Mum, I need your help

JD has been away for five months teaching skiing in Switzerland.  She has been sharing a chalet with 11 other ski instructors for the season. Last Sunday, a couple of days before she was due to come home, I got a WhatsApp message saying, "Please can I ring you?"

As I message back, "Of course," my heart is racing and my stomach is churning. What is wrong? The three minutes it takes her to ring me back seemed like three hours. Then finally...

"Mum, I need your help!" Her voice is shaky. I am scared...really scared.

"Mum, it's awful, there's so much food left. I can't use it all up. I am trying to pack as much as I can but I can't fit it all in. What can I do?"

My answer (after silencing my massive sigh of relief)...The pub, of course!

JD's favourite pub was Pub Montfort.  It's a popular pub with 'seasonaires' and JD was a regular visitor.  Although there would be lots of seasonaires leaving, I felt sure she would find a few people staying on for the famed mountain biking in the resort.

So JD and one of her fellow instructors packed up the remaining food from the cupboards and fridges into a couple of big bags and set off up the hill to the pub.  She said she was a little tentative, but in fact, when she got there she and her food offerings were very well received.  Everything was welcomed - yes, the pack of pasta with just one portion left,  a 'random mustard and honey sauce', half a bottle of cooking oil, the remains of three boxes of salt, various more interesting and complete items, two part rolls of cling film and she said she could never have imagined the excitement caused by dishwasher tablets.  Apparently no-one ever wants to buy dishwasher tablets so they are a rare luxury in a seasonaire household.

I was very glad that my daughter managed to waste nothing and was interested to hear about the last Verbier feast, which apparently mixed baked beans and lentils - who knew that was a thing?  And, 'not gonna lie' as they say, it was a proud mummy moment when I realised that I have set a good example to my children, and one they are happy to follow.

But... sometimes things back fire, don't they?

Not long after enjoying listening to the tale of the food bags and their trip to the pub as well as JD's interesting innovations in the kitchen, that she has promised to repeat for us sometime, disaster struck.  On unpacking one of her bags, she was puzzled to find some brown powder on her ski jacket (well technically my ski jacket, but we won't go there!). She thought it was some form of make-up spillage, but when I start to poke my nose in, I discover the tub of cocoa, with its lid half off.  It went everywhere.  In fact I can smell cocoa as I write this. We both keep going back to the task of hoovering everything clean and we are still not done. The creatures in my compost heap will probably be on a chocolate high for weeks.

Cocoa filled hoover!

Shame the cocoa missed the trip to the pub!

The Plastic Bag Tax

Bring it on!

From 2015, shops will be required by law to charge 5p to customers for a 'single use' plastic bag.

Ok, so I know they are not actually single use, in that we often use plastic bags for other things than just to get our shopping home.  But the point is, by having this system of being able to use brand new bags each time we shop it's creating a huge environmental problem.

A while ago, Sainsbury's removed their 'single use' plastic bags from the tills and just had the 'Bag for Life' bags available which cost 10p.  But for reasons I'm not party to (but probably involving being scared to lose customers to supermarkets that didn't follow suit) they stopped the initiative and back came the plastic bags, cluttering up the till area and cramping our packing space.

It is just so much nicer in France where there are no bags at all in the packing area of the till.  And people, funnily enough, don't seem to forget their shopping bags.   Well, if your only alternative is to go to the customer service desk, queue up behind all the people who need their complicated enquiries answered, and wait to be served, so you can purchase a sturdy and quite pricey shopping bag, then you're unlikely to forget a second time, right?

Now, I've heard people arguing for the need to get a constant weekly supply of shopping bags, just in case they run out at home.  Well, I've used reusable shopping bags for at least 5 years now - probably nearer ten - and, d'you know what?  I still have a whole stash of single use carrier bags in my recycling cupboard - despite twice taking several bags to my local charity shop.  All these bags are just the ones left by other people bringing stuff into my house in single use plastic bags.

Maybe once the tax comes into place, my plastic bag holder will become redundant, but I guess they mount up because I don't find a use for them very often.

You've got two years to practise!  The law doesn't come in until the autumn of 2015.  All you need to do, is follow two tips from my book, 101 Ways to Live Cleaner and Greener for Free.

Simples, says the Meerkat!

For more waste reduction tips that save you a fortune too, you could buy the book! http://viewbook.at/101Ways.

Recycling your mascara

I don't do landfill.

But even in West Oxfordshire, where there is a fantastic kerbside collection for most packaging, there are still sometimes things that can't be collected by the local council for recycling.

So, what to do with them?

I have a policy that, unless I really feel I need something, I will avoid it if I don't know how I can recycle or reuse it at the end of its life.

But, I have a family and I have friends, and thats' not a rule that is always at the forefront of the mind of everybody who has cause to dispose of something while in my house.

So, I have a little collection in my 'recycling cupboard' of things I don't know what to do with.

One of those things, until recently was cosmetics packaging.  The problem with cosmetics packaging is that it is often made of mixed materials, and often made in part of hard plastic, two things that make it hard to recycle.


So I was excited to find out that the cosmetics company Origins have set up a recycling scheme at their cosmetics counters.  The great thing about their scheme is that you can recycle any cosmetics packaging through them, not just their own packaging.

So, I used the locator on their website to find out where their nearest collection point was and then planned to go there yesterday after a meeting I had nearby.  I had a fairly large bag of various packages - my own, Senior Daughter's, Junior Daughter's and JD's best friend.  So I felt the extra mile to pop in to the town centre was well worth it, and I was rewarded with a free sample of Origins products, Recyclebank rewards (and a warm, smug feeling from doing my bit for the planet).  I'd recommend it!

Credit Crunch Carrots

In a mad moment we decided to dig up all our carrots yesterday.

In true Rosie style - stable door and horse bolted style - I Googled 'How to Store Carrots' after having dug up the entire crop.

Yes, I know, we always get everything wrong. And digging up the entire crop wasn't the first gardening sin we'd committed. For a start we didn't bother with thinning except when we wanted a few carrots for dinner - when instead of weeding out the weediest ones we picked the biggest. Well, if you want to eat them, then why not pick the biggest?

First sin, don't thin.

So, for my second sin, what did Google tell me about how to store my carrots? That's right! The best way to store carrots is in the ground. Ah well! Too late for that.

I continued my Googing and was pleased to learn from the World Carrot Museum - did you even dream there'd be such a thing? - that carrots will actually increase their vitamin A content during the first five months of storage. Yay! A glimmer of hope.

I decided that since I couldn't exactly plant my carrots again I ought to try to find them the next best thing, so I found two old bread crates someone had kindly left behind after a party (you see it sometimes pays to never throw anything away!)and filled them with a layer of soil from my vegetable garden. Then I sorted through my carrots and picked only the perfect ones, laying them in neat rows on the layer of soil. I then covered them over and started a new layer. My crop from one packet of seeds, which has kept us going through the summer already, amounted to an entire wheelbarrow full which turned into three layers of perfect carrots in each crate and a large number of 'rejects'.

Hopefully this way we'll get to eat more than the mice and slugs will!

The rejects have now been scrubbed and cut up into chunks (taking out any bad bits) and I'm making them into soup - one batch for now and one for the freezer. The only slight problem is, I've eaten so many carrots while I chopped I'm worried I might be tinged with orange. Oh well, better than fake tan!

Water

Water is something that in many parts of the world is seen as the most precious commodity. Yet in the UK, often we take it for granted. Be honest, how many times have you poured away water that you've taken out with you on a trip or taken up to bed with you and not drunk?

A while ago it occurred to me that I could be using this water rather than pouring it down the sink.

I found an old plastic watering can – the kind that was used for watering houseplants – and I keep this on the windowsill by the sink. So now when I take bottles of water out school bags and sports bags or glasses of water from around the house I tip the water into the watering can rather than down the sink.

I use this water to rinse the sink and to rinse out glass bottles and other packaging for the recycling. Best of all, when the watering can is full I use this as my cue to water my houseplants. They are looking a lot healthier since I introduced this new system, which probably goes to show just how much water we used to waste.

How do you charge your mobile phone?

Ofcom report some interesting findings in their UK Communications Market Review 2008.

The report tells us that :

"Although nearly three-quarters of consumers (72%) say that they care about the environment and take it into account in their personal lives, only 39% say that they compare environmentally-friendly aspects when purchasing communications devices."

The report suggest this may be because less than a third of consumers think it is easy to compare energy use of different devices. Ofcom say that Energy Saving Labels are an important way of trying to improve customer knowledge about efficiency, but 50% of consumers say they are not aware of energy labels.

The report says that " only 30% are aware of the obligation for retailers to take back and recycle old equipment free of charge when purchasing a new device under the Waste Electronic and Electrical Equipment Directive, and only 7% appear to have taken advantage of this."

Source: Ofcom (2008), UK Communications Market Review 2008: Interactive Key Points available at: http://comment.ofcom.org.uk/cmr08/

Their findings also show that many consumers use unnecessary power by charging their mobile phones up overnight, not switching off broadband wireless routers when they are not in use, and not switching off Television set-top boxes.

I try to charge my mobile phone in the car using energy produced as a by-product. My children tell me they no longer charge up their phones overnight since they realised how much energy this wastes. However, my first New Year's Resolution for 2009 must be to turn off my router. Next on my hit list will be the Sky Box. Problem is I don't understand how it works – how many of us say that though, and it is no excuse. So 2009 will be the year in which I find out exactly when the Sky Box needs to be on and when it doesn't. It is not going to rule my life anymore – I will pull that plug.

Have a look at this:

Ofcom UK CMR 2008 Charts

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: ofcom uk)

Litter

It costs nothing to take your litter home.

New EU laws for Recycling Batteries

BBC News reported this morning that Britons will be expected to recycle far more batteries under a new European law which is coming into effect. The EU batteries directive requires that an eighth of all portable domestic batteries sold are recycled by 2012, rising to a fifth by 2016. At the moment only 3% of batteries in the UK are recycled and the government will now be expected to ensure the necessary facilities are in place. Read full article

 

Our local council run kerbside collection takes batteries for recycling. They ask that batteries are kept separate from other recyclables within your recycling box.

 

This whole issue, though, made me wonder why we don't always use rechargeable batteries and this led to thoughts about the environmental impact of disposable versus recyclable batteries. Think I might do some research.

 

Last year I bought one of these Freeloader gizmos. It was quite expensive and I have hardly used it. Most of the time I can't seem to find the right attachment to charge what I need and annoyingly neither of my children's mobile phones would connect to it despite the multitude of adapters. But perhaps it is time to give it another try. Are there any success stories about these things?

Night Visitor

Well I certainly never dreamt I'd be posting this!

My turn to do the lift share to football training. Rounding the last corner, we could see there was something looming in the middle of the road. As we approached we saw it was two badgers scrapping. As we edged forward gradually, they both looked up at us and ran up the lane. We followed slowly, expecting them to dart off into the hedge. They headed on up the lane, not seeming too worried that we were following them. Every now and then they stopped to resume the scrap.

One then swung a left and disappeared through the hedge but the other carried on running down the middle of the road looking like it had a firm idea of where it was going. On and on it went, until it too eventually turned off the lane - into our driveway!

 

101 ways to reduce your carbon footprint for free

As I was being 'dissed' yet again for my recycling habits, I came up with the idea of putting together a list of 101 ways to reduce your carbon footprint for free. Free? Yes, absolutely free.

I thought I'd have no trouble coming up with hundreds of little things that we could all do that would be more environmentally friendly but didn't cost a penny. Surely it would be a doddle!

Well, it wasn't.

The ridiculous thing about « going green » is that it so often costs more than not being green. It costs more in terms of time and effort, and all too often, it costs more in terms of hard cash.

There may well be lots of things with long-term savings, but realistically, for many of us on this planet cash-flow comes first. It is the initial spend that we think about, rather than the long-term cost saving.

This, to me, is an important issue governments face that they could do something about but don't. Would it really be that hard to structure all taxation, vat and so on, to always favour the green option?

 

That said, the list is growing …..