Progress check

I have been sadly neglecting my blog lately so thought it was time for a progress check. How am I doing with the low-waste habits?

The positive points:

- we are shopping at the local independent shops more often. This has cut down on plastic waste especially meat and fish trays, and we are much better at avoiding impulse buys. From the butcher in particular we are finding the produce much tastier, too. We try to cycle there and so it also keeps us fit! (Particularly cycling back with laden panniers :)

- we are buying some things in bulk to reduce packaging - yogurt in 500g pots and dried fruit/nuts weighed out to order and put in paper bags.

- most of the time there are home baked cakes/flapjacks in the cupboard instead of packaged cereal bars.

- I make a point of saving foil and miscellaneous metal (bottle caps etc.) as I know that can go to the recycling centre now.


Still needs work:

- we still buy some things in unavoidable plastic packaging: celery, spinach, cheese (occasionally), yogurt (although see above), pasta, rice. These last two could maybe be bought in bulk, but I haven't seen large packs of wholemeal pasta or brown rice anywhere.

- I am doing longer runs now and need to consume energy gels which come in foil/plastic sachets. I might try going back to jelly babies! But the gels are easier to eat on the move.

- we haven't yet invested in any reusable containers of a suitable size for buying meat, fish etc.

- I need to get another reusable water bottle for travelling. With the liquids regulations on planes, airports even seem to be reluctant to let you take an empty "disposable" bottle through security, so you have to bin it and buy another (cunning). At least at Luton they had recycling bins for them. I had a flyer from Jarrolds this week telling me about new recycled plastic water bottles, UK-made, that they are selling for £8. I can't find the flyer (think I recycled it :) so I can't give more details, but I will probably invest in one of those, to support recycled manufacturing and to help me avoid disposable bottles on the move.


I mention travelling as I was away in Poland this week. Breakfast at the hotel was one of the least waste-friendly operation I have seen in a long time! Although you could help yourself to cereals, juice and milk from large containers, and bread from open baskets, everything else (butter, jam, yogurt, cheese, pate, tea, sugar) was in single-serving plastic cartons with plastic/foil lids. The best effort I have seen was in Germany where everything was help-yourself from bowls and plates, ranging from sliced meat and cheese to yoghurt, cereal and nut/seed toppings.


Just a few thoughts. I feel quite happy with how we are doing, and think that to go further would mean some serious rethinking of the way we live and, particularly, eat. Maybe in the future when the current habits are really entrenched, we'll look at going further towards zero waste?

Happy landings

The Worn Again bag has arrived - hurrah! I mention it again not to gloat (not much :), but because the sum-total of the packaging is as follows:

• a plain re-usable cotton shopping bag, with my address written directly on it
  
• some brown parcel tape
• a paper Worn Again label
  
• Royal Mail labels for postage, Signed For delivery, and Local Collect

Inside, the bag and...

• an order/packaging note (just paper, no fancy returns labels or anything)
  
• a paper Worn Again Virgin label (feels recycled) tied on with raffia string
• a flyer (also feels like recycled paper) about TheNag and AntiApathy climate change action websites

How cool is that? Kudos to Worn Again for showing other companies how it can be done.

I would have actually had it on Friday but I wasn't in to take the parcel - that's phenomenally fast delivery considering I ordered it on Thursday afternoon! I had to have it redelivered to the post office near my workplace, and the unusual packaging was also noted by the counter guy (even if he did just say "I dunno why they put it in that... er... webbing stuff").

I will have to put decoration of the bag on my to-do list, since I'd like to cover up my address! Time to talk to my friend Lizzie about fabric scraps I think :)

Come fly with me

Just a quickie - I have had my eye on these recycled bags for a few weeks, having read about them over on Inhabitat. I browsed over there today to find they have 30% off until the end of January!

Having invested in a laptop, I've been looking for a bag for it, and the Sherman is perfect. Made from recycled Virgin Atlantic aeroplane seat covers, seat belts, and bits of bicycle inner tube, this is a funky bag that should be hard-wearing - and it's a good example of creative re-use. A bit like Alex's cushions the other week! I'm really looking forward to getting it.

Bonus points to Worn Again for swiftly helping me to correct a mistake I made on the order (chose the wrong colour - d'oh). Good job I noticed as they are already processing it!

The best laid plans...

I was polishing my halo last night. Having made the last lot of low-waste festive goodies, for presents at Christmas number 3 this weekend, I had 4 egg whites left over. There are already 4 in the freezer (bit of an experiment, not sure that will work but we'll see) so as the oven was on anyway I figured I'd make meringue.

Over to BBC Good Food for a recipe. Egg whites, sugar, whisk, easy. The meringues even keep well in a tin, or will freeze. Excellent.

I glossed over the instruction "Line 2 baking sheets with Bake-O-Glide non-stick liner or parchment paper (meringue can stick on greaseproof paper and foil)." - I don't have Bake-O-Glide (whatever that might be) or parchment, just good old greaseproof. Besides, I'm standing here with a bowl of meringue mix, it's now 9:30pm, the cooking time is 1h45, and I just need to get on.

Big mistake. I now have a large pavlova-size meringue with a resolutely unpeelable papery bottom. Forget superglue, next time you need to weld something, use egg white and sugar. Bah. I'm going to peel the crunchy bits off the top and save them for a pudding, but everyone knows the gooey middle bits (completely 100% stuck to the paper) are the best. In the bin they go.

So, if there are any other egg white recipes out there, I'd love to hear them. Until I find something less prone to disaster (or invest in some Bake-O-Glide or maybe rice paper), I'm just going to have to find biscuit recipes that don't demand only yolks. Very inconsiderate of chickens not to lay them separately, I say.

That was Christmas...

As the waste blog world is summarising its collective Christmases, I thought I would join in!

We had a pretty low-key Christmas, thinking we would try it at home on our own this year - it was nice, although the family visiting season is now much extended into January. I'm not counting those as Christmas (is that cheating? :)

Our tree is plastic (gasp) but was bought back in hubby's bachelor days and therefore nothing to do with me :) It's decent quality, and will see us through several more years, so I think for now we'll leave the pine needles on the trees in the woods, and not on our carpet. We splashed out on decorations and bought 2 (count 'em) new baubles, loose, which were wrapped in tissue paper. What we didn't do was put our unwanted old decorations on Freecycle - next year!

Pressies given were mainly home baked goodies (gingerbread and shortbread) in cardboard gift boxes. There was barely any non-recyclable waste apart from some butter wrappers and a sugar bag. I chose to use greaseproof paper when packing them, to avoid greasy marks on the gift boxes and make them reusable, but that itself can't be recycled. Choices! We also gave some charity gifts from Good Gifts, gift vouchers, and books.

We'd asked for no pressies, still got a few but they were remarkably good on the whole and included a pretty tin with home made fudge (yum!) and a large Toblerone with cardboard and foil packaging (well thought out, Alex!). Other things like silicone bakeware, a running top and some books all had minimal or no packaging, mostly cardboard. However, special mention has to go to the best and worst packaged items:

• Best: six bottles of good beer from my brother, in a re-used cardboard box, packed with recycled brown paper packing. A consumable present in fully recyclable packaging and wrapping! Bonus points for delivering it in a reusable hessian bag.
• Worst: sad to say it was a Hotel Chocolat Dark Chocolate Immersion box from hubby. Six tablets each of six types of plain chocolate... all individually wrapped in plastic, held in a plastic tray, in a cardboard box that was wrapped in film. (Note that the packaging is not fully shown on the website...)
  

I do appreciate that the flavour is the key with the chocolate (the box came with tasting notes) and so you wouldn't want the types affecting each other - there were ginger, orange and chilli flavours as well as three types of "just chocolate". And the chocolate is absolutely heavenly (yes, there is some left! On twelfth night!). But it is a little bit of a shame to see so much packaging and I have to confess to a brief twinge of disappointment on seeing it (the packaging, not the chocolate). Now that sounds rather mean, and I have to stress that it's no reflection whatsoever on the giver - the scale of packaging simply wasn't apparent until opening. And I suppose if anything I am even more determined to savour and enjoy the contents so that the packaging was not in vain ;)

Food was also a reasonable success. All the fruit and veg came from the greengrocer in paper bags or no bags at all. We visited another local butcher for all our meat, and so there was a small amount of thin plastic waste but no trays or other packaging. We bought a turkey crown and boned ham, so there was minimal food waste there - in fact minimal food waste overall. I didn't get around to making mince pies or bread, so we bought those and a few other sweet and treat bits, and therefore had a few bits of plastic to deal with.

I haven't weighed it all but in a qualitative sense I feel like it's not a bad showing. A bit more planning next year and I'll get those mince pies and snacks sorted too :)

Playing tag

Earlier in the week Mrs Average from The Rubbish Diet tagged me - not once but twice! Well, actually she said to take my pick, but I can't resist doing both ;)

1. Six from six
The sixth image from the sixth folder in my photos directory is above. It's some mushrooms growing on a dead, half-fallen tree in Danby Woods, a small patch of woodland near where I live - I liked the colour of them as a contrast to the blue sky, and thought the shape of them was kind of cute. I suppose you could call them one of nature's recyclers :) One of the things I like about where we live is that we have not only the woods but also Marston Marshes practically on the doorstep, although we don't go specifically *to* them very often. I do run past them quite a lot though!

2. Another six
Six "interesting" facts about me... hmm, tricky! I'll try not to bore everyone to tears :)

Fact 1
I'm into the crazy world of triathlons - races where you swim, bike and then run. I started running a few years ago, and have cycled (commuting) for longer. A couple of years ago some of my neighbours asked if I wanted to come on a bike ride with them, "just 12 miles", so off I went on my trusty (heavy) commuting bike, with all of them on their sleek racing bikes. I not only kept up with them, but I loved it. Said friends tempted me to join them in Tri-Anglia triathlon club, and I started going to swim training too. Since then I have done three sprint (400m pool swim, 20km bike, 3km run) triathlons and two Olympic distance ones (1500m open water swim, 40km, 10km), and I've completed the Norfolk 100 mile charity bike ride. Amusingly I even managed to win the ladies' category in one of the Olympic races (due to low entry numbers I have to say!). Well, it gets me out of the house...

Fact 2
I can drive a Chieftain tank. And assorted other military vehicles. I used to work weekends for some friends with an activity centre (as did a certain Alex), and ended up instructing customers in driving various pieces of kit. They all had their special attributes, but I think I liked the Chieftain the best. Fifty-six tons of very heavy metal, the best part of 700 horsepower, and a LOT of mud. (I'm not reinforcing my environmental credentials much, am I?) I did get a bit of a kick out of confounding some people's expectations, stepping forward from among the other (male) instructors to take the customers over for their tank drive (which was sometimes over a car). Tank grrrrrrl indeed.

Fact 3
I volunteer as crew on a traditional Norfolk Broads wherry. These are the traditional boats of the area, around a hundred years old, with very distinctive large single sail. Crewing involves raising and lowering the sail, raising and lowering the mast for passing under bridges, and quanting (like punting but on a much bigger scale!) when the wind is absent or against us, and of course there's swabbing the decks and making the tea too. Actually since last year I have been chairman of the Friends of Wherry Yacht Charter Trust, looking after three of the eight remaining examples of these beautiful boats. Two of them are sadly not in sailing order - one is being worked on, and the other is waiting patiently for her turn - but we will be out sailing with the beautiful Edwardian pleasure wherry Hathor again next summer. Please come and sail with us, or come and look on board when we are moored up. It's the best way to see the Broads. You can even get involved as a volunteer or member. Just contact me if you want to know more!

Fact 4
I'm a map geek. I love maps, especially Ordnance Survey ones. I can sit and read them for hours, and always have to buy one when we go anywhere new. As I also love taking photos, I was very happy when I learned about the Geograph project - a web-based community project to document the whole of the British Isles, by adding map references and descriptive information to the photos. I don't get time to contribute so much these days, but I still browse often, and have a stash of photos just waiting to be uploaded when I get a free (!) day. I do have over 2,000 already there!

Fact 5
I do like a civilised tipple - real ale is my thing. I'm a paid-up member of CAMRA, and no I don't have a beard. The range of different beers you can get now is amazing, but I have a soft spot for treacly winter ales, easy-drinking dark milds, and fragrant summer beers. Norfolk has lots of excellent breweries, and Mark and I had Tipple's Redhead and Lady Evelyn on offer at our wedding - after a suitably serious tasting session to make sure we'd made the right choice!

Fact 6
Ich lerne Deutsch. I am lucky enough to get "personal and professional development" opportunities at work, and they agreed to pay for me to learn German via an Adult Education course. So, every Wednesday lunchtime I cycle over to King Street in Norwich and join my classmates for two hours of cases, conjunctions and the all important Kaffeepause. I do have work links with Germany - next time I go over there, perhaps I'll get the native-language lowdown on their excellent recycling system :)


That was surprisingly difficult! I'm still quite new to this blogging lark and so I don't have lots of people to tag, but I will tag Waste Free Alex - if only because I know she will have a bloody brilliant photo to share with us :) Thanks for the tag Mrs A!

See what happens...

...when you don't plan ahead and end up doing chunks of your shopping in random bursts? Our bin weights is 1.2kg for the past two weeks. In mitigation I will say it contains a completely stripped chicken carcass, and we have not eaten out as much this fortnight as we have before! There are several meat trays in there, and a bit of ham that hid at the back of the fridge until it was unusable, plus other unrecyclable plastics from pasta, spinach, celery and other things it seems impossible to buy any other way.

Tonight I will knuckle down, make a list, check out the freezer, and see how well I can plan out the week. I have to try and convince Mark that he can shop at the market (all of 200m from his office)! I'll also use up some of the many bananas I brought home from the half marathon leftovers, and turn them into my new favourite banana cake recipe, so there'll be no need to buy cereal bars etc.


Wholesome Banana Chocolate Breakfast Bars
(from 101 Cookbooks via Chocolate and Zucchini)

• 200 grams (2 cups) rolled oats or mixed rolled grains
• 60 grams (2/3 cup) ground almonds, a.k.a. almond meal
• 30 grams (1/3 cup) dried, unsweetened grated coconut
• 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
• 120 grams (4 1/4 ounces) good-quality bittersweet chocolate
• 4 very ripe, medium bananas, about 400 grams (14 ounces) when peeled
• 1/2 teaspoon natural vanilla extract
• 60 ml (1/4 cup) whole almond butter (can substitute olive oil, or slightly warmed coconut oil)

Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F) and grease a 9" square tin (or equivalent) with vegetable oil.

In a medium mixing bowl, combine the oats, ground almonds, coconut, and salt. Set aside. Chop the chocolate so the largest pieces are about the size of a chocolate chip. Set aside.

In another medium mixing bowl, combine the bananas, vanilla, and almond butter, and mash thoroughly using a potato masher. Add the oats mixture and mix well. Fold the chocolate in gently.

Pour into the prepared baking dish, level the surface, and slip into the oven. Bake for 25 minutes, until the top is set and golden-brown. Let cool completely before slicing into bars.

The recipe happens to be vegan, gluten-free, and no added sugar, but primarily the bars are just yummy! Oats, bananas, nuts, a little dark chocolate - all good stuff. A couple of notes on the ingredients: you can get almond butter in health/whole food shops if not in the supermarket. I haven't seen unsweetened shredded coconut (desiccated is too fine I think) so I substituted chopped pecans, but seeds would work well too. I guess you could put good old soaked fruit instead of chocolate.