Category: #ecosparkles2018

Whilst its been a little while since I did a catch up, my #ecosparkles2018 commitment is still going strong.  I have tried to reduce, reuse, recycle or repair in many aspects of daily life and I’m pleased with my progress whilst acknowledging there is always more to do.  Of all my actions I think clothes is a big change, I am buying fewer items and have repaired two things in the past few weeks rather than recycle them.

However the one area I’ve really focused on is reducing my use of plastic.  There have been many articles in the media highlighting the impact of plastic on our environment and it is worrying.  I have become quite zealous in not buying plastic bags or using plastic cups this year, my count on both is zero and I have refused to purchase a drink if it is served in a plastic cup.  I always carry a drinks bottle and cafes have no problem in filling it up or in giving me a glass for my drink rather than the plastic cups they provide.  It was a real eye opener at Butlins this week on how so many national food outlets use plastic, I found paper plates and wooden cutlery but there was far too much plastic just being thrown away not even into recycling bins.  I’m used to independent cafes in our small town who are definitely more eco friendly.

It was my birthday recently and it appears my crusade has been noticed by friends too.  I got a Chilly water bottle which keeps your drink cool or hot dependent on the content and it is amazing, this is not an ad just an appreciation of a great piece of kit.  I also received some beeswax wraps to be used instead of cling film for food covering.  Again I have been pleasantly surprised by their efficiency and I’m also using Tupperware boxes for food storage too (old not new purchases as they are plastic) rather than covering in cling film.  In the shops, I look at food packaging and have found the market the greenest place for plastic free packaging, I’m the 1950s housewife with my wicker basket of fruit and veg and I rock my look! My local health food shop is also encouraging you to bring in containers to take away your product so I’ve been taking advantage of this invitation too.  I’ve been using this article for inspiration too

https://myplasticfreelife.com/plasticfreeguide/

There is always plenty more to do, but just by making some simple changes, I feel I am helping in my own little way and am looking for new ways to be eco friendly in the months to come.

I had hoped to write a weekly update on my little #ecosparkles2018 project but the reality is that whilst I am making changes I’ve not been recording them, so here is an update for the last couple of months and I will then try to write a monthly update.

I am discovering in this project that its not about buying a few green accessories but making lifestyle changes.  It is more about being creative, reusing items and reducing consumption.  It is also about sharing your green values with the services you use, nobody has minded when I’ve used a reusable cup for a takeaway drink, or that I’ve asked for a paper bag instead of plastic packaging or in a café when I have asked for plastic straws not to be put in the children’s drinks and enquired whether glass bottles are recycled, people are happy to do simple green acts when customers request them.

Over the past two months these are some of the green things we have done in the Sparkles household.

1. We have had a Smart meter installed and it has had an immediate effect. It is now a family challenge to try and reduce the previous day’s total for electricity and gas and it has made us switch off items not being used etc..  This challenge is easier as we are approaching spring, I have no doubt that the daily cost will increase in colder and darker days.
2. I always have a water bottle on the go in my bag.  It is easier to fill it up than I expected, there are public water fountains in the community which I had never noticed.
3. Mr and Miss S have planted the seedlings in our garden, we have a variety of fruit and vegetables now growing ready for summer harvesting.
4. I bought some gym clothes to replace my very worn top and leggings (they were becoming indecent!) I found some which are made from sustainable, organic cotton in Decathlon at a really good price and I’m delighted at how comfortable and practical they are.
5. All our toiletries and cleaning products are now eco friendly and not tested on animals.    I have also replaced plastic brushes and cloths with bamboo products.
6. At work I am now leading the Eco schools programme and I am full of ideas and inspiration! Not only is my home going green so is our school!

As well as the above I am really proud of my zero count on some key products, every little helps.

So this has been my update and I look forward to now sharing a monthly post on how we are becoming a greener house in very simple steps.

 

 

This week’s ecosparkles is about trying to adopt a commitment to public transport and the limitations living in a small rural town.  Whilst I have a car, my weekly mileage is very low, sometimes less than 10 miles a week, our town is small and we live centrally where everything is near and walkable.  When I do drive, I am rarely alone in my car, as I’m either with the children or on my commute I share the journey with a colleague.  I have my car for when I need to go to big town, a 50 mile round journey or to visit friends and family in other parts of the country.  As its been half term this week I have done one of my long journeys and decided to compare the costs.

This week I calculated that to go from our small town, not on the mainline train network to the train station nearest to my parents would have involved a walk, a bus journey and 4 changes on the train making it approximately a 6 hour journey, costing £51.85 for myself and the two children (we have a family rail card)

The same journey in my car, a small eco friendly model, (roughly the model in the calculator below) for 196 miles (return journey) would have cost £16.20, door to door.  It is unsurprising that given the cost and convenience I opted for the car journey.

I also decided to calculate my CO2 omission for these two journeys to see if there was a considerable difference, however, both journeys worked out at 0.05 tonnes.

Before moving to our small town, I lived in a large city and public transport was key to travelling.  It was reasonable, reliable and regular and we used it, I think this is common in most large cities and towns.   There are times when living in a small town can feel quite isolating and transport is one of the significant issues.  We have two bus routes which serve our town and both are hourly, it takes more than an hour to travel to the nearest town and to the decent shopping town, ninety minutes.  In bad weather, the services are often suspended and in high tourist season, the buses are very popular and you have to be early to get a place.  The cost of the journey is high.  In the journey I calculated the return journey on bus of approx. 24 miles would have cost for 1 adult and 2 children, £17.40, the train stage of approx. 174 miles was £34.45, thus the bus is 72.5p a mile, the train less than 20p a mile and the car 8p.

As a family, we like travelling by train and we have a nice route which takes us to a number of resorts and shopping towns, from our nearest station we can even get to London on a direct train! We do have a family railcard and do enjoy little days out on the train, driving the 12 miles to the station and using the car park, before hopping on the train.  However we rarely use the bus for its price and poor timetabling.  Even in this challenge to try and make our family life more ecological friendly, I can’t make the full switch to public transport yet.

Whilst I’m not able to commit to public transport, I would like to offer a few suggestions on how I would be more open to using the bus.  Firstly, fares need to be so much cheaper to make them family friendly.  The routes could be streamlined, our buses go to every village, with a double decker winding round country lanes, why not have smaller buses more frequently, offering direct services to towns and a separate stop all service too for those wishing a more scenic journey.  The sadness with the trains is that we used to have a thriving train station in town, but it was one closed after the Beeching report in the 1960s.

Despite my reservations about public transport, I am trying to minimise car journeys this year and to try and share such journeys.  I have a small car and would love to look into a more eco friendly car in the future (electric?), however my car’s emissions are low enough for me not to have to pay car tax and it is economical, so I like to think it has some green credentials.

Public transport can be so good and efficient, its just sad that many small towns and villages are poorly served by such services and that there is a genuine need for a car. There does need to be more commitment to rural communities in transport infrastructure planning.

Resources

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/interactive/2009/oct/20/guardian-quick-carbon-calculator

https://www.fleetnews.co.uk/costs/fuel-cost-calculator/

http://www.co2balance.com/

 

I was thinking this week that some of this project is not about doing but not doing.  For example, I love glossy magazines but I started to think about the energy costs involved for what these days sometimes seems to be adverts and not quality pieces.  It occurred to me that blogs are filling that void with interesting, relevant posts and do I need to have the magazines?  So one of my eco activities has been not to buy any of this month’s glossy magazines.  When I was in town last week I found myself really questioning my need for products, I bought what I needed but didn’t succumb to any other purchases.  Here are more of my ecosparkles this week .

1. This week I have been looking at seasonal foods, rather than choose a recipe and then go shopping I did it the other way.  I chose seasonal vegetables and then looked up a recipe in my cookery bible, Good Housekeeping.  The parsnip and potato rosti was gorgeous, who would have thought of nutmeg with those vegetables?  I’ve also bought this poster to display in my kitchen to promote seasonal eating.  https://www.lizcookcharts.co.uk/seasonal-uk-fruit-and-vegetable-chart.html
2. It was time to tidy up this week and I took all the out of date and used medicines to the chemist to be disposed of safely and not harm our environment in landfill.
3. I have been looking at food packaging carefully.  We have lots of small independent shops in our town who do use paper bags and I always try to use these shops.  Sadly there is no independent grocer and no food market until Easter so vegetables and fruit can be quite packaged in the supermarket.  I’m finding myself frustrated with trying to prepare a green lunch, my pleas to return the tin foil have varied results.   However I have found these beeswax sandwich covers to try. https://www.asliceofgreen.co.uk/food-wraps-and-bags/robots-large-baggie.html

Whilst I wrote earlier this week of my attempt at a green shopping trip, I have had some little green successes this week.

1.  No disposable cups! Not only did I take a cup on my shopping trip, I also took it on my weekly lunch treat. Once a week, my colleague and I head to the gorgeous little café in town for a takeaway homemade soup and bread.  Today we both took our reusable mugs and the owner was more than happy to fill them up with the tastiest lentil, coconut and sweet potato soup!
2. Decluttering. Yep its that time of the year when I am working my way, room by room through the house to tidy and sort each area. I did the children’s bedrooms this week and sent some clothes, clean and in good condition to the charity shop.  There were some stained and damaged clothes and rather than throw these away I cut the t shirts up to make some rag cloths.  The jeans which were worn through at the knees have become a pair of denim shorts to wear whilst mucking around in the garden.  As well as the clothes, I sent some games and books to the charity shop and recycled paper. There was very little thrown away, apart from used pens for which I need some ideas.
3. No plastic bags.  Whilst I haven’t bought a plastic bag Mr S insisted on buying one despite my alternative offers when he bought some trousers in Next.  I was really annoyed with him, it felt like he was ruining my little project, something he is a bit bemused about at present.  I just hope that my positive action will rub off on him soon.
   

   

   I have a few little ideas for next week’s ecosparkles I’m going to see exactly what I can recycle at my local tip and see if I can reduce our landfill.

My resolution this year is to try and be more environmentally friendly and I have created a little hashtag #ecosparkles2018 to illustrate my efforts over the year. I want to see how easy it is to be more ecologically aware by adopting very simple habits, for example I’m hoping not to buy any plastic bags this year or use any disposable cups.  Today was my first big test with a trip to big town.  I was prepared, I had several bags for my shopping, a reusable coffee cup and I even cheekily took some spare coat hangers I had from my decluttering yesterday to see if I could recycle them in a shop.  There were some successes today, I used all the bags and didn’t need any additional and the Sainsbury’s cashier happily agreed to recycle my hangers.

However there were some little things I hadn’t prepared for, the trip took longer than anticipated and Little Miss and I needed a quick bite to eat.  The green and more comfortable option would have been to pop into a café but I was on a tight timescale so we ended up with a takeaway, my daughter’s lunch was served simply in a paper bag, a pretty good packaging option and I had a takeaway salad in a plastic box with a plastic fork, not great eco packaging.  However to try and make the best of the situation,  I took our used packaging to the recycling area of a supermarket as there were no recycling bins in the shopping precinct.  Unfortunately the area was only for recycling clothes, paper, books and silver foil.  I couldn’t take the used tub home as it had dressing in it which might spill onto my other shopping, so despite my best intentions and search for a green option I ended up throwing it away and feeling guilty.  That was frustrating as I had looked hard for a recycling option and it wasn’t there.  This was in a busy town centre and I would have expected some recycling bins around the shops, takeaways etc.. to help people make little green gestures.

My other observation from today was around cruelty free make up.  I went to Superdrug today which has a good reputation for cruelty free products.  I found some of the brands I was looking for and bought a new foundation and mascara which I needed.  What surprised me was the air miles involved in these products as some were made in China.  To me this also raises the ethical argument of China being the country which is insisting on testing on animals, producing cruelty free make up which I presume cannot be sold in the state.  It just doesn’t sit right with me on a number of levels so as well as cruelty free, I’m now looking for make up not made in China and with as few air miles as possible.

Today’s trip has shown the need to be prepared, that you can ask shops to help you be more eco friendly, eg the recycled coat hangers but that there is much more to be done by councils to encourage recycling in busy town centres.

 

 

Whilst my focus in #ecosparkles2018 is to try to do more little things to help our environment, I hope that I have always tried to be considerate of our planet.  I recycle as much as I can, rubbish, clothes and household goods and try to think of the environment in my actions. However there is always more that we can do, so this project is of new, little extra things that I’m doing this year to improve our environment.

1. Whilst I normally recycle our Christmas cards, this week I responded to a Twitter request to send the picture half of the card to a women’s prison so they can do Christmas crafts next year.  The cards will be used for a new purpose and the discarded part has been recycled. 
2. I ordered eco cleaning materials to replace the usual products.  I will develop my collection as the remaining products are used up.
3. At work, I have avoided using the disposable plastic cups at the side of our water cooler and brought a glass to the machine each time.  Sometimes it has meant a walk back to my office to collect a glass but I reckon I have saved 2 or 3 plastic cups every work day so far.

 

Firstly a confession, I never make new year’s resolutions, but this year I am because something has turned in me and I need to do something.  When I was younger I was proud of my ethics and teenage girl protests, I discussed  nagged my parents not to buy goods from South Africa in the apartheid era, poor Dad was never allowed to buy Gillette razors for their refusal to stop testing on animals and the Body Shop was the shop of my dreams.  Through to adulthood, I kept my values, carefully recycling, writing to my favourite clothes shops to ask of their working practices to ensure that my clothes were being made for a fair wage etc..  And then I became complacent, I thought the battle to ensure that products were not tested on animals had been won with legislation in the UK, I presumed that the kerbside recycling meant that we were becoming greener as a country and simply pottered along.  However I have read a number of articles recently and watched some video footage and have had that sad realisation that things aren’t as rosy as I had hoped.  If companies wish to sell their beauty and skincare products in China, they must be tested on animals before they are allowed to sell in the country, so some companies who have maintained a cruelty free product in the UK are rejecting this to sell to the large Chinese market.  Suddenly products which I believed to be cruelty free are no longer, my ‘I finally found the perfect’ foundation is no longer perfect, my beloved Essie nail varnishes have lost their gloss.  I’ve also watched videos of the damage being done by our obsession with plastic and our throw away attitude and how we need to act to protect our planet.  I am not an eco warrior, I’m simply someone trying to do little things to help our eco system so that we have a healthy world to live on and to be proud to pass it on to future generations.

As a new year’s resolution it has a pretty big remit, so I thought I would use my blog to post some updates on what I’m doing and why I’m doing it, using the hashtag #ecosparkles2018.  I’m not sure how this will look, but we’ll let it develop organically as time progresses.  However I know that the first thing I am doing is compiling a list of cruelty free brands which do not trade in China and to use this list to replace the unacceptable items in my make up bag as they are finished.  My other quick fix resolution is not to use any new plastic bags next year or take away coffee cups.

There will be other actions as I research more and try to take positive steps towards improving my environment and I hope to include many links too for others to look at the arguments.  Here’s to a greener 2018.

Resources I’ve used so far …

Make up and Toiletries 

https://www.crueltyfreekitty.com

Whilst this is an American website, it has lots of useful information on multi national companies and their policies.  It also helps you to work out who owns which brands.

 

http://www.elleuk.com/beauty/make-up/articles/a31152/11-cruelty-free-makeup-brands/

This is a really useful introduction to some cruelty free brands.

http://crueltyfreeproducts.co.uk/cruelty-free-makeup-brands/

This website has an excellent database of manufacturers for inspiration.

http://crueltyfreeproducts.co.uk/companies-that-test-on-animals/

The same website has this page of companies who sell in China and therefore accept testing on animals.  To me this was difficult reading when many favourites are on it.

Environmental Pollution / The use of plastics 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-42264788

Some worrying graphics about plastic in our environment

https://secure.greenpeace.org.uk/page/s/plastics-pledge-v3?source=pr&subsource=clpledge

A pledge to help reduce your plastic use.

https://www.zerowasteweek.co.uk/zero-waste-week-day-1-plastic/

This article looks at different types of plastic packaging.

http://www.greeneducationfoundation.org/nationalgreenweeksub/waste-reduction-tips/tips-to-use-less-plastic.html

More ideas here, some so simple, stop chewing gum and using straws.