Eco Switches

How to green your kitchen part 2 – in which we finally write about Ecobricks

The Everyday Radical7 Comments

So I’ve been threatening to write about ecobricks for a while, and a discussion on a Facebook group last night prompted me to get on with it, once and for all. I’ve been feeling conflicted about the ecobrick concept for a while, and I’m hoping that writing about it will bring me nearer to a conclusive decision.

Here’s a summary article about the whole ecobrick concept. Essentially, you take all your non-recyclable plastic, chop it up small and shove it into an empty plastic bottle (which has to be clean and scrupulously dry to prevent mould forming), to a specified density. It can then be used as a building block. The idea is that this prevents this plastic from entering landfill, being incinerated (creating CO2 emissions) or ending up in the ocean; effectively, it locks the plastic away from the ecosystem and transforms it into a useful material which is beneficial to the community, and maximises plastic’s durable nature. As I keep on coming back to, I think that plastic itself is not the enemy; the overuse of single use plastic and the disposal thereof is problematic, but long-term durable plastic, looked after and used sensibly, is actually pretty useful. (Remember how much I love tupperware, for example).

Critical to the ecobrick mission is the idea that the very time-consuming process of washing and drying your plastic is a meditation on your use of single-use plastic, and should prompt you to consider how you can reduce and refuse, rather than using the ecobrick as a form of appeasing your conscience for your plastic use.

Here’s a picture of our plastic management system – it’s a sock drier I think, hanging up in our kitchen at the moment (conveniently next to the cleaning cupboard, in a clockwise direction in the spirit of How to green your kitchen part 1). When it’s sunny we hang it outside on the washing line – our neighbours must think we’re pretty mad to be drying our salad bags in the sunshine. Some of the stuff hanging on here at the moment is actually for Terracycle (I’ll come back to Terracycle another time, as I’m having continuing qualms about it since my original post), and the big freezer bag I will reuse until it disintegrates. The process has really helped us to review what we’re using and make different choices, such as almost completly stopping using microrice and switching to bigger pots of yoghurt and washing powder in a box rather than tablets in plastic casing.

BUT I’ve got some problems with the concept.

Firstly, it’s really, really hard to find a project to take your bricks. Theoretically, there’s a network called GoBrik which exists to help you find where you can drop off your bricks to become part of a community project to build garden furniture or playground equipment for example. But a lot of the projects listed seem to be defunct, and people don’t reply to messages of inquiry, or there’s nothing local available. However, the official Ecobrick stance encourages people to take responsibility for their own plastic and retain their bricks themselves by making something for their own home or garden. The idea is that the “throwaway” idea of giving away your waste to someone else reduces your sense of responsibility and is the same as simply putting everything in the recycling bin without thinking about what really happens to it. Do we believe our local authorities are actually processing everything for recycling, or do we suspect that hard-to-recycle plastic is being sent overseas and ending up in the ocean? Equally, do we know that the project where we drop off our ecobrick is going to use it responsibly, to the end of its life?

But what if you haven’t got the time or the skills to build something yourself? If you actively seek a project to drop your bricks off to on the Facebook network, the response can be quite aggressive, with lots of people telling you to make something yourself rather than outsourcing the problem. In fact, the aggressive nature of the Ecobrick Facebook community is pretty off-putting in itself. So you end up with a bunch of bricks in your shed and no idea what to do with them.

Say you do find a project, or build a planter out of your bricks for your own garden. What happens in 500 years? Will they explode and spread tiny particles of plastic everywhere? Is it a time bomb? Would it have been better for it to be incinerated after all? Similarly worryingly, I know of some projects in schools which have been run by volunteers who aren’t properly clued up about the density requirements, so they may well be making structures for children to use which aren’t safely load-bearing, or using bricks that will go mouldy and degrade because people haven’t been instructed clearly enough on how rigorous the cleaning process has to be.

I also see scarily frequent posts on social media talking about how ecobricks can be “sent to developing countries for building projects” – I’m assuming that this has become mythologised because the concept originated in Indonesia, but I feel that this perpetuates the post-colonial approach to waste disposal, when we’ve seen the consequences of western/developed countries sending their unwanted waste to developing countries that haven’t got the infrastructure to deal with it properly, and the environmental carnage this is causing. (Sorry if I’m using the wrong words, it’s difficult to know what the least patronising phraseology is).

So I don’t feel too great about Ecobricks at the moment. I’m still trying to find a project, either in London or near to where other family members live to enable drop-off, while being mindful of the need to avoid complacency and a “giving away the problem” mentality. I may end up making a crap plant pot out of ours in the end (I am notoriously shit at artistic endeavors), then bequeathing it through the next 25 generations of my family… Unless we can start breeding plastic-eating worms to deal with the problem for us. But I do think it’s a useful process in monitoring your single-use plastic use, so for now we will carry on doing it. And suffering the very unbeautiful plastic sock sculpture in our kitchen as penance for our plastic sins.

This is a contentious topic and I would love to know other people’s thoughts on this. So press the comment button and argue with me please! (in a respectful way, of course – unless I’ve inadvertently said something really daft).

Peace and love xx

In which we don’t go on TV after all – but have some interesting thoughts anyway

The Everyday RadicalLeave a comment

So… the big news was that I was invited to be in the audience of the live filming of The Martin Lewis Money Show Live, on Tuesday evening in Wapping. I had a plus 1 and everything, and Mr EverydayRadical and I were excited about going for pizza afterwards. Almost as excited about the pizza as about the whole TV thing, to be perfectly honest.

BUT – we couldn’t go, for various dull reasons that I’m not going to bore you with. I wrote half this post before that decision though, so I’ve adapted it to hopefully be somehow interesting reading anyway.

I thought that the programme was going to be a Brexit special, discussing how Brexit is likely to impact various aspects of people’s household finances. Having watched it, the programme actually had a much broader brush than that, but anyhow… I think it’s an open process to apply for tickets or submit questions to be in the audience, but I was put onto it by a cat sitting client who’s read the blog, specifically my Brexit post, and thought I might be interested (I know! It’s not what you know, it’s who you know!). So I got in touch with the researcher and discussed potential questions to put to Martin.

He’s written a really interesting article about some of the possible financial ramifications of Brexit. But I was wondering about the cross-over between the financial impact and the environmental impact. So I started to think about two things – energy costs and overseas travel. I’m going to share my thoughts about renewable energy in this post.

We’re being told that we are likely to see increased energy bills after we leave the EU, especially if it’s a no deal Brexit. This is because we import increasing amounts of electricity from Europe (currently 7%, on track to increase to 20% by 2025), and the falling pound is making our bills higher already. There were pre-referendum warnings about the impact of leaving the EU Internal Energy market, but, y’know, boring experts, yadayadayada. According to this article, there’s also a possibility that in the event of a no deal Brexit, the UK could face third-party costs to use the power lines which connect Britain to European power markets, which would raise the overall cost of the energy. So far, so predictable.

What I didn’t quite understand is the impact on renewable energy – somewhere in my memory I have this belief that the EU subsidises renewable energy, so Brexit could impact on the cost and availability of this. I am particularly interested in this as we have just switched to a 100% renewable tariff with the Green Energy Network – this is quite an interesting thing in itself, as the supplier can’t guarantee that the power that goes into your house via the National Grid is actually from a renewable source, as this is dependent on demand and supply at any given time. But the Green Energy Network guarantees that for every unit your household uses, they will buy the equivalent amount in renewable energy. Here’s some good stuff about how the energy market works.

So I’ve done a bit of research and I can’t find anything to say that the EU directly subsidises renewable energy generation. However, while in the EU we would have been bound by EU target to increase from just over 20% of our total energy production to 30% by 2020. My guess would be that after Brexit we won’t be bound by that target. My guess is right. Meanwhile, the UK has the biggest fossil fuel subsidies out of all the countries in the EU, according to the stats from 2016 at least, mentioned in this article.

So anyway. It’s all quite depressing really. I don’t think the current government are taking climate crisis seriously enough and I think the Brexit show is distracting everyone from the most important stuff.

So I may not have been to the Money Show, but my top tip for this week is – get onto uSwitch and look for a fixed term renewable energy tariff, now, to lock in a price before the recession hits and prices start to increase. Our switch should save us £15 a month and we’re voting with our feet in favour of renewable energy. It sometimes feels to me that our only real power is as consumers. The other power is being well-informed – this is a good long read about the current and future state of the UK power industry, some of it quite uplifting.

Anyway, back to BBC Parliament… posts coming soon about how we’ve done in September on the No Buy strategy, my new plan for meat eating (or not) and yet another post about dishwashing. I also kind of want to write a rant about health visitors, but maybe I need to start another blog for that.

How to green your kitchen, part 1

The Everyday Radical1 Comment

Brilliant ideas often come while drinking wine with my friends, and this one is no exception. Thanks B, you know who you are and you’re a total legend.

Welcome to “Green your kitchen”. Not cleaning, but “greening”. The Organised Mum‘s method of cleaning involves starting in one corner of the room, and moving clockwise around it, to retain focus and make sure everything gets done. (I know, I’m namedropping this a lot at the moment but I honestly think it’s brilliant, and it gives you all a rest from me bashing on about my other hero, Jack Monroe.) So I thought, let’s do it with “greening” instead of cleaning. Over a series of posts (probably quite a lot), I’m going to work my way around my kitchen and assess what progress I’ve made in terms of becoming more eco-friendly, and what next steps there are to take. You may wish to join me on this method and think about your own kitchen… If it feels like a useful approach, we’ll follow this with greening your bathroom, bedroom, etc… The possibilities are endless.

Here’s a couple of photos of my kitchen (it does NOT always look like this, I just cleaned it while the small one is snoozing. We can have a chat about the copious amounts of plastic garden toys which I’ve edited out another time… under “greening your garden”, maybe).

My personal premise as always with this stuff is that it’s a gradual process to having a more sustainably eco-friendly home and lifestyle – some people have been working through this stuff for years, others are just getting started. I’m not sure where I “fit” on that continuum, but the one thing I firmly believe is that the “rid your house of all plastic, immediately” ideology is utter bollocks. I stand firmly by the principle that if you have it, you should use it up. There was a very suspicious element of the War on Plastic documentary where a couple had got rid of all the plastic in their bathroom very quickly and spent lots of money on Pinterest-worthy “zero waste” bathroom stuff. Did they just chuck it all away, unused? My view is that unless is’s obviously super evil stuff that shouldn’t be going down the drain – like cosmetics with microbeads in – it should be used up before disposing of the packaging as best we can. I think we should be respecting the virgin materials that this stuff is made from and make more eco-friendly decisions on an item-by-item basis, as things run out.

So here are some riveting pictures of my cleaning cupboards under the sink (big gap is where the compost caddy lives). These used to be be pretty full, but I’m making a conscious effort to use stuff up and replace with a reduced stock of more eco-friendly options.

There’s a few things I will absolutely not use up, that I’m in the process of giving away, via the Buy Nothing group and Olio. Fabric softener I no longer use – I don’t like the artificial smell and personally view it as unnecessary chemicals. I’ve given away some stainless steel cleaner which I bought when I lived somewhere with a stainless steel hob. Still going begging is some “fabric freshener” from Waitrose, I have no idea why I’ve got this, and some Febreze – anyone want them?

I’ve still got some super evil ant killer (I know, but they were in the cupboards… I couldn’t bear it!) and drain cleaner, and some weird stuff that’s supposed to neutralise the smell of cat poo and wee from when the Fluffbeast had some bladder problems and was peeing behind the TV. Some carpet cleaner which is necessary for cat and toddler puke. Plus mould and mildew remover. I’m sure there are alternative eco versions of all of these, but I haven’t looked into it yet. The small plastic water bottles have got distilled water in for my steam mop – I think if I just used our super-hard tap water, my steam mop would scale up and die. My amazing mum brings the water form their tumble-drier for me and we reuse the bottles. I’ve still got some evil plastic washing up sponges left, since swapping to Euroscrubbys we are using these up for fun jobs like scrubbing the barbecue and the highchair every now and again. They’re destined for incineration via our general waste anyway, so they might as well be used first (although they probably also leach microplastics when rinsed? It’s a minefield).

I’ve dumped my trusty Mr Sheen – this was a long-term relationship and I’m still grieving, but it was for the best. Replacing chemical spray from a hard-to-recycle can with damp dusting is a pretty easy switch really, and damp dusting is better for allergy sufferers too, as it traps all the dust into the cloth rather than wafting it around the room (thanks for this one, Gem).

I’m getting into the habit of keeping used dishcloths and tea towels separate, to add to hotter washes. In due course I’m going to look into getting a guppy bag to wash non-cotton stuff – to reduce microplastics leaching into the water course. I’m slightly on the fence about this, as I’m not sure what to do with the residue – so more research required.

Now the exciting bit… I’ve got a stash of empty spray bottles that I’ve saved up to take to my local zero waste shop and fill up with vegan, biodegradable, plastic free cleaning materials. (I will have a rant some time about the phrase “zero waste” and how misleading it is, but not now, as this is a good news story.)

Thus far, I’ve got window and glass cleaner and the multi-surface cleaner made by Sesi, the latter of which can be quite significantly diluted so will last a long time. It was nowhere near as expensive as I expected it to be, and it’s an easy bus ride form home, or about a mile walk away from somewhere I go every week, so I won’t be driving there and undoing my otherwise good work (maybe I’m going to rant about this some time too).

I’m also getting hold of a bulk-sized bottle of white vinegar soon (again via the Buy Nothing gang, it’s a quite remarkable project really), so I will have a crack at making my own cleaning stuff in due course.

I’m a fair bit away from a plastic and chemical-free cleaning arsenal, but I feel like progress has been made since I started really actively thinking about this stuff – around April, I think.

So, I hope that wasn’t too boring. This is the journey, folks. It’s not always glamorous or sexy but it can be radical to rethink every purchase decision you make, every item in your home, and choose to do it better.

Back to school – no shiny new pencil cases here #BuyNothing

The Everyday Radical5 Comments

I remember the back to school feeling SO well. I actually was a huge geek and loved school, so I never had that sense of dread some people talk about. I also love autumn and the air becoming nice and crisp and cool again (I am not a fan of heatwaves – so, y’know, let’s try and fix climate change, people). Even in the *many* years since leaving education, I get a bit of a “turning over a new leaf” feeling at the beginning of the new academic year, and September resolutions have been made (and broken) over several years.

Anyway… I’m basically reminiscing here about stationery and how much I love it. The new school year was ALL about stationery. We got new exercise books for each subject at school, even if last year’s weren’t full. I always used to have a new pencil case, and sometimes a new fountain pen. Also often a new rucksack at the start of each school year – mainly because the previous year’s one had been poor quality and the strap had broken under the groaning weight of library books, cookery ingredients and maths homework.

But I’ve still got my Miffy pencil case from 1993. Which makes me think… I probably didn’t need a new one every year, did I? But the consumer machine teaches us that we Need All The New Stuff Every Year. The kids deserve a treat, their friends will all have new stuff, they don’t like Paw Patrol anymore. And the Back to School concept can also be used to sell stuff to adults – there’s a whole marketing strategy here. Buy a gym membership or get a new hairdo to celebrate the kids having gone back to school, buy a new laptop to get that “shiny pencil case feeling”, even though you’re 48 and you don’t like Paw Patrol either.

I keep coming back, over and over again, to the realisation that one of the only ways to turn the tide on climate change and plastic pollution is to stop buying stuff, to stop generating demand for the production of new things and the carbon footprint generated by their manufacture, and the pollution caused by their eventual disposal. So I have launched, with a new local friend of mine, a South East London branch of the Buy Nothing Project (it’s originally an American thing – we do not use their acronym!) Have a read, it’s an interesting concept – a hyper-local gift economy enabling people to give, share and ask for things they need, where members of the community can get to know each other and commit “myriad random acts of kindness”. Sounds great, yes? It is. It’s also a bit of a mind shift for people used to a “first come first served” model like that used in Freecycle and most Facebook selling groups. We are building momentum though and it’s amazing seeing gifts being given, needs being met and friendships developing.

We’ve done a “Back to School” event over the weekend and seen people sharing uniform, stationery, rucksacks and of course pencil cases. All of this is preventing us from having to buy new, reducing our environmental impact and building relationships in our community.

So… to finish off. I’m feeling bloody depressed about Brexit right now, and the state of democracy in this country – it feels like all I see is division everywhere. I’m oscillating from feeling powerless and trying not to think about it, to wanting to go and chain myself to something and finding ways to rage against the machine. But actually the EU is less important than planet as a whole, and we mustn’t lose sight of that. And I think there are ways we can radically shift our mindset about consumption and possessions, while also increasing social cohesion and a sense of belonging in our communities, which we clearly sorely need at the moment.

If you are interested in setting up a Buy Nothing group, give me a shout and I will send you the info. At the very least, check out Freecycle and second hand sites before you hit the shops, next time you need to buy something. Even a pencil case. I’m not giving you my Miffy one though.

#SaturdaySwitch – lists, and also some amazing bloggers

The Everyday Radical4 Comments

Aaaaaah. Stationery. Mmmmmmm. My heart rate increases a little bit when I go into a branch of Paperchase. My pupils dilate when I walk down the stationery aisle in Sainsbury’s. I want it ALL. All the notebooks, all the nice brightly-coloured rollerball pens. Want, want, want. All, all, all. Covet, covet, covet.

And I love lists. I love crossing jobs off to do lists. I love having an amazingly complete and perfect and colour-coded to do list of all the things I have to do, ever. I love categorising lists. I’ve also been known to have a list of all the lists (to be fair, I was turning my life upside down and moving to London with no job and nowhere to live, so I think you can forgive me a few lists in pink pen to give me an illusion of control).

But paper is of course made of trees. And trees are amazing and my instinctive feeling is that it’s pretty obviously better not to chop them down. There is of course a circular argument that many trees are grown specifically to make paper, so if there was less demand for paper then those trees would not exist, and their carbon absorption benefit would be lost. But equally, even sustainable growth of trees for paper-marking has an environmental impact. Of course paper can be recycled, and 70% less energy is required to recycle paper compared to making it from raw materials. But of course, as always, it’s complicated, and there is a footprint to the recycling process. So the first steps, again as always, are to reduce and reuse.

So I’m working on the Buy Nothing project this week (more on this soon – it’s going to save the world, I tell you). There’s a ton of stuff to do, and my co-creator has shared the Wunderlist app with me – so I’m giving up my personal paper-based to do list… Can I also give up my shopping list, weekly meal plan and other random ramblings that I keep in my nice green notepad? We shall see…

Meanwhile, the totally incredible Gemma Bray at The Organised Mum has just released an app of her awesome system of organising household jobs. So if you’re into this sort of thing – and following her plan has been a sanity saver for me – then do check it out. It will save you the need to write any housework lists, ever again.

And just because I love to plug other awesome bloggers who’ve had a really positive impact on my life, and because I have an enormous girl crush on her, I want to tell you that Jack Monroe has just released a new book of vegan recipes, for pre-order to arrive on Boxing Day. Perfect for the post Christmas health kick and/or Veganuary. We’ll chat about the concept of Veganish again some time…

Second-hand September – or buy nothing, ever again?

The Everyday Radical5 Comments

I posted about No Buy July a while ago. We made a pretty good stab at it, and I was intending to carry it into August. But it’s amazing how quickly old habits return. When we got back from camping, I was feeling a bit down to be honest – I had found the trip pretty hard going, then been really ill when we got home with a stomach bug, which I thought at one point might be Lyme disease from a tick bite (dramatic, moi?), so I’d trooped off to the local Emergency Department on the advice of 111 to wait four hours to be given antibiotics (there’s a whole other blog to be written about the world views of an ex-NHS manager on the state of the public sector today, butI’m not going to be writing it any time soon).

Within a couple of days of getting home, I’d bought chocolate, which is not allowed in our house except in dire emergencies, otherwise we binge eat. I also bought two new tops from Asda, which were super cheap – I have done no direct research on this, but I expect Asda are pretty low down the list when it comes to disastrous fast fashion. And I bought some reallllly lush pyjamas from Marks and Spencer. I LOVE nice pyjamas. So I succumbed to this learned habit that all us good capitalist citizens have been trained to obey – when you feel blue, buy something new. And/or eat some sugar.

There were big posters all over Marks and Spencer about sustainably sourced cotton, and their corporate website says that they have achieved their target of 100% sustainably sourced cotton in March 2019, and are aiming to increase the proportion of Fairtrade, organic and recycled sources to 25% by 2025. I haven’t read all the information about what this actually means, but it’s gone a little way towards assuaging my guilt, particularly given the enormous amount of baby clothes I’ve bought from M&S over the past two years.

Anyway, sustainable or not, my view is still that it’s better to buy as little new as possible. I’ve got over my antipathy to eBay and started buying and selling stuff on there – the root of the antipathy is basically that I thought it was a huge load of hassle to upload items for sale, and that to buy stuff you had to invest huge amounts of time in watching bids, but actually it can be done much more simply, and you can buy pretty much anything. I’ve bought an OS map, some leggings for me (which I thought might be a bit ick but were totally fine), and some clothes for the ever-growing small one, plus some books and an amazing Melissa and Doug latch board, which he loves.

Oxfam are running a Second Hand September campaign, asking people to pledge to buy no new clothes in September and highlighting the environmental impact of fast fashion. 11 million items of clothing go to landfill every week, just in the UK. This terrifies me. I have a bunch of other interesting references and articles about fast fashion to share sometime when I’ve got the concentration span for a more analytical post, but for now, here’s some rambling reflections.

There must be enough clothes in the world for everyone, for a really long time. When you expand your brain and think about what would happen if we just stopped manufacturing clothes and bought or gifted second-hand only, it’s kind of mind-blowing. What would the economic impact be? What would happen to everyone whose jobs depend on making and selling new clothes? But what would happen within our communities if we shared, gifted, traded used clothing as a matter of course? What would happen if Saturday shopping centre trips to buy new clothes wasn’t a hobby anymore? What would people do instead? It’s mega.

Anyway, maybe take the Oxfam pledge for September and see how you feel. Maybe join the Extinction Rebellion fashion boycott. Check out eBay, Facebook marketplace and selling groups, car boot sales, or charity shops if you’re not dragging a toddler around with you. Weirdly, the small one likes markets and supermarkets but he HATES charity shops. I get three minutes browsing time, max.

I’m writing it here now to make it real – I’m not buying anything new for me or the small one, for the rest of the year. And I’m going to have a crack at second-hand Christmas too…

Meanwhile (and this is the reason for the posting hiatus, alongside a non-napping small person cutting some teeth), I’m working with a new local friend to launch a local Buy Nothing Project group. It’s ridiculously exciting but also a bit scary. More soon.

Belated #SaturdaySwitch and reflections on camping with a toddler

The Everyday Radical2 Comments

So we’ve been home for a few days now after our camping adventure at Rise Up Singing. I was expecting our first camp with a toddler to be hard work and I wasn’t wrong (sometimes it’s good to prepare for the worst, right?) Nappy changes in a tent with a wriggling, protesting, octopus-like toddler are a challenge and my post-pregnancy body definitely needs a better camping bed solution. It feels unfair to be more exhausted at the end of a “holiday” than at the start. Not to mention the fact that I managed approximately two thirds of one singing workshop, and a handful of fragmented conversations with friends. Some acceptance still needed as to how different this camp was, in comparison to all those years attending as a child-free person, learning five new songs a day and jamming with great singers until the small hours by the fire.

BUT the small one loved it – lots of free range rampaging, chucking 4987 stones into the stream and being allowed to eat Mini Cheddars and raisins for most meals (this is not a child who likes kale, yet). And we had some awesome walks in the woods, small one on the Daddy Donkey.

So anyway. Being in the amazingly beautiful Dartmoor countryside brings it all home in a really intense way (no camping puns here) what’s at stake, as we progress on our journey to protect Mother Earth from destruction. And I have to admit that amidst the mountain of washing, an intense post-camp stomach bug which at one point I thought might be Lyme disease from an infected tick bite (TBC by blood tests next week but I think unlikely as I’m now almost better), I almost felt like giving up.

It’s so hard. Aeroplanes fly over our house almost every minute in London and there’s next to nothing we can do about it. The supermarkets are full to the brim of plastic and it’s so much effort and expense to do plastic-free food shopping. The internet is still full of people arguing about how to save the world in the best way, while being quite rude to each other. We have a new PM and cabinet who don’t care about anything except hard Brexit. McDonalds paper straws aren’t recyclable. Or they are. Or it doesn’t matter. People leave litter in the park and put the wrong stuff in the plastic bag recycling at Sainsbury’s – which might not matter if it all ends up in an eastern European landfill or the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

But – this, guys. This.

https://www.pinns.co.uk/devon/hemburywoods.html

And this.

http://holidayindartmoor.co.uk/buckfast/hembury-woods-circular-walk-36110.html

(The rest of my photos were rubbish so these are stolen images of Hembury woods, but this is where we were, and it’s magnificent).

So onwards with the changes, onwards with the small steps – and gathering courage and strength for the big ones.

While away I did chemical deodorant detox (thanks, hippy friends, for tolerating this) and I’ve started using the new plastic-free natural one this week (as per The Great Deodorant Experiment). I’ve also ditched shower gel, shampoo and conditioner in favour of this conditioning shampoo soap bar which can be used on hair and body. And, sort of without thinking about it I’ve ditched face wash for this really gorgeous tea tree and peppermint face soap. My skin is feeling great, I don’t think I smell too awful and my hair is… taking some getting used to… but I’m persevering. Everything from The Good Soap Company came packaged in paper and card too, absolutely no plastic, and very good service. Highly recommended.

This really useful article suggests how to go about making the switch to a shampoo bar if you’re considering it. My hair is still feeling a bit waxy so I’m researching other methods e.g. lathering the soap first rather than applying the bar straight to your hair, doing extra rinses etc. I will keep you posted. I think a plastic-free bathroom is likely to be achieved sooner in our house than a plastic-free kitchen.

So. August continues and I have a bunch of cat sitting jobs coming up (yes, I am a multi-talented beast indeed), plus you’re all on holiday anyway, so blog posts may be less frequent for a few weeks. I’ve got some ideas for a bit of a relaunch in September, so I will be nagging for likes and shares and all that stuff. Back soon. Ish.

#SaturdaySwitch part 4 – No Buy July

The Everyday Radical1 Comment

I read about the concept of “No buy July” on one of the zero waste groups I’ve joined on Facebook. The full concept as discussed in the group seemed quite extreme to me – not buying anything at all, including food, and just using up whatever you have in the freezer and cupboards. I knew we couldn’t manage this, as fresh fruit and vegetables is important to us as well as a fair bit of dairy. But I decided to have a crack at it – buy no stuff, with the exclusion of food and fuel. (To be fair, there are plenty of months where we don’t buy diesel for the car, as we hardly every use it, but we needed some for the Center Parcs trip and next week’s camping extravaganza).

So why stop buying stuff? Let’s start with clothes.

It’s widely held that the fashion industry is the second most polluting global industry after oil. This might not actually be true, but it’s clear there’s still a major impact.

Extinction Rebellion are calling on us all to pledge to buy no new clothing for a year, from April 2019-April 2020, in a bid to disrupt the fashion industry and reduce the ecological impact of clothing manufacture. Key wording from the pledge:

“We can no longer afford to use land to grow crops for producing clothes and extract oil to produce synthetic fibres. Enough is enough. Business as usual is leading us towards extinction.  

For the next year, we will engage in a boycott of the fashion industry and its ecocidal, unethical system of pointless production. We will take joy in making do with what we, collectively, already have, and learn to share, repair, rewear and relove. We challenge ourselves to radically change our relationships with clothes.”

Buying no new clothes for myself is not a huge challenge really – I’m not much of a fashionista, and we haven’t got a ton of spare cash for these things. I have bought some leggings on eBay this month though, including some Boden ones, so I’m officially a yummy mummy now. I was initially a bit squeamish about second hand leggings, but they’re actually fine. I will do another post in due course about our adventures with eBay and why patience is a virtue!

Removing temptation is a good move – I rarely go High Street shopping, because it’s not very fun with a toddler. There are some good tips here about deleting marketing emails before read them – they’re designed to tempt you to buy stuff which you probably don’t need, and it’s so easy to buy online for that quick one-click endorphin hit. I’ve gone a step further and unsubscribed from a load of mailing lists. I know where the Mothercare website is if I ever need it, but I don’t need to see the cute new Mylene Klass range of kids clothes that my son DOES NOT NEED (sigh). Baby clothes (toddler clothes? boy’s clothes? He’s not really a baby any more… *sobs*) are my weakness though and I’m promising to make a concerted effort to get the majority of his next batch second hand.

Other stuff – well, it’s just more stuff, isn’t it, really? The manufacture and distribution of everything has a carbon footprint, and it all will have to be disposed of eventually. There’s probably enough stuff already in existence to go round for the whole planet for a good few centuries. There’s not much that can’t be borrowed or obtained second hand.

So far so good, until the camping trip planning began in earnest…

The sum total of new things we have bought in July are as follows, all directly related to our upcoming holiday:

  • A roof box for the car – we did try and find one on eBay but it’s super complicated getting one with the right roof bars for your car. I feel like this is a pretty major long-term investment though, and does not count as a disposable, frivolous purchase.
  • A feed bucket – sounds mad, but I think it will work as a good travel bath tub for the small person, I know he can’t go 10 days without a few scrubs. Plus it’s squashable so will fit more easily in the car than a normal bucket. Again, I think this will get a lot of use over the years on camping trips, for fetching water, washing up etc., and can be used as a storage receptacle too.
  • An LED camping light – tried to borrow one from various friends and family without success. Again, will have a long life with us over the years/decades and will be looked after (and NOT trashed by a small person obsessed with switching lights on and off, definitely not).

So we haven’t quite pulled off No Buy July, but I’m interested in a longer-term lifestyle change. As a friend of mine put it recently when she signed the fashion pledge:

BUY NOTHING NEW. 

I reckon unless you’re gifted something, or its absolutely essential, it’s hard to justify having new stuff these days. I think a challenge such as that suggested by Extinction Rebellion, gets you to really think every time you make a purchase. “Do I really need this? Can I find it second hand anywhere else? If I have to buy it can I make sure it doesn’t end up in land fill when I’m done?” 

I’m certainly not going to get all militant about it. But I’ve most definitely reached a turning point where buying new really jars with me.

Less stuff. Reduce, reuse. Rebel against the consumer machine. That feels more radical than buying leggings on eBay, but that’s what it is, and I think that’s what we have to do to save the world. Super rad.

Clingfilm Klingons

The Everyday Radical3 Comments

I hate clingfilm, with a passion. It sticks to itself and never obeys me in where I want it to go, and it’s all wrinkly like this Klingon’s head. I gave it up quite a while ago, because it’s so annoying, and so difficult to clean for the Ecobrick (although I have got some left in the kitchen drawer – wonder what I should do with it?)

But I’m even more annoyed by the gazillions of pop-up ads I’m seeing on Facebook (thanks, algorithms) for these stretchy lid things. I know I ranted about them a bit in my Tupperware post, but honestly I hate the concept so much I need to have another rant. I didn’t ever want to be dogmatic in my opinions here, as I know that different things work for different people, but please don’t buy them! Not only do the reviews almost all say that they’re not actually very effective, but they’re also not biodegradable, super hard to recycle (that old chestnut, “where facilities exist”), and their manufacture must have a considerable carbon footprint. Here are some other alternatives to clingfilm:

  • Tupperware – it’s great, and there really is no evidence that it gives you cancer. Really.
  • Old takeaway boxes are brilliant. I have 483 in the cupboard, at least.
  • One of these for the microwave – yes it’s plastic but I’ve had mine since I was 18 (a LONG time ago) and it’s saved a lot of clingfilm so personally I think it’s fine. I will bequeath it to my son when I’m dead in remembrance of all the microwaved peas he eats.
  • You could just stick a place on top of a bowl, either in the microwave or for storage. We all have plates and bowls.
  • You can also use kitchen roll in the microwave to catch splashes. Then use it to wipe something up afterwards, then put it in the compost. (Didn’t know you could compost kitchen roll? Nor did I until recently. Thanks Google – 10 things I’ve googled about waste and recycling coming up soon)
  • Some people have a stash of pyrex dishes with lids that can be used in the microwave.
  • For open packets in the fridge that need to be covered to stay fresh, I’ve started using old bread bags with the tie. These also work for covering things to go in the freezer.
  • Similarly, my stash of old freezer bags which I wash and reuse serve a similar purpose.
  • For storing leftovers in the fridge, you could use old yoghurt pots, margarine or butter tubs, jam jars etc.

Basically, much as I hate clingfilm, it really worries me that there’s this bandwagon of advertising to persuade you to buy more stuff to replace it, when actually there are loads of other options based on using what you already have, or reusing other packaging before recycling it when it starts to fall to bits.

The marketing machine behind “going zero waste” concerns me. Reducing waste and reducing plastic doesn’t have to mean spending more money and generating demand for yet more stuff, complete with the carbon footprint of its manufacture and distribution. Yes it looks nice and trendy on Pinterest and Instagram, but it’s pointless consumption, and more waste in the end. And it makes me cross.

So please, for your #SaturdaySwitch tomorrow, stop buying clingfilm but don’t be a faux-clingfilm Klingon. I will try really hard to be less ranty in my next post.

Peace and love xx

How green are you, anyway?

The Everyday Radical4 Comments

A friend of mine (the great deodorant co-experimenter) told me about this WWF personal carbon footprint calculator, so I thought I would have a go at it and share my thoughts with you.

The methodology section is a bit confusing, but essentially it measures your personal footprint in tonnes of CO2 equivalent carbon emissions. This is based on questions on four categories: Food – diet, food waste and buying habits, Home – energy type and usage in the house and presence of energy-saving measures, Travel – personal and public transport usage for leisure and work, and flights, and Stuff – purchase of consumable items.

It then gives you a percentage score – 100% is the average required for every citizen to meet the UK’s 2020 carbon emissions target. Less than 100%, you’re doing well. More than 100%, you’re contributing more than your fair share and could/should do more.

The “target” is the 2008 Climate Act’s goal to reduce emissions by 80% from the 1990 total by 2050 – to remain on track, we have to be 35% of the way there by 2020. More info here.

So I ran the questionnaire and came out initially with 98%. All good. Then I realised I had probably filled out the question about car travel wrong. We hardly ever use the car – literally one trip to the shops every 7-10 days or so, maybe a less than 50 mile trip once a month and longer trip every few months. So I initially answered the first car question saying “I walk/cycle/use public transport for all journeys”. When I went back and redid it, and answered the questions about the type of car we have (terrible huge diesel estate), even saying that I use it less than 2 hours per week made the answer came back at 112%… 11.2 tonnes. Still less than the UK average of 13.56 tonnes, but above target. Hmm…

Just as an experiment, to see how the weighting works, I ran it again with all the same answers but changed the food answer to “vegan”, and it came out at 109%. So the impact of car use seems to have a very high weighting. It would be really interesting to re-run it a few times playing with the other categories like recycling, flights taken etc. and see how that impacts the score.

The tips the calculator gives me are as follows:

Travel:

  • Cycle more – no, not going to. People would die. Probably me.
  • Use public transport more – I do this for everything except supermarket and visiting family, not sure how we can reduce this as I’m not really up for long train journeys with a toddler.
  • Drive smarter – remove excess weight to maximise petrol efficiency. Hmmm… 10 day camping trip with roof box coming up. Also, it tells me that “having the correct air pressure in your tyres results in better petrol mileage, better handling of the car, cheaper maintenance costs and a smaller environmental impact. This simple step can make a big difference.” This is my husband’s department (sorry, feminists), and I’m pretty sure he’s on it. And finally, my favourite: by slowing your travel speed by 10km/h, you could improve your car’s fuel consumption by 25%. Dear husband, please read this! (Cause of a few tiffs, this one)

Stuff tips – buy one expensive thing rather than lots of fast fashion, buy second hand. On it – see impending eBay post and my thoughts about fast fashion.

Food – eat in season, less meat and dairy.

Home – this was my highest score: switch energy supplier to a renewable energy company, switch to energy efficient bulbs (already doing this) and “embrace new technology” – this seems to be something about using apps to monitor energy use, or maybe installing a smart meter? More research required.

There’s a couple of non-negotiables in here which I’m sure have an impact (e.g. cat food spend, and we would really be sad if we cut down on our takeaways and the odd restaurant date night), but I re-ran it with the following changes:

No flights (won’t be flying anywhere next year anyway), changed meat from “some meals” to rarely, changed food to “a lot locally sourced” rather than just some, 100% renewable energy tariff, house temperature changed from “warm” to “cool” (grrrr….), no new household items (we bought new laptops last year with wedding present money, no plans to make anymore big purchases). I kept clothing spend at £0-£50 rather than zero, as I do have to buy the odd thing new despite my best efforts.

Drumroll please….. this takes me down to 11.4 tonnes, which is 93%. And this is with what I consider to be quite modest changes really, that we are heading towards anyway. More radical stuff could take it lower, and the methodology section says we should be aiming for 1.05 tonnes each by 2050. The global average is 5.28 tonnes and that feels like a good long-term aim.

Interesting stuff. I would love to hear what yours comes out as and whether it triggers any thoughts towards lifestyle changes.