low waste

Confessions of a zero waste sceptic

The Everyday Radical2 Comments

So I’ve been threatening to write something about the whole “zero waste” concept for a while. I wrote a piece for The Finest Example, a really great writers’ blog of creative collaboration, hosted by one of my favourite bloggers and writers, Peter Wyn Mosey Link to my article is here – it was fun to write and contains another Gruffalo reference, for those of you who remember my Terracycle post.

Essentially, the whole zero waste concept probably irrationally annoys me because of the way people have made it an aspirational, Instagrammable thing (and I’m a bit jealous of all the eco-blogs which are more successful than mine and look prettier and have ad revenue…) There are lots of useful zero waste groups on Facebook, where helpful information is shared, but they all have this propensity to descend into ridiculous bickering and one-upmanship. It usually goes like this:

“I found this great plastic free thing!” Often it’s a straw, so let’s use that example – “zero waste” straw options include paper, bamboo, glass, metal, silicone, pasta… endless possibilities. Half a million plastic straws are used across the world every day, so plastic-free options must be a good thing, right?

“Why do you need to use a straw anyway, are you a child? Just sip from a cup like a grown-up!”

Cue – flurry of posts about this being an ablist position and reminding us that a lot of disabled people need to use plastic straws. Some more posts about choice and how we all have vices and use stuff which is technically unnecessary to our basic survival sometimes (personally I don’t use straws but for a lot of people, it’s what makes life fun, apparently). Some more posts about the people who have died in metal straw-related injuries (this is a real, very rare but genuinely tragic story). Yet more posts about how stopping using plastic straws is a drop in the ocean (literally), and we should actually be giving up eating fish, as 20% of ocean plastic waste is from fishing equipment. (I’ve also read 46% in other places; how this can possibly be calculated accurately across the whole planet, I have no clue.)

Some of these debates get really vitriolic, and it honestly gives me playground flashbacks of nasty bullying girls making you feel like no matter what you do, it will never be good enough, and you won’t ever fit into the cool gang of eco-people who are “properly” zero waste. I’m sure this trigger isn’t universal and possibly says more about me than it does about them, but I’m sure I’m not entirely alone in feeling this way.

I think the absolutist nature of the statement is the most problematic for me. It’s intimidating and exclusionary and frankly unhelpful and I honestly don’t think there is any such thing as zero waste – as I outline in the article linked above. If you replace your plastic bottles with glass, they look prettier and you get to take pictures of your zero waste kitchen for Instagram, but glass uses more energy to produce, it’s heavier to transport and the glass recycling process is extremely energy-hungry. There’s a footprint to anything and everything we use and everything we do, every single day.

I thought about this earlier in the week as I sat with my husband at a concert of Beethoven symphonies at the absolutely amazing Southbank Centre. Tickets to this were my “zero waste” Christmas gift to him. But then I thought about the carbon footprint of 1000 people travelling into central London, of the power supply and heating for the auditorium, all the (presumably) single use plastic cups we were drinking our wine out of during the interval, the programmes given out for free on the door, the e-tickets I had to print out… Then I thought about all the “experience” gifts that people suggest buying for children as “zero waste” gifts, instead of the ubiquitous plastic toys. None of these will be without a carbon footprint of some kind.

So the concept of zero waste is massively flawed in my view (like any absolutist position really – any sentences that involve the words “you should always” or “you should never” make me suspicious in principle). Shoot me if you like, but I prefer “low waste” as a label, and a wider and more far-reaching view of the world than simply aspiring to be plastic-free.

Speaking of which… remember the great deodorant experiment? In which we compared the longevity and effectiveness of a £7 “natural” deodorant vs. a £1.99 “conventional” one – available in supermarkets, plastic packaging of questionable recyclability. Findings as follows: the natural deodorant I chose wasn’t really up to the job all summer long. I kept going with it for a good while, but felt pretty anti-socially aromatic at times. I reverted to my spare plastic one after my mother very politely informed me that I was extremely smelly (I had just been to the gym, to be fair). But now that one is used up so I’m in a bit of a quandry. I want to use up the natural one before I try another brand (otherwise it’s not really very zero waste at all, is it, boys and girls?), but I also want to keep my friends. So. I’ll keep you posted.

Coming up later in the week – how to “green” your cat. I’m sure he will still love me, no matter how bad I smell.

Running out of thyme – and the end of #BuyNothing September

The Everyday Radical1 Comment

I ran out of thyme this week. Sorry folks, it’s just too good a pun not to write about.

I’ve got quite a respectable stash of these herb and spice jars. I think it’s loosely based on a list from one of Jack Monroe‘s books of essential ingredients to have in your store cupboard. As someone who’s always striving to cook from scratch more creatively, it’s handy to rarely have to buy extra herbs and spices to add to recipes I’m trying out. They’re all supermarket bought though – the glass jars are recyclable but the lids almost definitely not. The label says “check locally”, but even if they were the right kind of plastic to be recycled, I expect they would get lost in the sorting machines at recycling plants and end up in landfill (I promise I’m going to write some more in the Recycling 101 series soon about all these random recycling thoughts).

My plan has always been to replace things with zero/low waste options as and when they ran out. So off I trooped to SWOP with my empty thyme jar to see what could be done. Sure enough, there’s a herbs and spices section, so I refilled my little jar using one of their funnels from a big jar of dried organic Spanish thyme… and held my breath at the till, expecting to pay a major eco-premium (plus an organic premium).

A 17g jar of own brand dried thyme in Asda costs 69p. A Schwarz brand-named packet (now in cardboard, not glass jars anymore it seems) is £1.37 for 11g. My refilled jar (not completely full but probably close to 17g) was 35p. So the lesson, boys and girls, is that eco and low waste is NOT ALWAYS more expensive… it’s pretty hard to predict which products are going to be cheaper and which are going to shock you with their prices, but I guess it’s all a learning game. And learning takes thyme. Ahaaaa. (I’m here all week).

Meanwhile, it’s now October! (Hurray for autumn!) Which means that Oxfam’s #SecondHandSeptember campaign is over. I wrote about this here – essentially it was a campaign to encourage people not to buy new clothes for a month, to raise awareness of the environmental impact of fast fashion. It was quite interesting watching the social media chat around this. For huge amounts of people, not buying anything new for a month is not a challenge at all. Loads of people people very rarely or never buy new clothes, for financial reasons as well as environmental. But some people are really interested in fashion and really want to wear the latest trends. I find this hard to understand to be honest, but no doubt there are some people who would find my book collection weird and extreme, and see it as a waste of trees (this is another post I will write one day – but I am procrastinating on it in a BIG way…) Anyway, I think Oxfam got the promo slightly wrong and were mainly preaching to the converted, but I’m not sure what the alternative is, and anything which raises awareness of the harmful impact of fast fashion on the environment is of course a good thing.

We were aiming for Buy Nothing September, or ever again… so how is my pledge to buy nothing new for myself or the small one until the end of the year going?

Well, pretty good actually. I’ve bought groceries, toiletries, food and medicine for the cat. I’ve bought some more clothes on eBay for the small one – he’s moving into the next size bracket so everything is getting too small all at the same time. I also bought myself a second hand copy of the novel of Les Miserables to read in my copious spare time, after going to see the staged concert of the musical last weekend at the Gielgud theatre. And just as an aside – OMactualG – beg, borrow or steal a ticket to get the chance to see this if you can, it was amazing. And it got me thinking about revolution and rebellion and being more radical, hence my desire to sit quietly at home and read the book…

Anyway. It’s been Mr Everyday Radical’s birthday this month, and I did buy him a new book – The Uninhabitable Earth, by David Wallace-Wells, which is about the impact climate change is going to have on our planet unless we take radical action. Uplifting stuff. I must confess I have a bad habit of buying him books as presents that I want to read myself. But that book is the sum total of new consumer goods that have entered our house in the month of September. (My mum also bought new shoes and some socks for the small one – does that count? Generous Grandma privilege remains sacred, I think).

Then on 1st October my son’s buggy broke on the bus, I had a huge meltdown and had to buy him a new travel buggy at Mothercare to use while we get it fixed. I also bought him a fluffy onesie for the winter in the sale. Because I buy new stuff when stressed. I also bought a Wispa to share with my mum, to help us recover from the bus trauma. The small one’s 2nd birthday was also 1st October, and he’s had some lovely presents (some new, and plastic – which is fine by me because they’re not single use, they will be passed on and I refuse to ban people from buying him stuff because that would make me mean and a rude twat, frankly). But I think on balance we are doing pretty well.

I’m working up to Christmas… I want to buy this for him SO much, because he would LOVE it, but it feels like it would be practically against my religion. Hmmm. I was going to do another installment of Motherhood, Consumption and Guilt one day wasn’t I? Watch this space.