plastic

More lockdown reflections, and Ecobricks – again

The Everyday Radical1 Comment
Photo by Margot RICHARD on Unsplash

I keep seeing posts and memes on Facebook telling me to make the most of this lockdown period to reflect, slow down, think about what’s important in life. I must confess, in weeks 1-2 of lockdown, these posts made me feel pretty stabby. especially this poem:

And the people stayed home. And read books, and listened, and rested, and exercised, and made art, and played games, and learned new ways of being, and were still. And listened more deeply. Some meditated, some prayed, some danced. Some met their shadows. And the people began to think differently.

And the people healed. And, in the absence of people living in ignorant, dangerous, mindless, and heartless ways, the earth began to heal.

And when the danger passed, and the people joined together again, they grieved their losses, and made new choices, and dreamed new images, and created new ways to live and heal the earth fully, as they had been healed.

It’s by a contemporary American writer called Kitty O’Meara, but it’s been widely and wrongly attributed to another poet named Kathleen O’Meara, supposedly writing during the 1860s cholera outbreak – I don’t even know if there actually was a cholera outbreak where she lived in France (although she was originally from Ireland). This annoyed me a lot – I felt like it was trying to attribute some sort of universal pandemic commonality of suffering across the centuries, when the reality of course is that not many Catholics in the 1860s would have been particularly into meditating, most people wouldn’t have had any books in their homes, and they most likely would have been more interested in preventing starvation and death anyway.

So I read this stuff, and raged about how tactless it is to celebrate being able to meditate when there are people dying alone in under-staffed ITUs, and people are losing their jobs and struggling to feed their families, and single mothers are being driven mental by small children cooped up all day. I raged a bit more about how bloody unfair it is that I haven’t got any time to read books and do puzzles and watch Andrew Lloyd-Webber musicals on YouTube (here’s the link for you lucky bastards who do have time – and if you can watch this without shedding a tear, you’ve got a heart of stone, dude).

Then my paid work finally all evaporated, and we got ourselves into a bit of a routine of sharing childcare and getting some exercise, and it all feels a tiny bit less awful now. Plus I also understand that boredom and loneliness are terrible things too, and people alone in lockdown with no toddler to distract them may also be suffering. I do acknowledge, occasionally, that it’s not all about me.

Then I wrote this post and realised that going back to normal isn’t an option afterwards; we have got to work harder on the eco stuff, or our way of life and all that we hold dear will slip from our grasp, and soon. Sorry, this is long already and I haven’t even starting talking about ecobricks. I will get on with it now.

I wrote this post quite a while ago about ecobricks and my various conflicts about them. There are definite pros and cons to the concept.

It’s incredibly hard to find a local project to donate completed bricks to and there’s pressure from within the Ecobrick movement away from “dropping off” your plastic and passing on responsibility to someone else for your waste. You’re encouraged to make something yourself or set up a local project in your community.. We still haven’t found a local project to give them too (although I may possibly have found one further afield that we can contribute to), and I have no enthusiasm for building something myself (the small one and I made a space hedgehog today out of spaghetti and play doh – picture at the bottom – you’ll see why I’m not confident of my abilities to make a planter out of bottles and mud).

(NB the idea of “shipping” bricks to developing countries to use as a building material is a common misconception, but it’s not at all recommended UK Ecobrick trainers and there’s no system to support it happening).

There are plenty of great examples though of people making the process work, making switches to reduce their consumption of plastic packaged goods, inspired into more mindful shopping by the volume of plastic waste they are having to process into an ecobrick and being motivated to reduce it. (There’s a side issue here which I find really interesting, which is that this more mindful shopping often involves visiting multiple shops and paying a “zero waste” premium, which assumes not only a certain level of income but also assumes time to shop like this, and maybe assumes there’s someone full time “at home” – probably a woman – who’s taking responsibility for this process. More on this one day.)

An empty landfill bin is an indicator of success in ecobricking, and the best brick you make is the one that you can’t fill because you’ve stopped buying plastic. So the idea that ecobricking encourages plastics use and the purchase of plastic bottles to fill is false. Aside from the slight concern I have that a lot of school projects involving ecobricks aren’t fully informed, I do think that teaching kids about ecobricks is likely to improve their awareness of the issues with single-use plastic, rather than encourage them to buy more of it to fill their bricks – mainly because the plastic harvesting is pretty boring. More likely, their parents (mothers?) will end up doing it for them when they get bored.

The most convincing criticism of ecobricking I’ve seen is that it’s guilt offset – people make bricks to make themselves feel better, and don’t make any lifestyle changes to reduce their plastic consumption. And this is where it gets personal for me. We basically haven’t made any major switches for ages and we are just bricking a load of plastic, and putting a load more into our Terracycle collection. Our Terracycle collection has been suspended at the moment due to safety concerns, understandably, so we would have to find somewhere to store it all. And it’s all loads of work washing and drying all the plastic, and we’re knackered with no childcare at the moment, and looking for things to stop doing to help us survive this time, so we talked about giving up bricking. Then I realised that the reason it’s so annoying is because we are, of course, doing it wrong by not making any further effort to reduce our plastic. The whole point of ecobricks is that they’re really annoying to make – the process is supposed to put people off making them so they look for ways to reduce their plastic. It doesn’t feel rewarding to us because it’s not reducing.

The various food chain issues we’ve all endured recently has also got me thinking. We are so far removed now from the production of our food. I don’t know where lentils grow (they do grow, right?) or where the plastic packaging they come in is made, I’ve stopped thinking about palm oil too and put a whole load of stuff in the “too difficult”pile.

So maybe now is not the time to make huge changes, because we can’t get to the zero waste shop or the market very easily and there’s limited options available in some shops round here still. But there is an opportunity to pause, maybe, and have a think about what’s going into the collection system for the bricks and Terracycle – we’re not giving up, we’re going to carry on suffering – and think about what we could do differently in the new world. I’m writing a list of what goes into each waste stream and have a vague idea of a post-lockdown action plan… (I’m not writing strategy anymore, folks, so I need an action plan of some sort in my life). Plus I’m going to find out if lentils grow on trees, or what…

Here’s the space hedgehog, just to remind us all why craft projects and me are not a great combination.

Motherhood, consumption and guilt part 3 – it’s time to party like it’s NOT 1999

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So you have a baby, and you have this blur of sleepless nights and stressing about naps and milk (and then you write a post about formula and climate change which goes a little bit viral on Twitter – eeep! And thanks for all the shares, folks), then you BLINK and it’s their second birthday.

To celebrate keeping the small person alive for two years, we decided to have a party. His first birthday was somewhat overshadowed by a double bout of norovirus, so I did feel like the occasion deserved particular attention.

Children’s parties are a bit of a minefield if you’re trying to reduce plastic and reduce waste (there’s no such thing as zero waste, people – just less). And I’m afraid I didn’t actually try that hard. I wanted “proper” 80s style party food – sandwiches, sausage rolls, those little eggy bite things, a cheese and pineapple hedgehog. I am SO gutted that I forgot to take a photo of the hedgehog – I feel like I missed the documentation of a pretty major parenting milestone here. It looked a bit like this though, except I forgot to give it any eyeballs (yet another parenting fail!)

I’m afraid this meant buying quite a lot of food wrapped in plastic packaging. I did try with the plates and cups – but I didn’t research it enough, I misguidedly thought that paper plates and cups would be recyclable, but of course they’re coated in plastic so they had to go in the black bin for incineration. In hindsight, with a bit more organisation, I would have been better off hiring a reusable party kit from something like the Party Kit Network UK. I’m not completely convinced by the various biodegradable palm leaf and wooden options available – they look very pretty and Instragrammable but I feel like they must be quite energy-hungry to produce, and of course – TREES, we have to remember the trees in all these anti-plastic efforts, despite what the influencers try to sell us.

Anyway, here’s a big bag of rubbish that we sorted through for recycling, Terracycle and ecobricking, as penance for our party sins.

We had amazing entertainment from the lovely Cathy at Rucksack Music and a bunch of ride on toys (mostly second hand, from car boot sales – we’ve had the plastic toys chat already, haven’t we?) We didn’t do party bags – just cake (Colin the Caterpillar is awesome). I figured I have a couple of years’ grace before children’s parties become competitive and party bags become an essential part of the experience. I am seeing increasingly in the zero waste social media world (I know, I need to get out more), lots of plastic free/zero waste/Pinterest-worthy eco party bags. I’m afraid I think some of this is pretty cringe-worthy performance parenting, eco-style, but I suppose I should get to grips with it before the next party – maybe when he’s about 12…

The party was SO fun and lovely. It’s just kind of exhausting thinking about low-waste parenting all the time and feeling guilty about not doing enough. I’m a bit jealous of people who parented in the 80s and 90s, when this stuff wasn’t at the forefront of our minds, although perhaps consumerism hadn’t taken hold quite so much then either and expectations were lower. And I am still agonising over this amazing advent calendar, which I also find slightly horrific, but I want to buy it SO much for the small one, as he would absolutely love it. I think I actually shared a different one in my earlier post, but the fact that there is more than one miniature Thomas the Tank Engine advent calendar in the world makes it even worse, doesn’t it? I want to buy him plastic toys that he will love, just like I want to buy him gorgeous, soft and squadgy organic cotton vests and joggers with dinosaurs on, rather than slightly tatty but perfectly adequate stuff from eBay. And I want to buy him strawberries from wherever the hell in the world they come from in February, wrapped in plastic – because he loves them. And he’s my best boy and I want him to have all the things he likes, and the very best we can afford. And all the stuff that the luckier members of the generation before this (mine) had, without anyone really thinking about the environmental impact.

But of course that’s what got us into this mess in the first place. And equally, I want him to be able to grow up and be able to go swimming in oceans that aren’t full of plastic, and see coral reefs that aren’t dead, and live in a world that isn’t a hellish post-climate-apocalypse warzone. (I’m betraying a sense of entitlement for long-haul travel here, which is another post entirely…)

So it’s back to it, kids. One change at a time, day by day, trying to do the right thing. This stuff isn’t easy. But it’s critical. If I’m not up for gluing myself to a government building to protest against our global emergency, the least I can do is contemplate giving up cocktail sausages.

Thomas feels my pain.

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

Magic and Sparkles?

The Everyday Radical2 Comments

Anyone thinking about Christmas yet…? I realise that talking about Christmas in September may be almost as controversial as Brexit, but as far as I’m concerned, once the Quality Street tins are in the shops, all bets are off. Anyway, I’m following The Organised Christmas plan this year, in an attempt to get into good habits for future years, when there’s more child-related madness, and possibly more children. The idea is that you get everything done by December 1st, then just concentrate on having a nice time. Super Mum stuff, really. We’ll see…

But the problem I have here is that I sort of hate a lot of what Christmas has become. I love the eating and drinking, watching films, going for wintry walks and being with family (mostly!). I just bloody hate the consumerist crap and all the useless, pointless s**t that we are encouraged to buy that we don’t need. Back in the days when I was more spiritually invested in Christmas, it used to really upset me that all this consumption was a far cry from the “real” meaning of Christmas. Now I’m less attached to the religious aspect, but even more bothered by the environmental impact. All that extra food wrapped in plastic, all those plastic toys which might be played with for a few minutes and then discarded, destined for landfill or incineration. (Funnily enough I feel less guilt-ridden about the empty wine bottles, but we can talk about glass recycling another time. And please, God, can someone find me a plastic free cheeseboard selection? Because that’s one sacrifice too many for me right now).

So I’m searching for good news stories about what companies are doing to mitigate the impact of Christmas and I came across this – Marks and Spencer are banning glitter from their cards, crackers, wrapping paper and calendars this Christmas, in a bid to reduce the volume of microplastics ending up in the ocean. They’re following in the footsteps of Tesco, who’ve switched to plastic-free glitter for their Christmas range of plants, trees and flowers, and Aldi, who’ve banned glitter from their Halloween range this year. Hobbycraft have launched biodegradable glitter and promised to be totally plastic glitter free by 2021, and Waitrose have made a similar pledge to Mark and Spencer, but by 2020. Even Strictly Come Dancing have banned glitter. So it’s great that companies are paying attention to consumer pressure on the plastic issue and taking action.

So why can’t we just, well, ban it completely? It’s not like straws where there’s a credible need for some people to use them (interesting stuff on this here). Does anyone need plastic glitter? I don’t think so. There’s a petition here calling for a total ban – please consider signing it, cos we all know how much notice this Government takes of petitions…

I’m thinking that, like so many aspects of the Christmas consumption-fest, we’ve been conditioned to think that we need sparkly stuff to make it “Christmassy”. But we just don’t. We need family and community and love, and ideally a bit of feasting. I want to read some more stuff about the history of Christmas, how we got to where we are now and how far away now we are from the original mid-winter Saturnalia festival. One thing I’m sure of is that we need to radically think our ideas of “magic and sparkles” if we want to celebrate our festivals in a way that’s respectful to Mother Earth.

Recycling 101, lesson 2 – when you wish upon a bin

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I talked in my previous recycling 101 post about wish cycling. I didn’t know this had a proper name, but I was aware of quite a few people I know doing this – putting things into the recycling bin which they think might be recyclable, and hoping for the best. Or even putting things in that they know aren’t accepted, but that they think should be, as a means of pressuring their local councils to expand their collection to recycle more types of waste.

This is actually a really bad practice, which creates more waste – it can lead to whole batches of recycling being contaminated and therefore ending up in landfill, or even worse, damaging equipment in sorting centres, leading to shut downs. All of this makes the waste management process less efficient and more expensive, which could lead councils to invest less in the process overall. So don’t do it, kids.

There’s also some more interesting stuff here about the global impact of wish-cycling – we know that China were importing two thirds of the world’s plastic waste in 2016, but since then have stopped buying waste from abroad, partly due to the amount of contamination.

So now it seems we are stuck with our own waste (although I don’t fully believe we can be sure that everything is staying in the UK for processing…), you would think it would be easy to find out what can go into which bin, yes? It’s in the interests of local authorities to make it clear, so that their own processes aren’t hampered.

Well. Recycling systems across the UK are hugely variable, as the Government doesn’t mandate exactly how its targets should be met, so it’s up to local authorities to implement schemes which suit their local area. The Greenwich Council information is reasonably good, but doesn’t answer a few questions. It talks about “mixed dry recycling”, asks residents to wash out food waste containers, but isn’t clear about whether recylables should be completely dry (they definitely should). It also doesn’t specify exactly what types of plastics it accepts, e.g. black plastic, tetrapacks etc.

So to avoid wish cycling, I think that you have to be quite determined. “Check locally” often just means checking the local council website, but sometimes you have to work quite a bit harder e.g. emailing or tweeting with a specific question. The RecycleNow recycling locator is helpful for confirming what’s accepted kerbside in some areas, and finding out what to do with other things which may need to be taken to a local recycling centre.

There are lots of useful recycling labels used on packaging to help people – lists here and here – but this labelling isn’t mandatory and is missing from a lot of packaging. Industry leaders have recently called on MPs to bring in laws to make recycling labels simpler for the public to understand, which in turn would improve the efficiency of the recycling process.

I had a look for any petitions about this specific issue – there are about a gazillion on different plastics and recycling issues. This one is suggesting mandatory labelling of types of plastics used to aid recycling, which would make sense if councils were clearer on what they accept by plastic type, rather than product type.

So maybe I should start a petition on this? Or is it pointless to have another one in the hundreds already circulating? I’m still pretty convinced that our recycling infrastructure is dysfucntional and I’m not sure how to influence it. And I doubt this will be high on the agenda of our new Prime Minister… *sigh*.

Perhaps I will write to my local MP about it. We’re practically penpals now after #smokegate.

Recycling 101, lesson 1 – in which we discover that everything we thought was true, is in fact a lie…..

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I thought I would do a little series on my recycling research. I know the jury is well and truly out now on whether recycling is in fact a massive waste of time, but I think people are unlikely to stop at least attempting to recycle some of their waste. Recycling is obviously the best solution if reuse and refusal are not feasible, so we might as well educate ourselves to make sure we’re doing it right.

This is “the green dot”. Did you think it meant that the packaging was recyclable? So did I, until pretty recently when I saw Sisters Against Plastic‘s post about it on Facebook. What it actually means is that the manufacturer makes a financial contribution towards the cost of recovery and recycling of waste. It seems to be misleading, not only because of how similar it looks to other recycling symbols, but also because the fee is waived for companies registered with packaging compliance schemes. The fee for small businesses is currently £295 +VAT per annum for small businesses, with approx 200 of these registered. So that’s £59,000 per year income for Valpak, the UK administrator of the Green Dot scheme on behalf of PRO Europe, who manage the Green Dot trademark worldwide. I’m probably missing the point here as it’s a hugely complex industry, but this doesn’t seem like a particularly significant sum of money and I would hazard a guess that it’s mainly used to administrate the scheme. Either way, I think it’s reasonable to surmise that it’s a fairly meaningless symbol when trying to work out what’s recyclable.

I believed that my shampoo and conditioner bottles were recyclable because this symbol is on them. But are they? They also have these symbols on them (does anyone know how to insert two images next to each other in WordPress? It’s driving me nuts…)

The HDPE one means it’s made of high-density polythylene, which apparently is the Meryl Streep of plastics, versatile and popular. Good because it is lightweight and strong, therefore has replaced heavier packaging options and is in theory better for the environment in some ways, as reduces the amount of packaging waste overall and is more energy-efficient to transport. It can be recycled, into for example storage containers, outdoor furniture and playground equipment, car parts and bins. This is an interesting and not too sciency article about HDPE and how it’s recycled.

The 12 M symbol has nothing to do with plastic type or recycling, and is actually a “period-after-opening” symbol – which is “an indication of the period of time after opening for which the product can be used without any harm to the consumer”. So I can safely use my shampoo for 12 months before it explodes, which is good to know. It seems not all cosmetics packaging is required to carry this labelling, because the product will not deteriorate in normal use – e.g. aerosols and perfume. More info here about cosmetics packaging – you absolutely do learn something new every day!

So putting my shampoo bottles in the blue bin hasn’t in fact been wish cycling – a common phenomenon where we put things into the recycling that we’re not sure about, and hope for the best. When they run out though, I will be looking into plastic-free shampoo and conditioner bars, so will be looking for recommendations on brands which will not make me look like Worzel Gummidge.

More on wish-cycling and plastic labelling in lesson 2.

#PlasticBandWagon part 3 – get rid of all your Tupperware?

The Everyday Radical3 Comments

Please note – this is NOT my Tupperware drawer. This is a borrowed image from this very funny article after a Google image search of “messy Tupperware drawer”, because all my Tupperware is stored very neatly with (almost) no missing lids.

So I’m seeing lots of stuff in my social media echo chamber about how to “rid your house of plastic”, “go plastic free” and lots of “plastic is rubbish!” posts. Like I’ve said in my previous post about plastic toys, I don’t think that plastic itself is rubbish, I think it’s pretty useful. Disposal of single-use plastic is a massive problem, of course, but I think that the plastic that we already have – whether given to us, bought in former times when we didn’t think about this stuff, or just durable, useful stuff which will last a long time – should be looked after, used and reused until it’s no longer usable, then disposed of as responsibly as possible. We should respect it for the energy and virgin materials we took from the planet to create it. I find the whole “plastic is evil” mantra to be very simplistic and usually a bit smug – but hey, I love your hand-knitted hemp and bamboo hammock, well done, you’re a much better human than me.

Plus, I bloody love Tupperware. Tidy, useful, stackable Tupperware. So imagine my horror when my good friend and blog follower Anne sent me a link to this: “Save your money and save the planet! I absolutely need to replace my entire Tupperware cabinet with these!”

Further quotation from the product page:

“Made with 100% Platinum silicone. Because you’re worth it. Traditional plastic containers are petroleum based and can contain harmful chemicals. These toxins can leach into your food especially when heating or microwaving. That’s why pure silicone is best for your health. No BPA, no lead, no PVC, no Phthalates.”

Surprise, surprise, 60% off at the moment #WarOnPlastic #PlasticFreeJuly. Wonder if L’Oréal know that they’ve nicked their slogan…?

Silicone seems to be the anti-plastic material being advertised most aggressively at the moment – not biodegradable, but recyclable “where facilities exist”. RecycleNow has no information on silicone recycling, and a fairly thorough Google of “silicone recycling in London” reaped no rewards… so these will probably last forever too.

So, is Tupperware (or any other brand of plastic food storage system) actually dangerous and should we all be going out a replacing it with other materials?

There are plenty of articles out there like this one, which could very feasibly terrify us all into chucking out our plastic boxes and replacing with silicone/bamboo/glass/whatever, anything to prevent “structural damage to your brain” and “changes in gender-specific behaviour and abnormal sexual behaviour” – NB no definition of these given. There’s also a helpful reference to a Daily Mail article. And who is Dr Mercola exactly – does he have some sort of doctoral qualification in chemical engineering or toxicology? No.

Alternatively, there’s some nice evidence-based science from actual scientists at Cancer Research UK and Harvard Health Publishing – my summary take from these articles is that microwave-safe plastic containers are safe, but heating food in lots of other kinds of plastic probably isn’t a great idea. This is also a really useful , although maybe slightly alarmist article on the different types of plastic and the ones to avoid. All my food boxes are plastic #5, so I’m certainly not worried about using them for storage.

Am I convinced about the heat issue from microwaving or dish washing? There’s so much out there, but the science-based stuff (more here and here) suggests it’s probably ok if you avoid BPA and stick to microwave-safe containers – but then there’s doubt cast on cans! It’s endless… This article is also really good and warrants further reading, as there’s a lot I don’t understand in it about plastic science.

Anyway, there is endless reading to be done and it’s very difficult to analyse the research unless you’re a chemical engineer. So my conclusions are:

  • I’m going to keep using my Tupperware for storage, but try to avoid microwaving in it (I don’t do this much anyway) or using in the dishwasher.
  • I’m not going to buy some dubious silicone cling-film replacement, which by many reports and reviews isn’t that good anyway, made by companies who are cashing in on the #WarOnPlastic like it’s some kind of fad. And I’m going to keep on exposing and getting cross about green-washing bullsh*t like this, because it distracts us from the real issues at stake. Buying yet more stuff will not save the planet.
  • I’m going to keep encouraging people to reuse and respect their existing plastic possessions, rather than succumbing to this weird demonisation of useful, durable stuff which we already possess.
  • I’m going to keep working on eliminating single-use plastic from our lives, but with an understanding that I can’t do it all at once.
  • Here endeth the lesson.

Back soon with updates from the Council about #smokegate, arguing with strangers on the internet about paper bags, and overcoming my eBay antipathy.

Everyday activism – does pester power work? #MyCenterParcsFeedback

The Everyday Radical3 Comments
Magnificent giant redwoods at Center Parcs, Longleat

Pester power is a thing, right? Children are manipulated by the media and advertising into wanting something, then pressurise their parents endlessly to get it, and they eventually give in. I seem to remember this being the reason you often can’t buy chocolate at supermarket tills anymore. I can’t imagine many toddlers tantrumming over batteries and ibuprofen these days.

The last episode of the BBC documentary War on Plastic invited viewers to “pester” retailers by returning unwanted plastic packaging to the supermarkets, and post on social media with the #OurPlasticFeedback tag. I’ve seen a lot of this shared on Twitter in the last week, with mainly the same generic responses from the supermarkets about what they’re doing to reduce plastic waste. Most worryingly is all the promises to make more of it recyclable – when we know that the UK recycling system is overwhelmed and dysfunctional, with large amounts of waste being sent to landfill anyway due to contamination or inappropriate items being put in the recycling, or sent overseas with no audit trail of whether it is actually recycled, burnt or put in landfill.

There’s a real feeling for me that none of the actions needed are happening fast enough, and we as consumers can’t do much about it – the sheer scale of the problem requires corporations to make the high-impact changes.

But a bit of pestering feels quite good, so I think we should keep at it, and highlight things as we come across them to put pressure on companies to get better at this stuff and be accountable for their environmental impact.

So anyway, we went to Center Parcs at Longleat last week with the small one and some members of the grandparental team. It was brilliant, we all had an amazing time – lovely site with some awesome trees, a lot of “splish splash” and we even managed a couple of date nights, with free babysitting. Thanks Grandad and Granny!

But this upset me a lot, especially as you all know I am obsessed with dishwashing.

One disposable washing up sponge per lodge for each stay x approx 800 lodges x 6 Center Parcs villages in the UK (not even thinking about the villages in Europe) x 97% occupancy over 52 weeks = something like 242,112 sponges used per year, ending up in landfill or incinerated. Not to mention the horrible thought that each dishcloth (made of grim microfibre polyester stuff) and tea towel might also be thrown away after each stay. So I’ve written to them and tweeted them to see if they have any plans to switch to reusable options. (Also heaped a ton of praise on the staff members we encountered, all of whom, without exception, were excellent).

I’ve also been hassling Greenwich Council about a local air pollution issue and their lack of action to address it, in writing and copied to my local MP and councillors. What has particularly irritated me is the Council’s declaration of a climate emergency and requests on Twitter for people to pledge to have a bonfire free summer for Clean Air Day, while ignoring local issues which flout air quality laws.

#greenwashing

Essentially, this whole climate situation is making me feel quite anxious and a bit angry that it’s so hard to make the right choices in the face of companies who won’t make changes quickly enough, for fear of impacting their bottom line. And it’s made me feel a bit better and a bit more in control to start complaining about stuff. I highly recommend it. I’m not convinced it will make any difference, but it’s got to be worth a try, right?

#SaturdaySwitch part 3 – the magical bottomless laundry basket

The Everyday Radical3 Comments

There is a German fairy tale I remember reading at school about a family with a magic porridge pot which produces endless porridge. One day, the mother (of course…) forgets to tell it to stop cooking, and it overflows endlessly until the whole town is full of porridge. I can’t remember what happens at the end but the it’s probably a happy ending involving an elf or fairy of some sort. And hopefully someone gives the mother some wine and helps her clean the house up.

So I think in most households with small people, the laundry basket feels a bit like this – if you blink, it’s overflowing again and you lose any semblance of control. I can’t imagine how people cope once multiple school uniforms, football kits and all that are in the mix. Although by then the food-related mess may have reduced a bit, I hope…?

We’ve been using these laundry tablets from Aldi for absolutely ages, because they’re cheap, basically, and they get the job done. The blurb says to use 2 tablets per wash, which I actually didn’t realise and have always used only one, so the cost per wash is 4.9p.

BUT the tablets come wrapped in these little bastards:

Possibly the most annoying bits of plastic known to man, and very hard to clean and dry for the ecobrick. So I have just switched to a big 2.6kg carton, which eliminates 18 of these plastic sachets. Or reduces the demand for them, at least, by me not buying them. I think works out cheaper if you don’t use the advised dosage of 85ml or 65g (which based on previous experience with tablets is more than you need). So by using 50ml or 42g (I totally don’t understand this conversion rate – I thought it was like for like with liquid and solids but apparently not!), I make it 4.8p per wash. So not dramatically cheaper, but a lot less annoying plastic rubbish.

I bought a four pack of these snazzy measuring scoops in different sizes too (NB I bought these before the beginning of “no buy July” – more on this tomorrow). My husband is using one for his porridge at work, and has stopped using the expensive sachets of oats with the little measuring line for milk. I will work out the plastic and money saving on this in my copious spare time – but the magnificent Jack Monroe has done her own version here at 3p per portion, vs. Asda’s own brand at 7.9p per portion.

So the washing powder seemed like a nice straightforward Saturday Switch. But then I read something which suggested that the packaging of laundry boxes isn’t recylable, as it’s coated in plastic to protect the powder from moisture and humidity. So is that true, or is this true?

I am going to tweet Aldi to see if they can offer some reassurance on this… will keep you posted.

Then there are the many various “eco” brands of laundry out there on the market, some of which come in plastic packaging. What constitutes cruelty-free, or even vegan? What causes the least pollution? Is there any way to make a further switch that’s still cost-effective, as well as also being effective on stubborn pesto stains?

I feel like each question I ask generates about another 100 questions and this is going to be a LONG journey. I know you’re all rooting for me – say hi in the comments or on Twitter, especially if I don’t know you in real life! Who are my mystery readers in Finland, Sweden, South Korea, Kenya and Qatar? I would love to know!

P.S. Sorry for the hiatus in posting this week, been on holiday to Center Parcs. Watch this space this week for Center Parcs’ plastic sins, my everyday activism ideas, “No Buy July” and maybe some other things, depending on the length of a certain small person’s naps…

#plasticbandwagon cont. – Motherhood, Consumption and Guilt

The Everyday Radical4 Comments

The minute you have a baby, or even considerably beforehand in some cases (NCT “newsletter”, I’m looking at YOU), people start trying to sell you stuff. Bounty reps come into your room when you’ve barely finished giving birth to pressure you into buying their newborn photo bundle, meanwhile harvesting your contact information to begin an email campaign convincing you of all the essential stuff you have to buy to keep your child alive. They are subcontracted by HMRC to distribute the Child Benefit form, so you end up giving them your details without really realising what’s going on (it’s possible to manage this differently, apparently, but honestly, when you’ve just given birth, are you going to argue?)

I could write a LOT about motherhood and guilt, and the way societal pressures and judgments push us into polarising mothers by their parenting choices (breast/bottle, puree/baby-led weaning, go back to work or stay at home etc. etc. etc.) You’re a bad mother if you don’t have the right pushchair and snazzy changing bag, you absolutely NEED all this stuff to give your child the best start in life. But you’re also now a bad mother if you buy too much stuff – in fact, it’s probably ALL your fault, especially if the stuff is plastic. Because plastic is in fact evil. As are most mothers.

So I wanted to talk about plastic toys. Here’s an actual plastic bandwagon.

It’s noisy and annoying and my son loves it. Fortunately, it lives at Grandma and Grandad’s house. And it also came from a car boot sale and cost 50p (thanks Grandad for “sourcing”).

There’s a fair amount of snobbery about children’s toys – articles like this would make most ordinary parents feel pretty guilty, judged and lazy, to be honest. Or just confused. (“Why buy plastic tea sets when they can play with real freebies?” Uh, because they will break them and the bits will be sharp and I won’t have a mug to drink my coffee out of and then I will die?) I asked for advice about toys for my son on Facebook once, and received the helpful comment – “whatever you do, don’t fill your house with plastic”.

Personally, I don’t believe there’s anything intrinsically wrong with plastic toys – I don’t think they’re actually toxic if made in the EU (shock, horror), and I don’t think they create gormless kids with no imagination. I do think too many toys causes overwhelm and lack of focus, but that could be toys of any material.

I read something on Twitter a few days ago which struck gold :

Plastic is, admittedly, a perfect material for sturdy, easily cleaned toys. I think the key thing with toys is to buy good quality ones, pass them around your friends and/or use charities. Are toy libraries still a thing?

Tweeted by @curlyheather28 on 24th June, retweeted by my new blogger pal @happy_tortoise

Beautiful sanded-down Scandi wooden toys are of course lovely, but they’re pretty expensive and also made of trees. Surely the best toy out there in terms of the environment is one that already exists.

So I did a quick toy audit at home – not including random household items which have become toys – a milk pan, an old remote control, a tea strainer and some old bangles of mine, among other things – because my son has an imagination all of his own, thanks, the breakdown goes like this:

21% wooden toys, bought new. 8% wooden toys, given as gifts. 8% wooden toys, second hand.

21% plastic toys, bought new. 13 % plastic toys, given as gifts. 29% plastic toys, second hand.

So 37% second hand – car boot sales, hand-me-downs and Facebook marketplace mainly. I would be aiming to increase that ratio as time goes on and reduce what we’re buying new, but I’m not going to lose any more sleep about plastic.

So enough on the guilt about plastic toys, folks. Obviously crap disposable Happy Meal toys that end up discarded very quickly are bad news (petition made famous by the War on Plastic TV programme is here). But durable toys passed on between families or shared within a brilliant community resource like the Charlton Toy Library should be celebrated as pre-loved, not demonised as bad parenting.

Here endeth the rant.

(Just wait until I post about the singing plastic dumper truck. Really)