Mixed successes in avoiding plastic – Plastic Free July.

Popcorn

Olives and dolmades from local market into my own containers

Granola

I used gram flour and vinegar to wash my hair

I dried lemon balm leaves to use for tea later in the year

Lemon balm for tea

Loo roll wrapped in a compostable plant derived alternative to plastic.

A plastic free shopping trip

Home made yogurt

Flatbreads

Homegrown rocket

Tortilla snacks

So, since starting out with plastic free July I really haven’t had time to sit and write – instead I have been sharing some pictures of some of my plastic free efforts over on Instagram which is easier to do as I go along. Do pop over and have a look.

My 2 initial pledges were to replace plastic wrapped snacks such as crisps, and to find a local milk delivery in glass bottles.

Well, so far so good.  We had our first glass bottle milk delivery last Monday.  There is no denying that it is considerably more expensive than plastic bottled supermarket milk, but the additional cost is more than offset by the saving we have made since we swapped from individual plastic bottles of fizzy water to a Soda Stream back in September.  And it somehow seems really nice to open the fridge and see a couple of glass bottles with nice green foil lids.  Plus, we are supporting a local dairy.

Finding a feasible regular alternative to crisps and other plastic wrapped snacks has been a little harder, although I have managed not to buy any more once I finished off the couple of bags in the cupboard already.  In the first week I was really enthusiastic and made flatbreads, cut into triangles and baked with cajun spices and  popcorn – seasoned with a little melted butter, salt and plenty of black pepper.  In the second week I managed to buy cashew nuts loose (into a reused plastic bag – most suitable thing I could manage to find) to last me the couple of days in the office.  But I can only buy them near my work, not near my home which means my half hour lunch break was pretty much taken up with getting these.  In the 3rd week, things were getting really busy at work so I didn’t have a chance to buy nuts.  I baked some cake at home but then had no time or energy to make savoury snacks too so ended up taking along the spare crusts cut off son’s sandwiches as an extra filler – it did stop me being hungry but was a bit dull as snacks go.  I had one go at making my own crisps but managed to burn them and even the burnt ones were soft rather than crispy by the time I wanted them at work the next day – so I clearly need to practice this!

I haven’t asked the rest of the family to join in with giving up crisps etc but my son did enjoy popcorn in his packed lunch a few times instead of usual crisps.  Another week I gave him tortilla chips from a larger bag for less pro-rata plastic but he got bored with that after a couple of days and didn’t eat them.

At the start my husband forgot and bought home plastic wrapped chocolate a few times – but now he is remembering to look for the card or paper packaged ones which are fairly easy to find.

Looking back at the instagram pictures has helped me see how many plastic free things I have managed including:

• Switching to glass bottled milk
• Washing my hair with gram flour and vinegar
• Using lemon balm from the garden to substitute some cups of tea, and drying some to use later on
• Making yoghurt in my Wonderbag
• Accidentally making granola – started out trying to make some raw energy bites ( oats, honey dried fruit and seeds) but I just couldn’t get them to stick together so baked the crumbly mess instead and it tasted great.
• Making sweet and savoury popcorn ( the kernels were in a plastic bag but makes lots of portions) – my favourite is to coat in a little melted butter and sprinkle with salt and pepper.
• Making flatbreads, and baking some into “tortilla chips” seasoned with Low Salt Cajun Spice Mix
• Buying a lovely bar soap in a card box
• Buying fruit and veg from the market in my own cloth bags, as usual
• Buying coca cola – which we buy quite rarely – in glass bottles
• Only buying paper wrapped chocolate
• Buying loose nuts
• Finding that a local shop sells recycled toilet roll in compostable packaging – with no plastic!

I’m quite pleased with that and although I am not going to promise never to eat shop bought crisps, I will be making some of these changes on a more regular/permanent basis.  Next I am going to try loose tea to avoid the plastic in the bags.  I already buy our coffee this way and the same shop sells loose tea so will be trying that this afternoon.

When I wrote this last week we were about to go off to a festival which I suspected would rather ruin my plastic free efforts – more about that in another post as this one’s getting rather lengthy.

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BYO Cup – are we preaching to the converted?

Bring your own stainless steel mug

 

I don’t generally have a coffee on my journey to work.  But the other day there was still coffee in the cafetiere and no time left, so I poured it into my stainless steel cup which falls somewhere between a “coffee to go” cup and a Thermos, and took it with me.  By the time I was sat on the train about an hour later it was still piping hot.

Maybe it was because I happened to be drinking a coffee that day that I took more notice of the others on the train, because I had not particularly noticed before.  In just one carriage, and it was not particularly busy, I counted 20 people sipping cups of tea or coffee.  Now given all the recent media coverage, Hugh’s War on Waste campaign and even articles in the Metro I was reading on the train that morning, you might think awareness of the coffee cup waste issue would be up a bit. So how many do you think had their drink in a reusable cup or flask?

Me.  Just me.

So it made me think.  Is the message actually getting out there?  And if it is, why don’t people care?  Are those of us trying to reduce our waste just sharing our disgust at the rubbish produced amongst ourselves? Are we preaching to the converted?

I truly hope not, and that little by little, the number of people thinking about such issues is increasing.   I was certainly not expecting to see no disposable cups, but 19 out of 20, now that really is rubbish.

 

An estimated 2.5 million paper cups are thrown away in the UK each year – that’s almost 5,000 a minute.  Less than 1% are recycled. ( rivercottage.net)

 

 

 

 

Olio – A great way to share food with your neighbours

When I heard the food sharing app Olio was extending out from London to the rest of the country I thought this was a fantastic idea.

Anyone who has seen TV programmes such as Hugh’s War on Waste will know that a shocking amount of perfectly edible food is wasted by households and businesses in the UK every week. Over the course of a year around 7 million tonnes of food and drink are thrown away, of which over half was perfectly edible.  This waste costs families an average of £470 per year, rising to £700 for families with children – enough for a holiday!  For more surprising facts, and lots of ideas for reducing food waste take a look at Love Food Hate Waste

So, where does Olio come in?  This free app allows people, whether individuals or businesses, to offer and to request surplus food by uploading a photo and details.  Someone nearby that can use the item sends you a message and collection can be arranged.  Some areas have drop off and collection points in local shops to make this easier.  You can charge for items, but the majority are offered free.

I jumped at the chance to become a volunteer ambassador to get the scheme going in my local area, and am encouraging people to download the app, to check their cupboards for quality food that they are never going to get around to eating, and to get sharing!

The items are gradually being offered, but it would be really great to see more people joining in.  Take a look and see what is on offer – if you don’t have surplus food yourself, you may find something you’d like to try.

Download the app for free at the App Store or Play store.

You can now follow my blog on Facebook

The image at top of post is courtesy of Olio.

 

 

ZERO WASTE WEEK #2

So another zero waste week may be over, but that’s no reason to give up trying to reduce packaging and other waste.  I have found this week really useful for focussing the mind on ways of reducing the packaging and other unnecessary stuff we bring into the home, and finding about new ways of avoiding or reusing thing – many thanks to the addictive and informative discussion on the Zero Waste Heros Facebook Group .

It has been tough, and we still have plenty of waste, but the week has focussed my mind on finding ways to reduce our waste further.

I am now the proud owner of some abeego wraps to use instead of cling film. ( from Boobalou)  And doesn’t the half eaten mango in our fridge look lovely in it?

I now know that you can buy specially made reusable kitchen towel (rather than just using cloth serviettes / tea towels etc) and even spent a fascinating hour one evening reading blogs about washable toilet roll ( or “family cloth”) – not sure I am convinced about that one yet but some people obviously love it – see this fascinating post from Becoming Peculiar . Didn’t imagine I’d be doing that at the start of the week.

I asked the council to replace our standard sized wheelie bins with smaller capacity bins – this will focus the mind on maintaining a lower level of waste.

I have had a mini sort out and given things away to foodbanks and refugee collections for example.

I’m starting to put together a zero waste appropriate christmas gift list of reusable stuff to replace disposable items ( and guess what everyone will be getting from me too).

I have also bombarded my facebook friends with loads of information about reducing waste – sadly not a single one has liked or shared anything at all so thank goodness for the friendly folk at the Zero Waste Heros Facebook Group  for keeping me from getting too depressed by this.

Of course even if we think do all start actually thinking about the packaging, zero waste is a long journey – the reality is that most of us have to shop in a supermarket and most things are overpackaged.  Legislation may be the only way to overcome this, and I don’t see that as likely any time soon.  But, there are easy things we can all do to reduce our waste where we do have options, and every little helps.  There are some easy swaps – even just swapping that multipack of individually boxed portions of raisins for a single large pack and putting a portion for your kid’s lunch into a reusable small pot helps, or choosing the yoghurt in the recyclable cardboard carton over the plastic one.

My favourite change, and one I could have done long before was to ditch the convenient individually packaged bags of fresh coffee we discovered a couple of years ago and go back to using loose coffee in a cafetiere – we have a fantastic local shop that roasts and grinds coffee and who didn’t bat an eyelid at me taking my own container for the coffee. Now, knowing little about different coffees,  we just have to work our way through the huge selection on offer to find the one we really like.

Anyway it’s now Ditch the Disposables week – bring it on.

ZERO WASTE WEEK – Tips for reducing your waste

Waste

It’s zero waste week in the UK this week ( starting 7th Sep 2015) so I thought I’d share a few of the things we already do, and extra things we could do, to reduce the amount of waste we produce, although we are still far off from zero.  I think we are already pretty good at the re-using and recycling.  We need to work much harder on reducing the stuff we get in the first place.

So here are some ideas:

Real Nappies

1.  If you have a baby, try using real nappies.  There are loads to choose from out there to find one that works for you and you may find your local authority or a nappy adviser can loan you some to try.  We used prefolds ( which are actually the ones you fold up yourself) as we found these to be cheapest, easy to wash and dry, and that they fit our baby best.  They were also the ones offered by the laundry scheme we started out with before deciding to do it ourselves.  But you can also get many that are already shaped to fit and fasten with velcro.  And even if you use them part time (e.g. using disposables on holiday/ when out or at night) you’ll still be reducing your waste by loads.  We also used washable towelling wipes to clean baby with and although we used disposable liners I see you can now also get washable nappy liners. Supernanny talks about the  Benefits of cloth nappies You can get loads of useful information from the Real Nappy Information Service
2.  Having used the real nappies it seemed logical to also switch to washable sanitary pads – and I would never go back. They are so much more comfortable. I only use disposables on holiday now and find them really crinkly and uncomfortable. I just keep a lidded plastic bin by our ensuite loo and chuck them in to soak with some Napisan.  Then they just go in the machine.  If you can find microfibre fleece versions I find they are the easiest to wash and dry. You can also find out about these from the Real Nappy Information Service and there are plenty of patterns for making your own on Pinterest.

   

   Washable Sanitary Pads

3. Compost what you can – it is not only fruit and veg peelings that can be composted.  You can also put in paper, cardboard, grass cuttings, and we also add the litter and bedding from our pet rabbit – this is quite safe to do with herbivores.  But you do need to get the mix of ingredients right so check out the Composting Guide. At the moment we still have to throw away cooked food waste/meat but you can get composters that will deal with these too which I am looking into – e.g. bokashi and wormeries.
4.  Before recycling, see if there is something else the item can be used for.  The cardboard tubes inside toilet roll can be recycled or composted ( they help by making an air pocket in the compost) but they can also be used for crafts, can be filled with hay and veg for the pet rabbit to play with, or in winter we stuff our till receipts and papers that would otherwise need to be shredded into them and use them in our woodburner – quicker and easier than compacting the paper into logs which you can also do.
5. If you have food that is going off see if there is something you can use it for even if it can be composted.  Overipe bananas are great in smoothies and muffins.  If you have no time to bake now you can peel and slice them and bung them in the freezer to add to a smoothie at a later date ( straight from frozen).  There are lots of recipe ideas at Love Food Hate Waste

   

   Don’t throw away those over ripe bananas

   

   Plum and banana smoothie

6. Choose products with no or less packaging wherever possible, and check that any packaging can be recycled or composted.  The supermarkets don’t make this easy.  In the summer we grow some of our own food but we do struggle with packaging over the rest of the year / for things we can’t grow easily.  I’m determined to get more of my fruit and veg from the market and meat from the butcher’s or at least the butcher’s counter in the supermarket where you can get just what you need and are likely to get less plastic packaging, but this will require a change in my shopping routine.   We drink a lot of sparkling water which comes in plastic bottles and even if we reuse them for tap water a couple of times they soon fill up our recycling bin.  So this week I have ordered a soda stream so we can make our own and reuse the bottles.  The other thing is liquid hand soap – I would say just change to bars ( you can easily get with no packaging from stores such as Lush) but my husband complains they leave a soggy mess on the sink – so our compromise is that I’m going to bulk order 5 litre refills to refill the smaller containers.  We already get our washing up liquid and laundry liquid refilled in a local store.
7. Make your own if you can – I’ve just made lots of plum jam using plums from the allotment but you can also forage plenty of fruit for jam – see other recipes on this blog.  I just reused old jars for this (sterilising them first). Since we got a bread machine we make a lot of our own bread too.
8. Think about using less of products – I’ve been looking with interest at people who have transitioned to using no shampoo – just washing their hair (and bodies) with water after a transition period of using shampoo substitutes .  Although I’m not at the moment planning on going that far, it is very easy to use a little less shampoo, or shampoo less often  – I have gone from shampooing every other day to every 3-4 days so far without any noticeable difference – and I probably already have enough shampoo in the cupboard to last me another couple of years.  If you are interested you can find out more about ditching the shampoo at No Poo Method
9. If you are crafty, try making something out of your rubbish – you may even be able to turn it into a business.
10. Sell on or give away the things you don’t need any more – try Freecycle, ebay, gumtree or local facebook pages or donate to your local charity shop.  Buy the things you need this way as well  – it’s easier than you might think.  A couple of years ago I decided to only buy preowned clothes for a whole year (excluding shoes and underwear) – I already bought a lot of stuff this way but thought this might be a challenge.  Actually it was quite easy, even when I had something specific in mind, and I sometimes now get shoes this way too as you can often find ones only worn once or twice.  My challenge is really just to buy less, particularly new clothes.

Hope some of these ideas are useful – please comment below if you have more to add.  My Pinterest Board Reduce Reuse Recycle has links to more useful sites and ideas.