we had a white christmas, and a green christmas!

It snowed on christmas day, for maybe the first time in my entire life! We already had snow on the ground, then it snowed just past midnight, we were still up and saw it, and so we had the snow in the garden, and about a quarter of an inch of fresh snow. Apparently bookies paid out on bets of white christmas in nottingham.

So one colour was fixed, what about the other? Green?

Of course the ultimate green christmas would have been sitting in the dark without a christmas tree eating food foraged or gained freganistically meditating or something.

Obviously I didn't take things that far, but I made some green choices where I could.

• we ate vegetarian (as I always do, but some of the other 7 wouldn't normally)


• I home cooked a vegan loaf to reduce a) animal products and b) packaging and processing costs


• I bought all veg british and where possible locally grown


• I have already talked about the ethical dilemma I had with the christmas tree and how i resolved this (I bought a real tree in a pot which I intend to keep for next year and beyond)


• all my decorations are made of natural materials, no plastic whatsoever (although to be fair, at least part of this is aesthetics!)


• I didn't buy a single card or piece of wrapping paper - I made cards (although I did use new card, but hopefully people will like them and treasure them), and I used pre-used paper

I bought people ethical gifts where possible -

• my husband got a recycled bicycle tyre belt and


• some recycled computer keyboard cufflinks!


• My mum got a fair trade afghan blown glass wine glass

People also know I like these things too, and I received a ring made from a teaspoon handle, and some table mats and coasters made from recycled fireman's hose.

I also received Leo Hickman's book - A Life Stripped Bare, Anthony Gidden's Politics of Climate Change and Time Out's Great Train Journey's of the World. I did a train holiday this year and believe this is without a doubt the ultimate way forward.

To improve my green christmas for next year i need to:

• reduce produced items such as real eat roast


• buy fairtrade crackers (if I had known about these before I bought mine I would have bought them, but I already had some. Of course some people say that crackers are a terrible bane for the environmentalist, this is somehting I shall have to think about. I did put all the recyclables in the recycling though)


• more green presents for others


• less electric lighting and more candles


• cards made from recycled materials


• reuse this year's tree

A petty problem

We are currently a no-pet family, although I am hoping we will be getting cats, rescue cats, 2 of them, after Christmas. That was until my husband read an article in the Guardian saying that some pets are worse for the environment than an SUV. My first instinct was to be outraged. I want a cat, how can a cat be worse for the environment than an SUV? (To be fair, cats aren't it's medium and large dogs which are, according to the article). Then having gotten over my outrage I decided to think rationally - if cats really are that bad for the environment then maybe I shouldn't get two, or even one. It's no good only listening to the green info I want to hear.

I arranged my thoughts into some sort of order and then read the Leo Hickman (who I do really like, I subscribe to his blog, but must have missed this post, I have his books on my amazon wish list too!) article. So, the article is quoting research from Time to Eat the Dog by Robert and Brenda Vale which finds that a cat requires 0.15 global hectares to keep it fed, the equivalent of driving a VW golf for 10000 miles a year, plus the energy required to make the car in the first place. So my two cats is almost at the energy cost of buying a 4.6 litre Toyota Landcruiser and driving it for 10000 miles a year (0.41 global hectares). Luckily I don't drive a Toyota Landcruiser as well then!

My next thoughts all concern the fact that I would be getting a rescue cat, so that cat is already having that footprint regardless of whether I own it or not. So actually so long as I promote responsible pet owning and only get a rescue cat I should probably get the cats so as to reduce the load on the shelters. Plus if it is going to be having the footprint anyway someone might as well get the joy from it, which I would.

My next thoughts all concern all the positives about having a pet. For instance, the joy and love that I myself would get. Then there is the positive personal and social impact that pets have on children (which I don't have yet, but would like to, although of course they have a far larger footprint than a cat, no joke). The article also explained some additional benefits - people with pets have greater immunity and visit the doctor less, 21% less when they are elderly, how many global hectares does that account for one wonders. Plus the mental health benefits that pets bring.

I would also think I might be less likely to go out if I had a pet thereby reducing my consumption and waste in shops, pubs, restaurants and cinemas. Of course I don't drive a car at all, very often. We have a small car between us which neither of us drive very often. I walk to work and get the bus and train further afield, despite the additional time, money and stress costs that this can often entail. I take all my compostable waste to work, I bring home any recyclable waste from work. That's right - I carry bags of waste to and from work despite the fact I walk, often in the rain - because it is the right thing to do. I don't eat any animals (that themselves have an eco footprint), I try to minimise my plastic consumption, I try not to fly. I pay extra to have 100% renewable electricity from Good Energy. We try not to have the heating on, and didn't turn it on at all until December this year (except one freakishly cold day in November).

I don't think that doing that means I can do anything I like, indeed I hate to hear people say, "I can do this ungreen thing because I recycle most of my stuff at home". But actually, surely I have reduced my footprint by that of a cat, so I am still on a positive even if I do have a cat? Plus the fact that my children will be more socially adaptable and I will use the NHS less later in life, and I will go out less. Maybe all these things add up to a cat having less of a footprint than it would seem?

I do think we should consider the ecological footprint of activities we partake in and lifestyle choices we make, but I don't think that means we have to not do anything which carries a number, which everything does. It's a case of weighing up pros and cons, and making thoughtful choices. How many global hectares does going to a pub every friday and saturday take? How many global hectares for out of date food which has been thrown away (I eat yoghurts 2 months out of date), how many global hectares to buy a newspaper every day? How many to have a cup of tea every day?

I appreciate the article for giving me the chance to consider the impact of having a pet (which I already had from a vegetarian standpoint, but i think this post has maybe been going on for long enough!) and I have added the book to my wish list, but I have weighed it all up and will still be getting my cat in the new year :)

(do you know I didn't even discuss the indoor cat/outdoor cat arguments, maybe I will do that when I have the cat)

Turkelicious... Or, On being vegetarian

The other day I heard a group of people bemoaning their Christmas poultry. Turkeys, they say, are dry. They would rather not eat them, but that is what they are given. They talk about how they leave them on the plate, or how they endure them with no satisfaction. Yet still they eat them.

As they are defiling the bird does the thought never cross their mind that before being on their plate causing such offence and displeasure it was actually a living, breathing creature? I shouldn't think the turkey much wants to be eaten, never mind being eaten by people who actually don't even like it.

I found the whole conversation offensive. I have actually been vegetarian for 13 years now (with a brief period of pescetarianism, which has long since passed, save for a very short fish eating holiday whilst in Japan, it didn't make me feel big or clever, and was only ever a foray). A few years ago I started to only eat organic dairy and eggs (except for some local eggs from a local farmer who only keeps a small colony and doesn't debeak - so essentially organic except for the feed, organic in terms of welfare) due to living conditions. The deal breaker with the eggs was when i found out that free range egg-laying chickens are frequently debeaked.

About 18 months ago though a realisation, that I think I had been suppressing, came to the forefront of my mind like a thunder clap, and it's hung around like a bad smell since, if it's OK to mix metaphors like minestrone soup. I realised that my whole moral position was invalid.

I became vegetarian after learning about the conditions in which meat animals are kept and killed. Not so much that they are actually killed, more the way in which they were. With time I felt less strongly about this, and more about the health benefits of limiting (to zero in this case) meat intake and increasing plant based foods. Now my position is a mixture of both of those and also more strongly the eco argument. I think it would be fair to say I was an environmental vegetarian.

I haven't actually read that article but in short I believe it is very inefficient in terms of food, water and fuel to eat a meat based diet. I also believe the meat industry to be more polluting, and in some cases toxic. I understand there is a book I need to read called The Vegetarian Myth which deals with whether this is actually the case. At this stage I will state that I have always said that if we were to go back to traditional farming methods and crop rotations and as such we needed animals for manure that I would not really know where I stood. Although I don't see why we would need to eat the animals until they died of natural causes anyway, and at that point there wouldn't be enough for everyone to eat... Anyway, I digress.

So, environmental vegetarian, yes? Yep. Except that then, as I was saying before, I realised my entire moral view fell down. What about the food, water, fuel and pollution associated with the egg and dairy industry? What about the young cockerels and the young calves condemned to death by those same industries? Wasn't I just supporting those? Oh dear. So I toyed with becoming vegan, and this is where I think the morality lies. It's just such a lifestyle change that I don't think I can be bothered. What a weak argument. It guilts me to think that thought let alone say it out loud or blog about it!

I decided to become a "social vegetarian", that is akin to a social smoker where one is a non-smoker except in social situations. I would be a non-vegetarian except in social situations (people's houses, restaurants etc). I would not want to use the word vegan and water down the tremendous will power and effort put in by people who do eliminate ALL animals products from their lives. I did very well for about 7 months - I did still eat eggs, but stopped drinking cows milk, only rarely ate cheese, bought soya alternatives etc. I don't eat a dairy marg anyway. I don't really know what happened with all that. I think I will start it up again. In fact I see a challenge coming on - vegan for a week, how do I do? Then I can try a month etc.

I was having a conversation with a fellow vegetarian last night, I was saying I should grow some backbone and give up eggs and dairy, and he was agreeing, saying he was from a hindu family and that he believed the hindu diet to be the most moral. Then some other people joined in, a couple, where one would like to be vegetarian and one wouldn't, and the one that would feels she can't because of the one that won't. Then someone else joined in saying, "There is no such thing as vegetarian anyway, only carnivores and vegans".

What a crock of shit. What am I then? A carnivore? Hrmmm. I mean, I know she is making my argument (with a thai chicken curry on her plate, mind), but I do believe that anything you do is better than doing nothing.

Of course even what seems to be such a simple line of reasoning such as this does throw open conundrums... Packing, storage and transportation of vegan products may be less energy efficient for starters.

Soya has its own anti-arguments, but there are other alternatives to soya. Not Tiger White though, my god, that substance sounds like the answer, but tastes like the devil! I am a firm believer that you can make yourself like anything if you just keep eating it. Anything except Tiger White.

Not Done Yet

Not Done Yet

The climate negotiations are all but over and we do not have the fair, ambitious and legally binding treaty that millions of people worldwide have demanded. But it is impossible to be without hope as our movement has come so far in this short space of time. World leaders still have a chance to get this right, but time is ticking.

They are not done yet, and neither are we.

http://tcktcktck.org/not-done-yet/

Poopenhagen

Crock(of shit)enhagen etc

I don't have much faith in the current world leaders to do what it takes, but doing nothing is not the answer either. So... sign here:

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/campaigns/climate-change/take_action/do-not-fail

not-cotton wool, or not-cotton not-wool

I have just started using what I like to call not-cotton not-wool. I started using a muslin square to remove my make-up and was still using cotton wool for my toner. I started looking into organic cotton wool due to the ethical conundrums surrounding cotton. Then on a somewhat unrelated note I started to phase out all disposable menstrual wear (having used a moon cup for eons, but still having some disposable back up pads).

At this point I wondered whether you could get reusable cotton wool as it were. Of course you can!

I bought a fleece set, a bamboo set and a hemp set. I am testing them all out. It's a tricky business though, no-one tells you how to use these things. I mean, you pick up how to use a disposable cotton wool pad. Basically you use it and chuck it in the bin.

Reusables are a tad more confusing - what sort of fibre? For what job? should i stain remove first? Or just wash?

So far I have tried the fleece ones. It felt soft on my skin and held the toner in a similar way to a cotton wool pad. I then washed it with warm soapy water before letting it dry then putting it in my net laundry bag for my small washable items like this. I only do my laundry with soap nuts you see, so i think if i didn't remove the stains at this stage it would probably come out of the wash looking similar to how it went in. All seems good with that one so far.

Then today I thought I would try a hemp one. That was so super absorbant that i had to use loads of toner. It just disappeared into the pad. I think this is the stuff nappies should be made from! So, not feeling the hemp ones yet.

Bamboo is still yet to be tried....

Reusable versus disposable?

Normally the reusable versus disposable debate also features the natural versus man-made debate. So resuable nappies are made of cotton, bamboo or hemp whereas disposable are made of plastic. Menstrual pads the same. This somehow makes the question easier to answer... natural = good, reusable = good, job's a good'n!

Except of course it is more complex than that. There is the debate about how natural is natural, especially in the cases of bamboo and hemp, and also about the energy costs for reusable.

That is for another post though as today's post is about a different sort of disposable versus reusable - Christmas trees.

As a child we always had a real tree, and I love the smell and look of real trees, I actually find fake trees a little depressing and pointless. Well that isn't fair, I don't really, but I would if I had one in my house. I think I would rather not bother. As an adult I have not had a Christmas tree, but this year we are having people round on Christmas day (green-eyed does Christmas!) and I would like a tree. I would like a real tree. But then there is the quandary over the real tree and so I was considering a fake tree.

So real trees are natural, and natural equals good, right? Well maybe not. They are a big crop, could that ground be used to grow food crops? Maybe in some cases, but would it? Maybe, maybe not. They can also be grown in ground which is not suitable for other crops. More importantly they are sprayed with Roundup. Roundup, the pesticide which causes the most poisoning and death. Hrmmm. I could buy an organic tree, if only I could find one!

So then, maybe I should buy a reusable tree, less waste, no removal quandaries. Once it has got to me that is it in terms of energy expenditure. No pesticides. Just petrochemicals. Probably quite a lot of tree miles as well. Plus I would have to use it for many years as they can't be recycled, and I do hate landfill.

Most green sites suggest you shouldn't get a real tree. They don't really say what you should do though. No tree I guess. That's not very festive though is it? I feel like I should be able to have a tree. But then do I come back to that perennial problem, I do as much green stuff as I can therefore it is OK to fly round the world and back again.

Harrumph. I feel like a tree should be a possibility, I will be sharing my Christmas with 7 others as well. It will be my first tree since being an adult.

I think I have left it too late to get a real tree anyway. But that aside, I think i have decided to try and get a small real tree in a pot, which I will then keep in a pot and reuse next year.

I use a lot of public transport and every so often I get a bit knarked with it all. The other day I wanted to come home from Derby to Nottingham, a distance of merely 18 miles, less than half an hour by car. I went to a gig, and would have happily got the train home, except for the fact that the last "train" left at 9 something or other, and the last "train and bus replacement service" also left not only before the gig ended (10.30 on a sunday), but would have taken an hour to get home. It also would have cost me a fiver on the train, plus either a 20 minute walk and then £1.50 on the bus on my own in the middle of the night, or £6 in a taxi, which aren't very environmentally friendly. I actually only live a mile and a half out of the city centre.

A while ago we car shared to get to Leeds, and the petrol worked out at about £5 each, unfortunately the car broke down just as we were leaving to come home, and the AA tow guy could only take 2 people in the truck, so 2 of us needed to get the train home. The walk up fee for a single home was £31 each. £62 therefore for both of us, 12 times the cost of the petrol, and a longer, colder journey, well not longer and colder than the journey in the broken down car, but you know! What motivation is there to take public transport?

Today I was on the bus with some canadian people who had clearly just moved here. "How do we know what stop we are at, Dad?" the kids kept asking. They mused on how they would know, would the driver announce it? Would it stop at each stop like a train? Where was the screen to tell them where they were? "Should I explain it to them?" I wondered. Eventually they concluded that they were OK cause they remembered where they were.

It throws open the question though of how do you know when to get off a bus if you don't actually know the route or the area that you are travelling in? If I get a bus to somewhere I don't know I like to have a map with me to assist me with knowing when to get off, and also where the hell I am should i get off in the wrong place! But it isn't always practical or possible to have a map with you. Do all buses in canada have screens telling you where you are? Trains have those screens, plus they pretty much stop at each of the possible stops and there are huge boards on the platform which tell you where you are. Trams have screens telling you where you are and what the next stop is. Of course you can ask the bus driver to tell you when you get there, but they don't always remember.

And then, today after thinking all this, I got on a bus to come home, and there it was, a screen, with all the info you would need about the route, the destination and the next stop. Maybe this is the future of buses?

I hope so, whatever we can do to make buses seem more appealing the better IMO!

None of this of course solves the problem of when you turn up early for a bus and the bus must have been even earlier or didn't exist and then the next one is late, which happened to me twice today. I can see how all but the most keen of public transporters would be put off.

Peddle Power

I exercise a lot. I am a member of my council leisure services. I get it half price because I work for them. I think it is good for me to support the council services, presumably the more people who support it, the cheaper it is and the more options there will be for people.

I go to the gym and i go to various classes - step, aerobics, bums tums & thighs, spinning.

Where is this going? What is the environmental link? Both good questions.

I also go running. I am not so good at running. I do like it for more than one reason though, even if i don't particularly actually like running itself! I like that it is free (although under my current leisure subscription it actually doesn't cost me any extra to do any additional activities in their facilities, i pay monthly) and it also is zero impact, ecological impact (unless you are running across wildflower fields, or panda mating grounds or something).

This leads me to feel bad when I run on the gym in the treadmill. They use so much power, and I am in a room with heating/air conditioning (sometimes both! Stupid council facilities), lights, fans, music, TVs etc. Plus the new gen treadmills have built in TVs with little, well reasonably sized actually, monitors in. I don't even WANT the monitor, I want just to see my times and things, but that has to be displayed through a screen that probably uses as much power as 10 light bulbs or somehting. At least though i am actually using the info displayed on the screen, I am trying to improve my times, checking my pace etc. Then I see people who are in the gym WALKING on the treadmill. OHMYGOSH what a waste of electricity. But who am I to judge? Everyone has their reasons, and I am only found on the zero-ecological-impact route once or maybe twice a week, compared with the electricity overload of the gym/classes which I attend at least three times a week.

My classes aren't as bad as the gym. Just the heating/air conditioning death match of doom, plus one CD player and amp, and one microphone headset. But that is split between 10-15 people. I think for the variety of exercise and the motivational benefit I can let that one go.

Now, just the other day I saw the music player you power with human running power and it got me thinking...

In spinning (cycling exercise class which simulates hills, corners and stuff) i think they should capitalise on this idea, and wire the bikes up to the lights (they have disco lights in spinning) and music. Not only would this be great as it would be enviro-friendly electricity, but it would also be a great motivator to exercise... if it all went dark and the music was slowing down, we would all have to peddle harder. Green electricity and a better work out, what more could you ask for?

ARGH! My hair is not sustainable!!

I have been in a quandary for a while about my hair, which isn't currently, but often is synthetic dreadlocks. At the moment it is woven in human hair dreadlocks. Each has its pros and cons.

The main problem with synthetic dreads lies in the name.... synthetic. As in man made, as in plastic. I avoid plastic where possible, I try to buy natural fibres (although I get guilt over non-organic cotton and the would-be vegan in me has to be squashed every time i buy wool - is there no simple answer?), so why do I have PLASTIC hair?

I feel that my hair is a small drop in the ocean... I maybe use 4 packets of hair per year, each pack is 3oz i think, so not a huge concern. Although it is Chinese produced which throws in more questions and doesn't give any answers, and it comes in packaging, plastic packaging. I do rewear my hair, and i keep it all or sell it, it never goes in landfill.

I do a lot of green things and think that this one little luxury should be OK.

Then I read George Monbiot's blog about how small actions allow people to overlook the bigger ones/. Obviously i am aware of this. When I went on my holiday by international rail last year I was met with criticism from many who fly who told me I did all my recycling and the like. As if my recycling could possibly cancel out hauling a 440 tonne hunk of metal into the sky spilling out jet fuel as it goes. This is what people think though. "Oh I took my own bag to the shop, I can go in my 4x4 and it will all cancel out". They do it with everything, "Oh I walked to work this morning, aren't I healthy, I can have fish and chips for tea and it will all cancel out.... In fact I even took the stairs instead of the lift, I'll have a donut to boot". Um... no.

I don't want to be one of these people though, I try to be more mindful of these things. Now, I don't think my hair could be worse than all the things I do do (except of course if we consider the many pit falls I may accidentally have fallen into), but I also don;t want to be merely neutral. If my hair has cancelled out all the good I do then my foot print is not reduced.

Part of me wants to ignore the issue here and assume my hair has minimal impact (well, I assume it has a big impact else I wouldn't bother, but y'know, minimal environmental impact) but I'm not sure how well the brush-it-under-the-carpet approach suits me. What do you think?

I have not the answers. I like to look good, feeling positive about myself leads me to be more proactive about the other things I care about. It's a complex web. But I am not a fly and don't have to be caught in it. I could find some fo' sure enviornmentally friendly hair. I don't know what that is though... human hair extensions have the potential to have a high social cost (that would be for another blog), natural hair has more washing and styling in it, which uses more water, more product and more electricity. I could go completely au-naturel, but tbh that isn't going to be an option. The web gets stickier and I can see the spider approaching me and I haven't even begun to find the answer.

There is wool, but again the would-be vegan in me debates which is better.

I haven't even talked about dye yet!,

Little Fluffy Clouds

OK, maybe not, but today I have made fluffy clouds at work (I have a dead serious job) out of cotton wool balls. I did however say to some people that we would have to buy some as I don't have nay at home. They were curious as to why and what I used instead.

To answer this with the long story here goes! A while ago I decided I would like to minimise my disposable cosmetics paraphenalia. I realise it would be greener still not to use it at all, but hey ho, I like to look nice, and i try to do it in the most responsible and sustainable way possible, so I am not going to feel bad about that at this point in time. I switched away from traditional make-up remover which comes in plastic bottles and started using baby face by my favourite shop!. I then removed it using a muslin cloth which i was given with some Liz Earle products i was given for a birthday pressie. As this worked well I bought some organic cotton muslin and now have a collection of muslin squares for make-up removal (we only do washing when there is a full load, so things can hang around a bit, so i needed a stack of them).

This worked well for ages, but I was still plagued by the notion that i was using toner on cotton wool. Yes, I had reduced the impact, but not eliminated it. Then I started using reusable menstrual wear and started to think that i could use reusable cotton wool pads. So, I now don't keep cotton wool pads/balls/roll etc at home. I have a few sets of reusable pads for make up removal, some organic cotton, some polyester cotton mix, and some hemp, and maybe some bamboo. I haven't tried them all so I can't contrast them.

This throws it's own dilemmas at me:
1) is it better for the environment to wash and reuse or dispose of somehting small and biodegradable?
I think in my case it is most definitely better to wash and reuse, as i stated we only wash when the load is full, we use soapnuts or occasionally ecover, we wash at 30 degrees, we don't tumble dry

2) even though cotton production is highly unethical in many respects, for the people that produce it it is better that someone buys it than no-one, not buying it doesn;t help the farmers really. Social cost vs environmental cost

3) I had nothing to use to keep my eyes cleansed separately when i had an eye infection! (this is small fry!)

4) i bought some nail varnish remover pads in a plastic pot. I am suspecting this is worse than me having some cotton wool and a bottle of nail varnish remover? Is plastic waste worse than cotton? The ethical dilemmas abound!

Sustainable Art?

When we went to the Deep in Hull they had an exhibition by Martin Waters.

I found this work to be not only beautiful but also to highlight the effects of living in a disposable society. Much of his work is made from remnants of things he has collected from the beach. There was a collection of plastic forks, a collection of toy guns/water pistols that sort of thing, there were others arranged by colour.

I would like to try my hand at these, but with city waste. I would like to try it with the children but I am concerned about the health and safety aspects of that. I think I need to build up my collection of junk and then I too can make a disposed of montage.

Watch this space for green-eyed's environmental art.

Plastic-Free Lent - The results!

The previous post contains the bulk of last year's plastic-free lent experiment, this post contains the results.

Here is the grand total of all the plastic I bought or had to take, the plastic bag is not included, I had that in the house already!:


Then this is what it looks like all laid out:


That one above includes the bread bags which I did allow in the initial rules, but not the milk. I didn't buy much soya milk anyway as I had a few cartons in already, so this is what it looks like minus the "allowed" items:


On the left there is a bag from some potatoes that my greengrocers insisted we have (they seemed to think it was hilarious and refused to sell us the unbagged potatoes), there are 3 tags from some spring onions, some painkillers (I was quite ill!), a straw which I picked up without even thinking on the first weekend of lent. A packet from some veg, I forget what, it turned up in plastic from the greengrocers in their delivery, a packet surrounding some burgers inside a card box. I'm sure they never used to be wrapped in plastic as well. There's a plastic cup I got half way round a 9 mile race. There is a plastic plate and cup I got when I was on a conference and hadn't thought about lunch before going, I could have taken my own plate and cup had I thought. Anyway, decided I would take them and not go hungry, but I took them home, washed them and took them back the next day so I didn't use a second plate and cup! There is also a packet from some biscuits and one of those things for taking tea bags out with, this one is really silly - I carefully selected a paper cup not a plastic one, had fruit tea so I wouldn't need the milk in the plastic thing, and then stoppped thinking and took my tea bag out and ate some biscuits, then realised :oops:

So as you can see, more stupidity and lack of forward thinking than anything else. That said I have run out of everything and am ready to go to the shops and get some replacements! Also, it would not have been possible if we hadn't already had some things in the house. Like we already had some long life pate for our sandwiches, and a block of cheese. It was certainly inconvenient though.

I don't know as I would do it exactly like this again just due to some of the ethical dilemmas (some of which I picked up on in the previous post). In general I would like to see plastic and packaging reduced, but not at the expense of something else, and I worry that this might be what would happen, and is already happening in some places where they make it appear they are being greener. I would want to know and understand some of the issues in more depth, which I don't think is all that possible unless you are a journalist or a scientist or somehting and you actually have paid time to find out!

That said, obviously I try to make greener choices, and this is why I chose this for lent (and why indeed I have this blog). It has made me think more about things, and there are some things which I will take away from this as everyday things. So, I will never put my fruit and veg in those plastic bags in the supermarket anymore, I will take in my own paper bags, which are given to me by the greengrocer and I can compost at the end of their natural life.

Ultimately I would like to lead the most natural life possible, but I think we have to be careful that some things that appear more natural may actually be worse for the environment.

I wish it wasn't so difficult to know what to do.

I also think I may start taking my own straw out with me. It sounds daft and it's only a straw which is small, but I like drinking my drinks through a straw, but if we reduced straw consumption I imagine that would be a fair amount of plastic reduced. You can use about 10 or more straws per night out. If I take my own I will only use 1, and could rinse and re-use as well.

Those 2 things are really very trivial in the grand scheme of things though.

I do try to do things which have a wider impact on the environment too though - we get our electricity from http://www.goodenergy.co.uk/, I try to walk and take the bus/train instead of the car. We only own one car between us and purposefully bought an energy efficient model (and plan on a hybrid when we need a new one, although I am now not sure about this as I heard they are very bad for the environment). Hardly ever have the heating on. I'm vegetarian and restrict dairy. I pretty much never fly.

I also feel that even with all that (and a bit more that would sound like a self-righteous monologue if I went through it all), I am only making the tiniest difference, and mostly only to my own conscience. And it is all wiped out and more the minute Gordon Brown builds a new runway, or a new coal fired power station.

I think I am going to start going to climate camp and doing more campaigning for political change. I think individuals have a small personal responsibility but ultimately I think it is political change we need. Of course individual responsibility extends to voting for a party that will make a difference. And if there isn't one then voting for a party that wants to change the system and make it more likely that there will be more real options for which party will govern the country.

Plastic-Free Lent

As this is a fairly new blog I have some past things I would like to add retrospectively, and this is one of them. This is a 6 week experiment condensed into one single-serve backdated blog!

Last year we (Mr Organik and myself) jointly gave up plastic for lent. Well, kind of. Some friends of ours gave us the idea talking about some friends of theirs who did it last year, but apparently they stockpiled before lent! Well, we didn't stockpile as we only decided to do it the day before lent began (plus that would have been a real cheat and totally missed the point of what we were trying to achieve), but we did have a fair amount of stuff with plastic in and on in the house already (as we bulk buy a lot of produce going out of date). So we gave up the acquisition of plastic. As far as possible. The more we thought about it the harder we realised it would be - no crisps, chocolate, bought sandwiches, no bottles of water, no wrapped vegetables, no bags of salad, no yoghurts, no cheese... almost everything comes wrapped in plastic.

We gave ourselves 2 exceptions, one being bread which we didn't think we could get without plastic and I had never made bread and didn't think this was a good time to learn. And milk, because I drink soya milk we couldn't even get it delivered in glass bottles (if they even still do them) from the milkman anyway. But everything else was a no-go. At least we decided to see how long we lasted without having to buy plastic anyway!

Part way through the experience I found this experiment:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/monthwithoutplastic/2008/08/goodbye_plastic.html

She set herself similar rules to us, but being a journalist and that was effectively her job she was able to take it a bit more seriously than us.

I was challenged by someone saying that I could have bought paper wrapped bread from a bakery had I so chosen, which is indeed true, but here is the reasoning behind why we didn't do that:
-usually bread like that only lasts a couple of days at most. We wouldn't get through it all in a couple of days, so this would be an extra cost and an extra wastage (we keep our sliced bread in the freezer and just take out a slice or two as we need it)
-I couldn't really get to a greggs/bakery section etc every couple of days anyway. My hours are already pretty long, and I walk to and from work and don't go past any of those things. I wouldn't want to drive anywhere, that would defeat the environmentalist side of things.
-so yeah, I *could* get bread in a paper bag (not from asda though, their bakery stuff is in plastic!) but I would have a huge impact on my life, so I have written that one off from the start.

Mr Organik made some errors early on though, he ate some packaged biscuits in a meeting, and didn't realise till he ate them. He also had a coffee from one of those machines that uses a sachet thing because he hadn't taken a drink with him to work and was in meetings all day (hmmm!)

I turned down a cheap pot of lush gorgeous because it was in plastic. I didn't go for curry with people from work cause they put it in polystyrene. I also didn't buy the yoghurts in cardboard pots because they had plastic film lids.

I have come to the conclusion that this definitely wouldn't be sustainable long term, we were just curious really to see whether it's even possible, lent is only 6 weeks, just over.

Followers of my experiment were concerned about various things from washing up liquid to loo roll, detergent to moisturiser and butter to what on earth I put my vegetables in (most came from the local greengrocer who use paper, and the ones from the supermarket went in paper bags I took with me to put them in). The paper bags go in the compost bin once they have reached the end of their natural life.

On our first supermarket trip after lent began we were excited to find squash/cordial in glass bottles. I had hoped there might be, and I knew ribena used to come in glass, but there was actually quite a selection, and all sounded very exciting. They were clearly luxury items though, and priced as such, so we just bought 2 had to see squash as a luxury, having water the rest of the time (which we frequently do anyway).

I was also expecting cheese to be off the list because it invariably comes wrapped in plastic, but found one that was wax covered, and 2 in waxed paper and one camembert wrapped in waxed paper in a wooden box. Again, more expensive than the cheese we would normally have bought, but we had to consider it more of a luxury.

We bought 2 things that were made of plastic - one a birthday card with plastic wrap round it and one a gingerbread man kit which was in plastic as a present for the person the card is for. As these are to give away we decided it wasn't ideal, but didn't want to penalise our friend for our lent.

We found ourselves looking at all sorts of random things, "ooo, look you can get so and so in a tin" and that sort of thing just because they weren't in plastic, then wondering why as they were things that we didn't even want! We saw several boxes of pasta but they all had plastic windows in, so no pasta for the next month. We also saw a "no plastic in here" easter egg, and wondered whether it was a calling! We didn't buy it though

There was only one lot of toilet roll wrapped in paper - andrex 2 rolls, and there was only 1 packet left, luckily that was enough to last til easter!!

I did buy some pain killers. I was quite ill and decided lent would have to take a backseat to that!

It's a tricky issue. To rid ourselves entirely of plastic isn't necessarily the way forward anyway. For instance, the squash/cordial I bought in glass bottles required extra fuel compared with a plastic equivalent to get it to the shop because it is heavier. Yes it can be recycled, but so can plastic squash bottles. Which uses more energy to recycle? I don't know. I know we have an issue with glass recyclng in this country (UK) in general though which is most of the glass we take to be recycled is green (from wine bottles) and most of the glass we use here is white, so the green has to get shipped somewhere else. All very complicated.

Another example could be carrier bags. Plastic bags take a very long time to degrade in landfill, and are made from oil, and are only recycled in limited places. But if we were to replace all the plastic bags with paper bags that would be bad because paper in landfill decomposes anaerobically which produces methane which is a worse green house gas that carbon dioxide. So paper is only better if you compost it. And it's heavier, so again, more fuel to transport it, plus plastic bags take up less space in the dust cart/dustbin van so less vehicles are required, and they take up less space in landfill. I use cloth/hemp/jute bags for my shopping but then what if the person who made them didn't get paid a living wage? AAAARRRGGGH!!! It makes my head hurt!

Hence why in general I try to live the least waste route, but was just keen to try the not buying plastics thing for lent, just as a test to see how hard it was really. In general I would like to see less unnecessary plastics, but I am not sure whether ridding ourselves entirely of plastic is the answer either, not at the moment anyway. I would like to see easily recyclable plastics which can recycled energy efficiently. I also wish that the ethical conundrums were less clouded, I don't think even some of the top scientists could answer of the questions about which thing it is better to buy! How is the average man on the street supposed to know?!

Apparently "loose" fruit and veg at the supermarket actually have 4 times more packaging associated with them than packaged fruit. Even when you think you are doing the right thing you might not be. I think they like to keep us in the dark

I was also questioned about "ladies" products, but that will deserve a post all of its own. Rest assured though I do not use plastic in my feminine wear.

See the next post for the results of the plstic-free lent experiment

Welcome to green-eyed's new blog

Here it is, the first post in my new blog. This blog is to be the journal of my thoughts and experiences as I attempt to make my life a little more ethical, a little more sustainable and a smaller tread on mother earth.

This journey began some time ago, but as this becomes a bigger feature in my own life the more I have an urge to share my thoughts with others, and hopefully learn from others along the way as well.

With some luck it might be an interesting read too!