18 green words to live by

We are at a critical point. Time is running out to stop catastrophic climate change that will threaten our very existence. It is great to see so many people making and promoting positive environmental changes and we need to build on this and we all need to change the way we lead our lives. To do his most of us need a complete change in the way we approach our lives because everything we do had an effect on the planet. We need rewire our brains so that we automatically lead our lives in a way that is sustainable. In that way we don't need to wait for Governments and businesses to make the necessary changes - we can do it first and lead the way.

Whatever we are doing we need to remember keywords that will help make our life choices the ones that don't damage our planet. 

 

Less

We really need to be buying less stuff. We need to be using less energy and wasting less stuff including food.  The worst culprits are single use, disposable items but we need to buy less of everything because when we buy new stuff older items are thrown away.  In other words we live in a linear economy (raw materials are processed into a new, often single use products that are thrown away after use) when what we need to have is a circular economy - an economic system aimed at eliminating waste and the continual use of resources. 

Circular Economy Explained. Image from Deceleration.News

We can help shift from linear to circular if we think before we buy anything: We all know the 3 Rs but there are actually a lot more words we need to get into the habit of thinking about. Reduce, Re-use, Recycle are great but let's build on these three - we also need Repair, Upcycle, Downcycle, Repurpose, Re-home, Borrow, Lend, Share, Compost, Re-evaluate (what is actually important to us), Reject (what we don't need), Long-lasting (buy quality products), Make (our own) ... they might not make a very catchy acronym but once you start applying these ideas to your everyday life you are making important steps towards changing to that all important circular economy and a sustainable future. 

These words will also help:

Local

Buying from local producers means you are cutting down of transport, supporting strong local communities and helping the people who are closest too you. Less money is lost to the super rich CEOs of mega corporations with their often excessively wasteful lifestyles from obscenely large houses to private jets etc.

Seasonal

I am old enough to remember when you could only get strawberries for a few short weeks in summer and now, when-ever I see a recipe that combines ingredients from different seasons I got so cross.  Before you buy fresh produce ask yourself if it is in season because if not you can bet it travelled from afar.  Get into the habit of checking where your food comes from as supermarkets will often import foods even when they are in season locally.

Plastic-free

It is difficult to see where we stand on the war against plastic. In many ways we are losing with plastic filling every corner of our lives but it is also encouraging to see the growth in non-plastic products. The more the public buys these the more they will be produced, siple suppy ad demand. So think plastic before you buy anything, both the product itself and the packaging and choose those items with the least plastic. But remember, if you have plastic items keep using them and only replace them with plastic free ones when they are broken and really cannot be repaired.  

So now I have got you thinking green and becoming more environmentally friendly.  These are general terms to where we should all be aiming and unfortunately their vagueness is seized upon by businesses and used to to Greenwash the public. 

Greenwashing

Greenwashing is behaviour or activities that make people believe that a company is doing more to protect the environment than it really is. Environment damaging companies run campaigns to try and improve their images but they are meaningless in terms of what they actually say.  Many businesses label their products or services as "environmentally friendly" and "green" but again, once you dig just a little bit deeper you see they are, at best, meaningless and, at worst, more damaging than something not labelled in this way. It is all just green spin.  This blog post explains more about Greenwashing. But as you continue your journey to making good environmental choices it will become easier to recognise these non-environmental wolves in sheep's green clothing especially when you apply the keywords highlighted in this blog:

Less, Circular Economy, 

Repair, Upcycle, Downcycle, Repurpose, 

Re-home, Borrow, Lend, Share, 

Compost, 

Re-evaluate (what is actually important to us), 

Reject (what we don't need), Long-Lasting (buy quality products),

Make (our own), 

Local, Seasonal, 

Plastic-free,

Greenwashing.

 Do you think these keywords will help you live more sustainably?  Have you any others you would like to add? 

Green Bog Round Up - February 2020

Each month I am putting together a post with some of green themed blogs I have come across over the preceding month. Here are my favourites for February 2020 and if you have any interest subjects such as reducing waste, plastic free living, carbon offsetting and green cleaning then you will find at least one blog post here to enjoy.

Helen from Spot of the Earth reviewed her local Zero Waste Shop
You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook

Aaron from The Busy Papa will help us reduce fridge waste with this post.
You can find him on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest

Teja on the Horizon wrote about Carbon Offsetting based on your personality
You can follow her on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram

With Summer on the way Justine from Little Green Duckie talks about how to having wet wipe free festival fun!
You can follow her on Facebook and Twitter

Spring Cleaning must be in the air as two bloggers have written about natural cleaning: 

Trail  of Breadcrumbs wrote about the simplicity of Green Cleaning  
You can follow this Trail of Breadcrumbs (see what I did there?!) on Twitter and Pinterest

and so did Isabel from Sustainable, Responsible Living  - Cleaning with Natural Products

You can follow her on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest.

Whilst we are talking Spring Cleaning I wanted to also highlight this post. I have recently become aware of cleaning influencers on instagram and how they are pushing their followers to use ridiculous amounts of cleaning products. This overuse is a disaster both for anyone who uses this amount of cleaners (something I blogged about before) and for the environment. One of these influencers, a brand ambassador for P&G, has over 3 million followers and in the unregulated world of instagram is able to post stories promoting their excess use whilst also showing unsafe ways to store these dangerous chemicals aka laundry tabs.  I can see no better reason to stop using these commercial cleaning products than the facts that they need child proof lids (that should NEVER be removed) and 7000 cases of ingestion were reported in a one year period and 6 deaths since have been attributed to people eating them. (source).

Finally I wrote a post about making environmental connections:

Find A Green and Rosie Life on Facebook, Instagram (joint page with the gite), Twitter and Pinterest.

... and don't forget you can follow my #DailyGreenTips over on my A Green and Rosie Life Facebook page.

If you have a blog post you would like to be added in the March roundup please do get in touch.  Posts need to be current and on any of these subjects:

• Recipes with seasonal and/or foraged ingredients
• Organic gardening and attracting wildlife to your garden
• The 4 Rs and a U - Reduce, Re-use, Recycle, Repair and Upcycle.
• Natural crafting
• Waste and energy reduction.
• Conservation posts - helping wildlife, wild flowers and their habitats.
• Connecting kids to Nature
• Discussions on green, sustainable, ethical, organic, environmental subjects such as:
• Green hobbies
• Green technology/advances
• Green politics
• Good environmental practice 
• Greenwashing 
• Sustainability and you

.... and lots more besides.  If you have a current post with a theme that is green, sustainable, ethical, organic, fair trade, environmental, seasonal or local please do get in touch and I'll include it in next month's round-up.

What our fast fashion habit is doing to the planet

The term fast fashion has changed slightly over recent years. It originally meant the practice of high street clothes stores producing cheap clothes, quickly, based on clothes on the cat walks of the most recent fashion shows.  Now, though, it has taken on somewhat of a further sense to mean the way many people view and use cheap clothes - fast fashion is where people buy a fashionable item, wear it once once or twice and then throw it away.  The clothes are generally cheap, imported and of low quality but the wearer doesn't see or care about this.  They buy them to satisfy their Fast Fashion Habit.  In fact, the term Single Use Clothing could be used in many cases.

Do more for the planet by buying less

If there is ONE thing we can all to to help reduce our impact on the planet is is to BUY LESS ... and that includes so called green or eco-friendly alternatives.  Let me explain using one commonly used item as an example:

** Wet Wipes **

The first wet wipes appeared in the late 1950's but it is in the last few years that they have really taken off - our supermarket shelves and online shops are groaning under the weight of wipes for everything - for bottoms from the cradle to the grave, for every surface in your house and beyond, for make-up removal, for hands and faces, for screens, for pets ... wipes for pets??  That was a new one on me!

What EXACTLY is Climate Change?

I am sure we have all heard the term Climate Change but do you really know what it means and what effect it will have on the earth?  Are each of us really responsible and is there anything, as individuals, we can do to minimise its negative effects?

If you search for a definition of Climate Change you will find various ways to describe what it is and this one is typical:

Climate Change

A change in global or regional climate patterns, in particular a change apparent from the mid to late 20th century onwards and attributed largely to the increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide produced by the use of fossil fuels.

A-Z of Going Green, one step at a time.

I am going to make any specific New Year Resolutions this year.  Instead I am going to try and follow the A-Z Going Green, one step at a time.  Are you with me?  Will you make 2018 the year of Going Green?

My kitchen table - my life

This was my kitchen table yesterday and I realised that it summed up my life so well and what I hope to achieve on a daily basis.  Let me take you on a journey round my kitchen table/life ...

Starting top left and going clockwise:

Bowl of bread dough rising - this one is pumpkin bread and it turned out really tasty.  The sharp eyed among you may notice the dough is covered with plastic and you would be right.  It is a bag that had tortilla wraps in it and after being used several times to freeze things it split so got downgraded to a bread cover.

My 13 year old Nokia phone - yup, I really do have an original Nokia and it is at least 13 years old.  Dare I ask how many phone upgrades you have had in 13 years?

2 tea towels - these came from my Mum's house after we cleared it out.  We tried to salvage as much as possible of things that could not be given to charity or sold on/recycled.

Am I really green because ...

I am not a vegan?

But what about all those vegan foods that are imported from the other side of the world.  Maybe I should only ...

Shop Locally?

But what if I can only get non organic produce or factor farmed meat locally.  I need to ...

Only Eat Organic

But you know what?  My organic shop sells a lot of processed foods, non local foods and those made with palm oil.  So let's go ...

Palm Oil Free

Looking good until you realise that the only palm oil free peanut butter you can buy comes in a plastic jar.  So the answer must be to ...

Go Zero-Waste

Sounds great until I tell you that the nearest bulk store for me is miles away without any public transport so think of all that fuel I'd use to get there.  So I need to become ...

Self Sufficient

Now in fairness I do grow a lot of my own produce.  And so it is local .... and organic ... and palm oil free and very low on waste.  BUT, I raise and eat my own animals (and use their manure to fertilise the soil) so I am well and truly not a vegan which takes me neatly back to the start of this post.

My Green Summer

I pretty much took a break from blogging this summer - partly I was too busy and something had to give and partly my internet connection was playing silly whatsits and was often so slow (or even dead) that it made working online almost impossible.  I am keeping everything crossed that will behave itself from now on.

So I though I would take this opportunity to share with you some of my green moments from the summer of 2017.  I'd love to hear what you have been up to too.

Family Time

The boys and Simon went camping in the UK for a while and when they were here we had some great times playing games such as Settlers of Catan and Molkky (Finnish skittles made from wood), visiting local landmarks including our favourite castle at Falaise (birthplace of William the Conqueror) and taking some lovely walks around the Normandy countryside.

Playing Molkky

Does Zero Waste need a re-brand?

I have always been pretty good at not wasting too much stuff.  I think it brushed off from my mother who was born just before WWII and spent all her early years eeking things out, making them last and only throwing them away when they really had reached the point of zero usefulness. As her generation grew into young adults they took 2 very different paths.  Some threw off the shackles of the austere war years and others, like my Mum just carried on as before.  Those who changed started to buy more things and would have seen their waste levels creep up. They enjoyed the convenience of ready meals as they started to appear in the shops in the 70s and as they had money and things were freely available nobody questioned if they wasted some food, threw away the Christmas wrapping paper of filled their bin with plastic packaging etc.  In contrast we never wasted food and Mum knew how to make meals from left-overs, we had to open our presents carefully so the paper could be reused for the next year (and the one after that) and my mother did not waste her money on a lot of stuff she felt we didn't need ... stuff that was increasingly to be found in more and more packaging.

All this rubbed off on me. At university I read Environmental Science and a friend once pointed out that I was Green long before it was trendy to be so.

Fast forward a few years though, and with the advent of the Internet I learnt of a whole new level of waste reduction that I could never have envisaged >>> Zero-Waste. I saw pictures of zero-wasters holding a small glass jar containing their entire waste for a year – in some cases even more than that. Oh my goodness me. I thought I was good at not creating waste but it seems I am not. No, there are zero-wasters out there who have all but eliminated waste in their lives.

Image from Inhabitat

Take the 100 step plastic reduction challenge

In our modern world is is impossible to avoid plastic.  It is all around us that in many cases we probably do not even notice it yet its negative effect on the planet is devastating.  Plastic is made from fossil fuels that were laid down many millions of years ago, locking up carbon and you can read more about why this is so bad in a recent blog I wrote - 100 ways to reduce your plastic use. Scientists estimate that there are 269,000 tons of plastic pollution may be floating in the world's oceans made up of some 5.25 TRILLION plastic particles.  We are even eating plastic and microplastic particles have been found in mussels, oysters and sea scallops.  It is even estimated that by 2050 there will be more plastic, by weight, in the ocean than fish.  That is plastic that YOU and I have used and thrown away. 

Image from the Marine Conservation Society

Weekly Green Tips #38 - Keeping Old Clothes out of Landfill

Week 38 - Keeping old clothes out of landfill

Many people add decluttering to their New Year Resolutions which may well include thinning down the contents of the wardrobe ... or maybe with all that weight loss you've achieved some clothes are too big now!  What-ever your reason for getting rid of clothes though, there are far better things you can do with them besides chucking them in the bin where they end up in landfill.

Weekly Green Tips #33 - 7 Tips to Reduce Christmas Waste

Week 33 - Tips to Reduce Christmas Waste

Christmas is a time for giving and receiving but the downside of this is it is also a time of huge waste.  Unilever estimated that in 2014 the equivalent of 4.2 million Christmas dinners were chucked away i.e. around 263,000 turkeys and over 7 million mince pies.  Each year some 1.12 billion cards are sent in the UK with no way of knowing how many end up in landfill.  There is more ....each Christmas the UK public throws away:

> 226,800 miles of wrapping paper
> 125,000 tons of plastic wrapping
> 10 million items of turkey packaging.
> 25 million Christmas pudding packets

And this is just the UK - multiply these figures up across the world and we are looking at an unimaginable amount of waste.  So what can we do to reduce the amount of waste each Christmas generates?  Here are my top 7 tips to reduce Christmas waste.

Weekly Green Tips #28 to #30 - 21 ways to cook efficiently

Week 28 to 30 - Cooking Efficiently 

Apologies for the lack of Weekly Green Tips over the last 2 weeks but I have been away on holiday.  So to catch up here is a triple bonus post with 21 ways you can cook more efficiently and thus reduce how much energy (gas/electricity) you use when preparing meals.  I hope you enjoy them as much as the food you prepare. 

Image from Pixabay

Weekly Green Tips - 7 Uses for Old Newspapers

Week 25 - Reusing newspaper

Newspaper is easy to recycle but as with all paper it cannot be recycled indefinitely as the quality reduces too much and there are also the energy costs involved in transporting the paper to be recycled and the process itself.  Not long ago it would wrap your Friday night fish and chips but not any more so finding other uses for your daily read makes good environmental sense.

Image from Pixabay

100 ways to reduce your plastic use

Synthetic plastic has only been around since 1907 yet it is now found in almost every aspect of our lives.  Looking at my somewhat chaotic desk I can see plastic in or on all these items - the film covering books, a pack of labels and some chocolate I am trying hard not to eat, my laptop and mouse, my phone, a lamp, my glasses case,  a pen pot, a lighter, a flexi dog lead, sellotape and its holder, a tube of glue, a plastic bag full of loose change, a thermometer, a small pot, pens, scissors, a DVD case, the plastic coating on my spiral notepads ..... OK so I have a messy desk but it makes you realise how all pervading plastic is.  Recently I bought a jar of rollmop herrings.  I thought I was doing OK not buying plastic as they came in a glass jar with a metal lid but when I opened them I saw that the rolled herrings were no longer held together with a small wooden peg as previously but with a PLASTIC one.  Plastic is everywhere and this is not a good thing for us or our environment.

Why is Plastic Bad for the Environment?

1.  Plastic is made from non-renewable petrochemicals and natural gas whose extraction process produces large amounts of toxins that are harmful to wildlife and the workforce involved.

2.  Its manufacture adds to atmospheric CO₂ levels leading to global warming.

3.  It is non biodegradable but it will break down to toxic components which can affect wildlife and enter our drinking water thus affecting us.

4. It is difficult to recycle so most ends up in landfill.  That plastic bottle you put in the recycling does not get made into a new bottle but gets down-cycled to polyester which is then not recyclable.

5.  It is a major constituent of litter - this is both unsightly and a danger to wildlife.  Much of this litter ultimately ends up in our oceans causing major problems to the marine ecosystem.  It is estimated that the weight of plastic in the oceans is equal to 50% of the total weight of marine life.

A Future for Recycling?

Recycling.  We all do it to a lesser or greater degree.  We separate out plastic, glass, paper, cans etc placing them in whichever bin our council says we should and get that slightly warm and fuzzy feeling that we have just done our bit to help the environment.

However is recycling always the best way to deal with much of our our rubbish?

Brexit and the UK Environment

One of the arguments for voting Leave in the EU referendum was that EU bureaucrats exerted too much control on the UK, forcing member states to accept too many regulation that maybe they would better without.  Too much red tape.  Too many stupid rules.  In some cases, yes, this may have been true but when it comes to the environment the EU has been instrumental in getting some pretty good cross-European policies adopted.  Let me give you a few examples

What has the EU ever done for the UK Environment?

Wildlife

Natural species do not understand man-made boundaries and therefore having environmental policies that stretch across Europe has helped to protect vulnerable species.  High environmental standards and a legal framework across Europe together with EU funding has protected many species in the UK; the bittern is a good example.  This large but secretive bird was on the brink of extinction in the UK due to loss of its habitat - reed beds.  Funding from the EU via the EU Birds and Habitats Directives enabled reed beds to be re-established and now the bittern population is rising.  And not only has the bittern benefited - other reed bed species are now thriving and this in itself encourages green tourism that helps the local economy.

Bittern - Image from Flickr

The Future of our World is in our Hands

Today, June 5th is World Environment Day.

We only have one world - THIS world and it is our responsibility to protect it for our children and all the generations to come.

Everything we do has has impact on our world but there is plenty each and every one of us can do to reduce the damage we do.

Here are links to blogs I write every Friday in my series called Weekly Green Tips giving simple positive steps we should all be taking.

So starting today, on World Environment Day, let's work together to make the earth a better place.

Weekly Green Tips #5 - 7 Tips to Make your Holiday Green

Week 5 - Green Holidays

It's easy to be green when at home but what about when you go on holiday.  What steps can you take to ensure your holiday is as green and therefore as sustainable as possible.  Here are 7 ways to help you.

1. Go independent

Booking a holiday direct with a cottage owner is generally better for the local environment.  It means all the rental goes to them without a chunk of it lining the pockets of large multinational corporations who are more interested in profit than sustainability. Independent holiday cottage owners buy locally, support their local economy/community and encourage local prosperity which are all good for helping to maintain regional diversity and the distinct character of where you are on holiday.  By all means use the big companies to find a holiday but then search online for their own website. There are also numerous Facebook Groups such as Book Your Holiday Direct with the Owner.