strasbourg.  We saw Gothic cathedrals and exquisite fountains and a lot of scuptural, heavyweight political and religious art from big squares and lawns or parks without spending a penny on entrance fees or tour guides.  We passed refugee camps and roadside settlements, were sometimes overwhelmed by the begging and touting and graffiti, and saddened by stories told on lamp-posts and bridges from the disenfranchised and ignored.  We rode on funicular railways and gasped at scenery: acres and acres of cityscape unfolding underneath us and the accompanying mass of humanity also visiting the Sacre Coeur.  The brash, loud creations of humanity were clearly displayed in this concept of a ‘city’.  Later, more quietly in the Black Forest we were looking at trees for miles and miles and miles on a glorious summer’s day.  That which we neglect was just getting on doing its hundreds of years old thing.

Humanity clearly demonstrates a sense of importance in its cities – past experiences and triumphs are trumpeted right in your face: ‘We did this!’ The noise arguably belies our insecurities and fragile egos.  But in another place a quietly vast sculptural experience in a forest compliments the natural surroundings, making us look up and look down.  Making us aware of how small we can be in our world.  In another place a ‘barefoot walk’ taught us to be calmer and more at peace with our own corporeal animalistic selves, here and now, with a lack of trumpets and triumph but with fun and acceptance.  We are just mortal animals.  To be barefoot and sensual in a place traditionally associated with hardcore hiking boots which immediately separate our selves from the natural place we are visiting was an amazing experience and utterly without any moralistic preaching.  The message was inherent to the walk itself.  But, as this walk demonstrated, we are not visiting.  We are part of this natural world.  We are animals too, like the bears and the wolves and the rats and the squirrels.  Humans.  What is in a name?

I found out the other day that my lovely little goldfish, Devon and Charlie, are not actually goldfish at all but are carp.  I can honestly say that I have never wanted to have carp as pets in my life.  The idea of sharing my home with carp makes me giggle.  But it would seem that my lovely ‘goldfish’ don’t exist.  (And one isn’t even gold any more which should have been a clue.)  We created the idea of goldfish and a whole discourse around them which told us they are small and easy to look after.  This, as the owner of two, is not true.  They are filthy, they poo a lot, they need a lot of room and cleaning and filtration and fresh water and air and food, they need stimulation and they definitely have memories and feelings (mine sulked for days after we came back from holiday).  And we read or watch telly to discover that dolphins talk and Orca have dialects and fish change gender and pigs like problem solving and we are surprised.  Why?!    Because, apparently, nature is so passively dumb and, goddammit, we humans made rules!  Gender is gender and humans speak and problem solve – why, this is what makes us so marvellous!  *pats on back*.  And it makes me wonder – in the end are nature documentaries like Planet Earth helping or hindering these ideas?  Rather than informing are they now serving to maintain a distance between us ‘humans’ goggling at the weirdness of our planetary companions like the social anthropologists did while studying pacific islanders in the 50s and 60s?  Are we perpetuating the idea of our planetary buddies as ‘others’ – animals that are not ‘us’ – not as clever or as creative or as Enlightened and therefore, as deserving of space here?  We are ignoring the fact that we are an intrinsic part of this planetscape we marvel at from our sofas.  And so often what we find marvellous is not that these creatures exist but that we found out about them, with our expensive, fragile submarines and clunking big cameras.  Well, fancy that! *more pats on backs*.

Blue Planet recently broke this fiction by allowing us to glimpse the reality of the production team’s experience – time consuming, obsessive, dangerous and sometimes tedious work to bring us a second of an Orca’s life.  And then there is the other fiction that this world on telly is untouched.  Rather, they confessed, they were surrounded by litter and plastic, by animals dying from eating our human-made debris.  This was a brave, understandably tentative and apologetic break from a traditional, more glossy and romantic narrative.  It was essential to stop perpetuating the idea that nature is always lovely when actually it is being trashed.  By our species.  We had a wee peek through the looking glass.  I picked up straws in Paris; microplastics in the Black Forest; drove past trashed verges and laybys in Luxembourg, walked past overflowing bins being scavenged at by gulls; picked up fag butts and straw packets and takeaway boxes and plastic forks and ketchup packets and coffee cup lids.  It was ugly and distressing and complicated and it showed me that wherever I am the world can never be the same again.  This is a really, really bitter pill to swallow and I am so reluctant to have these memories as part of our family experience.  I am reluctant to talk about the horror of the plastic that was in the quietest and calmest of places because it will ruin my holiday’s narrative and turn it into something ‘negative’.  My husband desperately wanted me to stop being ‘on duty’ but when this is our reality I cannot ignore it and paint a nice, distant picture of an experience that didn’t happen. On the positive side I saw some lovely anti-rubbish, anti-plastic and pro-recycling initiatives that I am looking forward to sharing here and with my local townsfolk.  There are efforts being made.  But culturally I would say that we are still hugely in denial.

Our human rubbish is *everywhere*.

And so onto us as ‘humans’ – as ‘civilisation’ – does this exist?  We are animals, we are earthly, we are not distinct from ‘the natural world’.  Like goldfish that are actually carp, humans are not special or immortal or uniquely marvellous rather we are simple carbon atoms – like the wood of trees, or paper, or diamonds, or the stars.  Just carbon.  We need to understand ourselves more as animals, like those we study in a zoo or a nature documentary.  See ourselves from the outside-in.  We need to change how we see our planet and our place in it.  We are not brilliant.  We just are.

I have to walk my wolf-pet now with my small human beings in a beautiful, quiet field on this planet I am lucky enough to call home.

BYE!

Not Bags: Boxes

The future is in cardboard boxes.  I saw it this week, and it pleased me.

Cardboard boxes are stackable

Cardboard boxes are cheap

Cardboard boxes are reusable

Cardboard boxes can be decorated/branded

Cardboard boxes are easily and widely recyclable

Cardboard boxes are not complicated

Cardboard boxes rarely need any kind of plastic fasteners

Cardboard boxes can have lids

Cardboard boxes can be flatpacked

Cardboard boxes can have holes in or not

Cardboard boxes can be thick or thin

Cardboard boxes can be any size

Cardboard boxes are biodegradable – in the truest sense of the word.

 

Now, I know that cardboard is no good for soft fruit because fruit is largely water and just makes the cardboard all wet and decomposes.  Plastic really is the best thing for soft fruit and veg that needs to last.  If you want soft fruit and veg and to be plastic free the best thing you can do is buy it from your local grocer or farm shop.  Our local corner shop has punnets of strawberries in cardboard…

BUT – is the tide turning?! I see that lidl are now selling off boxes of end of life fruit and veg for £1.50!  Such an ingenious way to combat food waste that supermarkets are worried about!  (Using as an excuse to drag their heels…)  This is really exciting in more than the anti-plastic sense.  It makes varieties of fruit and veg available and affordable to everyone.  There is such food snobbery and fear about different food in the UK.  I think this will do really well to make good food available to everyone 🙂

Boxes should also be used instead of bags for life.  Don’t use plastic bags AT ALL.  Even bags for life are not actually bags for life AND need to be used 144 times to warrant their production in comparison with a traditional plastic bag.  Cotton bags are also intensive to produce and make.  Cardboard can be sustainable.

So I am delighted to see avocados being sold in boxes by Tesco – at an affordable price – and boxes of oranges in Co-op.

Boxes!  Not bags!

 

Tesco in Truro, Cornwall

Oh my days.  I am in such a state of plastic-induced horror I have verily harrumphed myself into something measurable only on the glasgow scale.

I have already exclaimed on facebook about the INDIVIDUALLY WRAPPED DISCOUNTED LIMES that were all together in a tray.  Someone had bothered to bag and tag about 50 limes in those flimsy grocery bags to show their new price.  Well, thought I, they must be different prices.  NO!  Dear reader, hold onto your sandals for they were ALL the same price!

WHY NOT JUST PUT THEM ALL IN THE TRAY WITH ONE SIGN?!  Seriously, I know you want the barcode on them to differentiate them from other limes but a bag for EVERY lime?!  Take the financial hit and compost the blighters.  Give them away.  Stop being so bloody ridiculous and heartless.

ARRRRRGHHHHH.  The stupidity.  I was in a major hurry trying to avoid meltdown-mania from my increasingly rebellious brethren and only in the wretched store because they own the car park (next to where, incidentally, I am working on a stall highlighting the perils of plastic litter.  FML.)  I know supermarkets are not ideal places for planet conscious types and will always raise our ire in some way.  But the limes stopped me in my tracks.  Because a person DID this.  One of the people in that store.  They did this with their hands and their time and their mind.  And everyone else in that store thought it was OK with their minds.  Despite moaning children I tried to pick up a handful to take to customer services.  I wanted to say, ‘Do you think this is OK?!  This is NOT OK!  When you took my son round on your ‘farm to fork’ advertorial journey around your store with his Scout group, did you say about how you are smothering anything farmers try to grow in bloody plastic shit?  DID YOU?’

However, I was thwarted by the limes themselves – the stickers had all stuck together so they were all falling out in a ruddy great big lime train.  I must’ve looked super keen for those plastic-wrapped limes.  Not one would suffice.  I needed ALL of them!  Half price limes everyone!  They’re mine!

Anyway, I digress.  I did not go and holler hellup at customer services with all my limes in tow because I couldn’t carry them with the baby as well and they wouldn’t have given a monkey’s anyway.  So instead I thought, ‘I will send them an angry tweet’.  But my phone was out of battery.  No photo.  No tweet.

Now, if I had been in my right mind I would have bought all the limes and then bloody well boxed the lot (twitching at the post office lady who always asks me what is in my parcel because, obviously, I might be a cornish mum lady terrorist.  Though copme to think of it – is sending limes in an angry way to someone a terrorist act?) and sent it off to HQ with a terse note demanding significant demonstrations of remorse and promises to change.  Instead I blew my top quietly inside my mind and headed off to find some lettuce.

And the lettuce!  Oh, dear reader, the lettuce!  Rows and rows of wonderfully chilled bagged and chopped/shredded, washed ‘lettuce’.  It was a sanitised version of lettuce-like food on the aisle, all bagged up in stiff plastic.  And this wasn’t just the brands like florette who do fancy lettuces or rocket or whatever.  Tesco had bothered to chop up iceberg lettuce and seal it in a bag.  Iceberg lettuce.  The most banal, quotidian of lettuces that everyone knows how to prepare.  WHY?!  Honestly.  Kids are not going to have a clue about fruit and veg if it is like this.  They’ll think it is 3D printed all chopped up in a bag.  Potatoes come in packets and boxes frozen and half baked.  Carrots are called ‘batons’.  (Harrumph)

And so onto the avocados.  This was actually – hold onto your hats – pleasing!  They had job lots of avocados in really hard boxes for £3.  This is lovely and my dog has had the best afternoon trying to get her treats out of the box (not the avocados, dog treats).  It can be reused or composted.  Ideal.

And then onto trying to leave the store where I was faced with a veritable wall of discounted multipack bottles of water, wrapped together in plastic.  WHYYYYY?!  Why can’t they have a wall of reusable, funky bottles instead and a ReFill fountain?!!  Why bottled water?!  ARRRRRRRGGGGHHHHHH!  It is almost a cliche about bottled water we all know about it so much.  It costs 5000 times as much to buy a bottle of water as fill one up at home.  WTAF.

And this was in a whirlwind 20min max visit.  You then come out of the store to see the estuary at low tide, littered with plastic crap.

It hurts!  The bloody frustration and futility of it all!  There’s me on my stall about 200m away, trying to engage the public in understanding how important picking up litter is, trying to stop them dropping it and demonstrating the skanky perils of bottled water and plastic lids and packaging on our habitat and then…  and then…

…Tesco.

I am not a fan of Tesco right now.

 

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!

How Life Has Changed…

OK so I started really thinking about all this in Octoberish last year.  I was struck by a Natural World documentary that I downloaded on Sky where a lovely lady in Hawaii laid out all the plastic she had picked up in an hour on her stretch of isolated paradise.  I remember that she had LOADS of:

Cotton buds

Toothbrushes

Roll-on deodorant balls

Straws

Nurdles

Blister packs from tablets

Bottles and bottles and bottles

Plastic bottle tops

I was really surprised by the deodorant, toothbrushes, straws and cotton buds…  It hadn’t occurred to me that these things were ruining the world.  It moved me so much, I think because I am a mum and because I LOVE the sea and beaches and live in Cornwall.  I see the rubbish around but never connected the dots.  This film made me realise that this problem was MY problem.  Not the local or county council’s, not the person who dropped the litter, not the sea-cleaners (sea cleaners?!) but mine.  And yours.  OURS.

And then it made me realise that this needed a change of what we consider normal behaviour.  Normal behaviour has become walking past rubbish because we know someone else will pick it up.  Normal behaviour has become about convenience and cheapness – single use plastic.  Normal behaviour has become about thinking that recycling works when actually it is riddled with systemic problems and a lack of financial viability.  When actually there is too much rubbish to be picked up and we need to start tidying up after ourselves again.  We need to be motivated to care!

I really liked changing how I did things.  All this time on and I happily use different products.  This has become normal for me and I am so pleased.  I think when you feel lost sometimes it is good to realise how far you have come.  And so:

In the kitchen

We got rid of our tassimo coffee pod machine 🙂  We make filter coffee instead.

I now use wooden washing up brushes with changeable, compostable wooden heads and natural bristles.

I use washable cotton cloths and have crocheted a few of my own with nubs on for funky style and super cleaning 😉

I use compostable safix pot scrubbers, made from coconut husk!  They are marvellous.

I compost my organic food scraps.

I refuse to buy fruit and veg in plastic bags.

I reuse jars and bottles.

I use beeswax wraps to cover and wrap food up in instead of clingfilm.

I use bicarb to clean!  I love it!

I have mugged up on recycling and realised I can recycle a LOT more than I did!

 

In the Bathroom

I have tried various different organic deodorants.  My favourite is from the Natural Deo Company.  Pricey but long lasting, actually works, comes in different scents and strengths and in a lovely glass pot.  I do not buy traditional deodorants any more – they smell toxic and have a weird residue.

I like bamboo toothbrushes.  I am looking for a bamboo head for my leccy toothbrush and need cheaper alternatives to keep my kids in brushes without going bust.  Work in progress.

I use soap instead of bottles of bodywash.

I use shampoo bars instead of shampoo in bottles.

I use my wonderful straight razor and lovely sharp razor blades instead of disposable razors or cartridge razors.

I use crocheted, washable cotton eye make up remover pads!  Totally organic, compostable and colourful – way nicer than a plastic bag of cotton wool balls!

I use crocheted, washable cotton face cleanser pads – ditto above.

I use crocheted, washable cotton flannels.

I use a compostable, organic konjac sponge for cleaning my face day and night.  It has built in cleansing properties so I use this instead of my beloved, super convenient but environmentally nasty facial wipes.

I use washable sanitary towels.  The tampon and sanitary towel industry is a plastic NIGHTMARE FYI.

I use hydrophil’s bamboo cotton buds.  Completely compostable.

I use cotton cloths for cleaning instead of bathroom wipes.

For the Kids

Balloon free zone in the main: although the biodegradable ones I used seem to have vanished in my compost bin!

We have reusable straws.

We have ice lolly molds.

I avoid fast fashion, cut knackered trousers into shorts and sew on funky patches 🙂

I use reusable nappies as much as possible on the baby.

I use reusable, cotton cloths to clean the baby’s bum instead of wipes.  I soak them in a solution of water, olive oil and either tea tree or lavender essential oil from Holland and Barrett.  These clean, moisturise and the essential oils provide an antibacterial clean!  AND they get muck off way better than smudgy wipes do 🙂  And your baby smells yummy.  BOOM.

I try and use bamboo toothbrushes but as my Man does this kind of shopping he tends to bring in normal toothbrushes.  What can I say (I harrumph).

I avoid packed lunches but if we do them I use old clothing for beeswax wraps (Mummy, look!  My sandwich is wrapped in stars!) and takeaway containers for sarnies etc.  I never buy individually wrapped chocolate bars or bags of crisps – I would rather buy one big bag/bar and portion it out into containers if I am going to do this.

They eat fruit by the bucketload (thank GOODNESS!)

I bake biscuits and cakes (at the moment!) so no problem with snacks etc.

I cook lots of food at home from scratch – I like cooking and my Mum cooked for us so it feels normal.  We don’t do ready meals.

We all have water bottles and take water out with us.  When you have a baby/toddler/kid you do this for them anyway so it is an easy habit.

I get them to bin rubbish if they see it around 🙂

 

For the Dog

Free pour dog treats from pets at home

Use poo bags sparingly – if she has gone off the path then am happy to leave it.  Poo is biodegradable – animals LOVE it.  Bags are not.  ‘Degradable’ dog poo bags will NOT become at one with the environment.  EVER.  Plastic is degradable.  In 400 years it will be in microscopic bits, I agree.  But I disagree that this is a good thing!  Degradable poo bags are a greenwashing campaign of nonsense that I would sincerely like to address with the manufacturers…

I have a big ol’ bone that is pulled out of the freezer for a new chomp nearly daily.  Keeps her very busy, cleans her teeth, relieves teething issues and boredom and isn’t vacuum packed or any other nonsense.

I can improve a lot on the packaging of daily food I get her.  As I have her over time I will get better at knowing these things 🙂

 

What a list!  So much more than I realised!  Am most pleased 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

 

Plastic Free Puppy?!

We have our puppy!  She is a rescue and completely delicious.  Fast learner (er, love treats), gentle and kind.  Very much in love.

But she comes with added responsibilities re: single use plastic.  I am unnerved by the amount of poo bag nonsense/lying/misdirection.  Firstly is Sainsbury’s basics which proudly state that their bags are ‘degradable’.  YAY!  They degrade!  Oh, hang on…  everything degrades.  The question is does it BIOdegrade?  Does it become harmlessly at one with its environment when in its final resting place?!  Answer NO.  No it definitely doesn’t.  All plastic ‘degrades’.  In the literal sense it de-grades.  It becomes less, not simply of mass but of quality.  It breaks into pieces and is eaten by the animals.  So we will leave Sainsbury’s offering on the shelf, thank you very much.

On to Pets at Home.  Pets at Home very proudly state that all their poo bags are biodegradable!  YAY!  That’s more like it.  Oh, hang on.  Ah.  Biodegrades in how long?  Gazillions of years?  And breaks down into small bits along the way?  Ah.  Not so good.

And then I found the least of all evils in the form of ‘earth rated’ doggy bags.  now, they are not completely biodegradable because rarely plastic is.  But they are big!  this is great because I use it again and again for garden waste.  Out and about I have not yet needed one…  Puppy is fussy 😉  They come highly rated but I am no expert and will shop around when re-ordering.

And what about toilet training pads?  I bought some of these but never used them.  I don’t understand them to be honest.  Am fairly sure I just want my puppy to go outside from the off so take her out regularly and just deal with accidents.  It is working a treat.  A pad that smells like somewhere she might want to wee seems to be setting her up for odd habits.  So I will ditch these responsibly.  I don’t know why anyone uses them!

Treats come in plastic while she is a puppy.  This bugs me!  I am sure I can discover which treats are suitable for her in the bulk bins at the shops but because she is a wean I don’t want to give her something meant for adult dogs.  When she is allowed adult dog traets though I will always buy from the bulk buy bins in a reusable plastic container 😉  I really want to feed her bones from the butcher too rather than kibble, again in non-recyclable packaging until she is older.

But the worst thing is what she plays with when we are out and about.  Plastic bottles, discarded poo bags, netting, lager tins, clear plastic film…  seeing her find and pick up something like this when we are out on a walk in the beautiful, beautiful countryside around us makes me gnash my teeth.  And do you know what?  I am not a martyr.  Sometimes I just want to go for a walk with my toddler and puppy and stare at the wonder of birds of prey as they glide over the estuary below and NOT have to think about plastic, or picking up plastic, or wishing I had brought a bag to pick up the plastic.  I want to watch Springwatch and not feel desperate at the owl that has made her nest on an old squirrel’s dray lined with black plastic, or hear about the cormorant that had its head stuck in a plastic beer can ring or hear about the school cat whose head was stuck in a crisp packet.

But I am grumpy today.

 

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!