So we haven't eaten much meat this year anyway, as it's generally packaged in lots of unrecycled stuff, but I decided we'd go all out during lent and totally skip meat to see how we'd cope. (As you can see the kids seem to be enjoying it :-)
I also thought I'd start to do some reading up on the carbon footprint of meat, and I've been astonished. I'm not sure if I've just been blinkered to lots of news about this, or it's just not news, but when we talk about reducing our carbon footprint, I always remember hearing lots about reducing your air miles, insulating your home, double glazing, walk more, etc. But not eating meat (or even reducing how much you eat) also has a huge impact.
Just google 'carbon footprint of meat' and you'll be drowning in the info.
At the start of this year I listened to a TED talk by Graham Hill about being a 'Midweek Veggie', which was where we started, and I'd recommend it as a listen: http://www.ted.com/talks/graham_hill_weekday_vegetarian
And having felt a few weeks ago that the issues of climate change were insurmoutable, I was interested to do the WWF Carbon Footprint calculator this weekend (I haven't done one in years), and by the time we don't fly, we've gotten rid of the car, and we've cut out meat, along with lots of boring things such as insulated the house, double glazing, shop local, buy organic, grow a few bits, recycle/share things, we've somehow managed to get our use of the earth to less than 1. So if we all lived like that (according to WWF) we'd be OK. I was amazed, as I thought we'd have to live much more extremely. (of course we will if others don't get on board!)
So in future I'm going to approach carbon footprint conversations differently, as often people have great excuses why they can't give up flying, or driving, but do we really have a good excuse not to give up some meat from our lives? (And I don't count 'but I like it' as much of an excuse :-)
So yet again, perhaps an 'inconvenient truth', but how about cutting out meat at least one more day next week, and see how it goes. And you might find my pinterest pages with recipes helpful:
http://www.pinterest.com/southseamum/2014-meat-free-lent-recipes-for-this-week/
http://www.pinterest.com/southseamum/midweek-veggie-ideas/
And if you do buy meat, try and get it from the local farmers market, butchers, or the counter at a supermarket, and take along your own container. I've asked our local organic butcher who comes to the farmers' market each month, and he had no problem at all with not using his bags to take it home in (saves him money too).
Fancy trying Eco Balls before buying?
So if you've been reading this blog you'll know that I'm a convert to the Ecoballs, although we had a slight blip at the start of this week. I opened the door to the washing machine and found the nappies mixed with the innards of one of the balls. One of the joins had worked loose, and out they came. No disaster as I managed to just scoop them back up, and the washing was still done, but slightly annoying.
I contacted Ethicalsuperstore, where I'd bought them from, and they apologised and sent me another pack.
I haven't heard of this happening to anyone else, so I'm up for continuing with them, but I do now have a couple spare, as they last for 1000 washes. So rather than squirrel them away for a few years, I thought I'd see if anyone wants to experiment with them, and have the chance to 'try before you buy'.
Jam Jar Lids
So if you live locally, let me know and I'll send them your way for a couple of weeks.
My other revelation recently was on the recycling of jam jar lids. I lot of jars I reuse for my homemade jam, but there are some that are just unusable due to their size, and I've been frustrated that you can't also recycle their lids in the glass banks. Locally they've started to advertise that you can leave screw tops on wine bottles now, but they dont't seem to have extended that to jam jars etc yet.
I googled and came up with a revelation from Somerset:
Can you accept can and jam jar lids?
Yes, but because small lids sometimes
get stuck in collection vehicles and sorting equipment, it helps if lids
can be squashed inside a food can. All can and jam jar lids can be
recycled as they are made from steel (test with a magnet to see if
sticks), but not screw tops from bottles, which are made from various
alloys and are not steel.
And don't forget steel biscuit tins. (Just remember to not put lids in if they are lined with plastic...life's not that simple of course.)
So in the past week I've been sent a couple of things to watch from friends, and I thought I'd share them with you too.
The first was a TED talk (I love these) by a sustainability strategist, who urges us to think bigger in order to create systems and products that ease the strain on the planet. Really interesting, very accessible and challenging. (18 mins long)
http://www.ted.com/talks/leyla_acaroglu_paper_beats_plastic_how_to_rethink_environmental_folklore.html
The second is a movie from a few years back, that I missed at the time, and is called 'The Age of Stupid'. Wikipedia sums it up nicely: The film is a drama-documentary-animation hybrid which stars Pete Postlethwaite
as a man living alone in the devastated world of 2055, watching archive
footage from the mid-to-late 2000s and asking "Why didn't we stop climate change when we had the chance?"
It has very challenging footage from Iraq, the US, Nigeria, France and some infuriating footage from the UK. It's a bit longer at 89 mins, but is a challenging watch, and in some ways makes my small changes seem like total drops in the ever rising oceans, but inspires me to think further and beyond as well. http://youtu.be/XpSdPP9b0pc
A few weeks ago someone was shocked when I explained that we no longer have a car and rarely leave the city, and that I hope not to have to travel on a plane in the future. Was I not limiting my children's outlook on life by not taking them to the woods and the countryside frequently, by not flying them to different places? On one level the answer could be 'yes', but on a more future planet-state level, perhaps I'm helping to keep opportunities and life as we know it on our planet for a bit longer. As another movie title suggestions, it's an 'inconvient truth'...and a constant battle/challenge to make decisions....but it often feels like the 'right choice'.
All a bit more heavy that bins, plastic and nappies...but hey ho.
Can you believe that currently in the UK about eight million disposable nappies are thrown
away each day, which accounts for about three percent of our household
waste. (Check out more details here: http://www.veoliaenvironmentalservices.co.uk/westberkshire/Waste-Minimisation/Real-Nappies-The-facts/)
So since starting on our nappy journey over 5 years ago, I invested in terry nappies (simple squares), nappy nippers (a modern version of the safety pin that doesn't go through the nappy) and bamboo wipes. And both kids have used these, with the exception of holidays when I can't face or fit nappy pails in the boot of the car. However, I did slack off when my youngest dropped down to just night nappies (seven nappies to wash per week seemed mad).
But since the start of the year I've gone back to the terries for his bedtime nappy, and I just wash them every other week, which works fine.
I've even attempted to use the eco balls on them, as they are only wet nappies, and amazingly they work just fine.
Back in 2012 when I weighed our waste before starting on the journey of reducing it, night nappies alone in a week weighed 4kg, and probably took up about half a carrier bag of space. So I'm glad I've gone back to terries, and I'm hoping he'll be out of them soon anyway.
...I can't quite believe it, but the whole of our household's general waste this week did fit in that one carrier bag! Even our recycling bin was pretty empty as I'm being better at using the back of paper/card etc before it goes in there, and we've elimiated all the plastic milk bottles. Am quite astonished, although one week is just one week...so let's see how the next few weeks go...birthday wrapping paper from others could scupper it all!
P.S. This didn't last for long in the gales, so ended up buried under the neighbours black sack pile :-) (And if anyone local has a outside dustbin that they no longer use, I'd love to give it a home, so we can eliminate the need for the plastic bag too!)
So this lonely looking bin is our new kitchen bin for the week! Am I mad, or are we up for the challenge? (Note to self: find an empty bucket for next week, so we don't even have to waste a plastic bag...and source an outside dustbin, so we can just transfer any waste to that for the bin men to empty directly in to the truck.)
Update: Did a terry nappies wash today with the ecoballs and they've come out looking just like they normally do....in fact they are possibly slightly softer!
I never imagined how impacting this journey would be, and we're only 4 weeks in, but my whole mindset has changed to so many everyday habits already. So far it's been stimulating, fascinating, exhausting and lots more beside. So tonight I thought I'd write about jam and washing, and a small link between the two that occured on Friday.
A couple of weeks back I bought some ecoballs. I had come across them before, but had been very sceptical as to whether they would work for a family with young children, but I thought I should at least give them a go. They suggest that they will last for 1000 washes, and cost £15.99, so at less than 2p a wash they are certainly cheaper than the laundry powder that I currently use. You also don't add conditioner, and if we had a washing machine that allowed you to dodge the rinse cycle, we could save on our water bill too (a feature I'll be looking for if/when our machine gives up). They also provided a sample of a stain remover which you rub on stubborn stains 10 mins before washing.
So I've now done two weeks worth of washing with them (you just pop all three in the back of the machine and set it running). And I've been really impressed with the results. We always dry our washing outside, so there is the added bonus of sun (although not a great deal in the past 2 weeks), but the clothes have come out as clean as ever. And this week I made some jam and some of it ended up on a white tea-towel. I put a bit of the stain remover on, and it was all gone by the time it came out of the machine.
So the verdict? I'm surprised, impressed, and we'll continue using them. I may even attempt a nappy wash with them (they're just night nappies, and so just wet, rather than highly soiled)...will report back later. And yes, for those eagle-eyed amongst you, they are made out of plastic. But you can get refills and they should last forever, I may even be able to pass them onto the next generation :-) Sadly the packaging they arrived in was a cardboard box (fine), but then they were each wrapped in small plastic bags :-(
And now onto the jam. A couple of years ago I started making marmalade using my stock pot, but I spotted a preserving pan in Oxfam last weekend,
so picked it up and defrosted some red and black currants that had been in our freezer since the summer from someone's allotment and added to some apples and jam sugar. It has turned into the best jam I've made yet, even both kids love it! And a lot less effort in the preparation than marmalde or the wild pear jam that I made in the autumn from some of the fruit on our city's street trees. So thank you Oxfam!
I used this recipe, although minus the cassis as we didn't have any, and I doubled all the other ingredients. http://www.blackcurrantfoundation.co.uk/recipes_apple_blackcurrant.html
What's this got to do with plastic? Well not that much really, as there was no plastic involved, but it does mean I've reused jam jars, and although the glass is recycled if we don't reuse them, the lids always end up in the bin as they don't accept them, so again, one less thing in the bin. I may have to set a new challenge and see if we can survive the rest of the year just on homemade jam :-)
P.S. I've decided not to make butter at the moment, as you need cream to make it, and that comes in plastic cartons which are considerably bigger than the paper/plastic/foil stuff that butter comes in. But we are converting to butter, which my husband is very happy about!
