- Reusing a Neighbour's waste!!! Someone a few roads from me left 2 old compost bins (and a bird feeder) out the front of their house on the verge. I have wanted a compost bucket for a while but been rubbish about actually doing anything about it so I was so excited to see them! I headed out down the street as soon as we got home. I checked for certain they were free by knocking and asking. CBC and I came back and picked it up later. It fits beautifully in a space by our summerhouse/shed. Excited to make use of someone else's rubbish!
- Checking the bin! On Tuesday, I went into the Staff room and was just about to put my tea bag into the new fresh bin bag when I noticed that someone had put 4 tubs of yoghurt sealed with their cardboard sleeve round them and a 12 egg-box plastic box with 2 eggs in it in the bin plus a huge glass coffee jar. There was nothing else in the bin. Firstly, I was perplexed by someone putting 'out of date' food straight into the bin, packaging and all rather than cleaning and recycling. But what annoyed me more was, when I got them out the bin, intending to empty, wash and recycle them, I discovered the yoghurts only went out of date on Sunday and the eggs on Friday. So I put the yoghurts in the fridge and the eggs too. I ate a yoghurt for lunch- it was fine. I brought home the other two for me and CBC to eat. Do you know how to check if eggs are bad or good? Well, my method is to carefully drop the egg into a cup/jug of water. If they float, tey are bad, if they sink to the bottom and remain on the bottom, they are good. Both eggs, of course, were fine, so I used them, along with 3 other eggs I had at home, to make Courgette and Bok choi fritters for dinner. They were battery hen eggs, which I would never usually buy, but since that hen had a horrible life anyway, it seems even worse to put the eggs in the bin. With the coffee jar (which seemed full of coffee sludge), I put water in it and I have left it in the garden to pour over the earth under the rose bush.
- Took out several cans and bottles from the bin at work and washed them up to recycle. On about 5 days in a row...Honestly, nobody cares!!!!!
- I detest Amazon. They are the scourge of our High Streets and they are TOO big! The amount of packaging they produce compared to shopping on our High Street alone is a big incentive for me to avoid them, the destruction they have wreaked in our High Street but the worse of all - the fact they DO NOT pay the correct amount of tax. I have not shopped with them for years!!!! I signed this 38 Degrees campaign petition. Send this email to your friends and get them to sign it.
Dear friend,
Since Amazon launched in the UK two decades ago, half of high street bookshops in the country has closed down, a new report reveals.
Last year, Amazon posted record profits, yet they’re paying even less tax than the year before. This report is the latest warning that our high street shops could continue to die off if the Chancellor, Philip Hammond, doesn’t level the playing field between our local shops and online giants like Amazon.
An amazing quarter of a million of us have already signed a petition telling the Chancellor to make Amazon pay their fair share in tax. Right now, he's making plans for his next budget. But you can bet highly paid lobbyists for online giants will be busy behind the scenes, fighting against a tax rise. We could tell him that the public want him to help protect our high streets and make companies like Amazon pay their fair share.
We don't have long before he makes his final decision. Will you add your name to the petition now?
- Find out if your MP supports Plastic Free rivers by putting your postcode in! Then email then if they aren't! https://plasticfreerivers.org.uk/
- Urge Burger King to sign up to a No DeForestation supply chain here: https://actions.sumofus.org/a/burger-king-end-deforestation-in-your-supply-chain-now/?akid=56873.10909212.1CWWZW&rd=1&source=fwd&t=14
- Went prepared to our friends' house for a Barbecue and party (we were asked to bring chairs with us which is in itself a good idea- why get worried and buy additional garden furniture when friends can happily bring their own!?) by taking some of our own travel cups (and my cutlery) but happily, they just got us to use all their regular plates, cutlery and glasses!
- Fished out the 20 or so paper cups from the staff moderation meeting I wasn't at and cleaned them up to bring home for recycling.
- I love it when a wish comes true!!! I was on the train home on Wednesday night and I had had a typically voice heavy Wednesday (bellowing the note names over the top of 30 7-years overblowing their recorders for 3 hours plus Singing assembly and choir and recording myself singing the Circle of Life and I Can't wait to be King for practice recordings for our drama production and was kicking myself for forgetting to fill up my water bottle for the train. As I got off the train, I thought, "I wish that S station would let you fill up your water bottles with water. As I arrived at Platform 4 for my second train, I decided to walk along the left-hand side along platform 3 to reach the far end of the platform rather than along Platform 3 and then I saw this...
Bravo Abellio Greater Anglia!!! Well done! My water was deliciously cold too!
And elsewhere on the web:
And elsewhere on the web:
https://www.plasticfreedom.co.uk/product-page/maistic-compostable-bin-liners-20l-15-bags Compostable bin liners! Somebody told me that in landfill, the waste cannot rot down when in bin liners. Surely, it makes sense for the waste to be in compostable bin liners.
- @tulips_and_a_toolbox on Instagram made a natural suggestion for a fabric and air refreshener spray:
1/4 cup of Vodka
120ml Distilled water
25 drops of Lavender essential oil
10 drops of Tea tree essential oil
A funnel
An empty spray bottle
Mix and done. Shake before each use. The vodka works as a carrier oil and evaporate quickly. It has no strong smell. It leaves no residue or traces and it dilutes the eseential oils evenly
- I love this idea for making natural toilet bombs- 8oz Bicarbonate soda, 2.5oz citric acid, 40-60 drops of essential oils. Add 1/2 a tap of water at a time until damp, then squish into ice-cube trays and leave overnight to dry.
I love the idea of sprouting new veg from old bottoms of veg...
https://foodrevolution.org/blog/reduce-food-waste-regrow-from-scraps/
https://www.buzzfeed.com/arielknutson/vegetables-that-magically-regrow-themselves
- Oooh, pens made out of grass????
- STRAWS:
Some people really like to moan about paper straws and their going soggy (er- answer- are you 2, are you in a hospital, do you really need a straw???) and think it is silly to carry around a stainless steel straw, so how about these Wheat straws in a party pack from PLastic Freedom? £11.99 for a box of 250 if you really must!
- One thing that I know drives MANY people mad is when you go to an area of utter beauty and see poo bags left on the side of the path from dog owners. I saw loads of this on the Dovedale river, a beautiful area in the Peak District last week. SO many bags of poo left on the path, grass, hanging on branches or stuffed into hollow trees. Why not buy compostable/biodegradable ones to use instead!?
- Apparently Glastonbury is going plastic bottle free:
What Eco-successes or fails have you had this week or great products or ideas have you learnt about?
Oh my goodness don't you put us all to shame Kezzie with your recycling efforts and research. Thanks for finding all of these new products - there are some pretty dedicated people out there! I love the idea of growing more veg from your veg - how cool is that? Have a fab weekend x
ReplyDeleteI think I'm going to attempt some of those toilet fizzers too, the last few times I've sold a silicone ice cube tray to someone it has been for that purpose, so even here things are catching on. Lots of local businesses have "happy to refill your water bottle" signs in the windows now too which is great.
ReplyDeleteUnsurprisingly my MP is not signed up to clean rivers - you'd think it would be a priority with half the constituency being on an estuary and the other half on the coast!
I managed to save two rusty and unsaleable wine racks from the bin at the charity shop this week and hope to turn them into herb planters.
i love seeing all the innovative ways companies are using recycling in products. It's fascinating. I really think many people don't understand best before/seel by dates at all and need educating on them.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Anna that you are putting is all to shame, Kezzie. Isn't the amount of food people throw away just shameful? I know use before dates have their uses, but I wonder if the yogurts would have been thrown out if there would have been no date on them? xxx
ReplyDeleteI'm impressed! I need to join you in your campaign!xx
ReplyDeleteYou're doing an amazing job! I work with a lady who insists on taking teabags home to compost (even though they contain plastic!) yet puts plastic milk bottles straight into the bin and it's really infuriating (I keep taking them out and taking them home to recycle!)
ReplyDeleteI started using biodegradable bin bags a little over a year ago. I'm a little sceptical about how biodegradable they really are, but figure that must be better than regular old plastic.
Thanks for sharing the pens... that's something that has been bothering me recently so I'm excited to discover that there are pens made of grass available now.
So great to hear about the water machine! It is lovely your wish came true. I wish we had those here as well!
ReplyDeleteWhen people here want to get rid of things that are still good (like the compost bin you found) they put them outside with a label saying free. I've seen everything from CDs to furniture and I occasionally put books on a box outside our building.
ReplyDeleteWaste in Basel is incinerated so it makes no difference whether the bin bag is biodegradable. I'm honestly not sure whether burning is better than landfill but that's just how it is where we live.
Yey for rescuing the food from the bin and the jar, I am a frequent bin/recycling bag diver at work - so many resources for my crafts at work and Rainbows and nice coffee jars for me to reuse. And how lucky to find the compost bins for free!
ReplyDeleteMy house backs onto an alley and I can't tell you the amount of times people hang their dog poo bags on my hedge, or worse, push their bags through my hedge so they're in my garden, it drives me mad! Biodegradable bags are a good idea at least, when I lived in Spain it seemed the norm for people to pick up their dogs poop with newspaper!
You are doing so much! Well done! It's a shame people don't even realize that they spend so much of their lives making money to buy food (and other things) that they don't even appreciate having.
ReplyDeleteI'm not bothered by the "best before" dates or even "use by", for things I'm familiar with. Some people throw away even salad just because is after the best-before day. I can't understand why someone would do such a thing, it's obvious if the salad is still ok to eat. Bonkers.
I'm astounded at how wasteful your work colleagues are, there's so mnay families relying on food banks with kids going to school with no breakfast inside them, they ought to be ashamed of themselves.
ReplyDeleteGreat rescue on the bins and the bird feeder and liking that recipe for loo fizzers.
Glastonbury is trying so hard - you wouldn't believe the questionnaire us traders have to fill in when we apply. As always our pitch will be a plastic free shop (apart from the Gala tent!) xxx
The best before date thing is so misleading. And as everyone is in the possession of a nose there really isn't any need to abide by them so strictly. A little common sense is all it needs - if it smells bad, don't eat it! I like your tip on eggs, I'll remember that, generally I break them into a glass and give them a sniff if I'm not sure!
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad to see the water refill at the station, hopefully these will start to become commonplace. I forgot to take my water bottle out with me the other day, I was so thirsty but resisted buying a bottled drink. I though about a can of drink but I don't really like fizzy drinks and they're not hydrating anyway, so I came home and had two glasses of water in quick succession. Maybe next time I won't forget my water bottle...
I've signed the petitions. And like the idea of compostable bin liners. I use recycled ones but compostable are even better. If these things exist why aren't they used more widely?!
I've been searching for more plastic packaging free products recently. I have some toothpaste in a glass jar - tastes a bit weird but I'll get used to it. And I have some paper packing tape, with all my ebaying at the moment I'm posting a lot so when I ran out of cellotape I switched to paper tape - it's just as good!.
You're still putting me to shame with your efforts. I often talk about you and use you as an example when talking to friends and family. I got my hands on some fabric gift bags recently and used them for our wedding anniversary, our ten years of being together anniversary, Andy's birthday, and my Dad's birthday. I told my Dad he had to use them, or give them back. He kept them, promising he'd use them (I suspect I'll get them back on my birthday, I'd be delighted if I do!).
I've bought my brother some solid shampoo for his birthday as he seemed interested when we talked about it. It's all these little changes that will add up and make a difference!
xx
I think that's the longest comment I've ever written!
ReplyDeletexx