How many gardeners compost?

Of the 27 million gardeners in the UK, how many do you think compost?

It could be as few as a third, according to a study by the Royal Horticultural Society, the UK’s largest gardening charity. But there is hope for the future with younger people showing more interest than the older generation in learning how to start composting.

The study found that those who compost tend to be older – over 55 – but that age group also showed the most resistance to starting if they didn’t already. The age group most likely to start composting was in the 18-24 age range. Social media is thought to be the reason why more and more young people are getting interested in gardening, or even just cultivating house plants which are especially popular with those living in flats.

Among all ages who took part in the study, a third of those who don’t currently compost said subsidised bins from local councils would get them composting.

We believe there’s a home composting solution for everyone. For example, older people, or those pressed for time, might prefer a Green Cone, which only accepts food waste and requires no aeration or maintenance. It doesn’t actually produce compost but a nutrient-rich liquid that seeps from its underground basket nourishing the surrounding soil. Read about some of our customers’ experiences of using a Green Cone: The long, long life of Green Cone food waste composters (greatgreensystems.com)

Young people with no access to a garden could consider a wormery, which can be kept indoors, and is a great way to turn kitchen waste into food for house plants.

Bokashi bins can also suit those in flats, especially if they can donate the fermented pre-compost that is produced to a friend or neighbour with a composter or to a community or allotment composting project.  Bokashi bins take all food waste along with the addition of beneficial microbes in the form of a spray or bran. The full bin is left to ferment anaerobically (without air) for around two weeks while the contents become a pre-compost mixture which can then be added to a composter or buried in soil. Bokashi juice that is drained from the bin is full of nutrients and can be diluted for use as a feed for house or garden plants. It can also be used undiluted as a drain cleaner. Read our blog about how one family work as a team using a bokashi system: Helping the planet by switching to bokashi composting (greatgreensystems.com)

Studies have shown that the reason why many people don’t compost is fear of getting it wrong.

That is such a shame because really there is no wrong; there is only an imperfect situation in need of a helping hand (as the PR department at Compost HQ might say).

The big thing to realise is that if there’s an issue, there’s a remedy.

Composting is so beneficial for the environment, as well as your garden, that it’s well worth learning the few basic rules to ensure success.

Compost, when added to soil, helps to capture carbon in the atmosphere, improves plant growth, conserves water, reduces reliance on chemical pesticides and fertilisers, and helps prevent nutrient runoff and soil erosion. What’s not to like? It’s estimated that the average amount of compost made by home composting is 280 litres, enough to improve the soil structure of 5 square metres of garden.

There are a few basics to learn with composting but once you know, you know. The facts of nature don’t change. We invest time learning how to use the latest gadget, how much more important to learn how to feed the earth?

Here’s the thing; if things aren’t going great your bin will let you know – usually by starting to smell or looking a bit slimy. If that’s the case we need to go back to basics.

Composting essentials

The basics of composting are about providing good conditions for the insects, micro-organisms and worms that will be digesting the waste. They need three essentials:

  • Waste materials
  •  Water
  • Oxygen

MATERIALS

 The composting creatures in your bin grow thanks to protein in waste materials that are high in nitrogen and they get energy from sugar in waste that is rich in carbon. Your aim is to find the right balance between the amount of nitrogen and carbon.  In composting circles, nitrogen-rich materials are often referred to as Greens and carbon-rich materials as Browns.

Greens (nitrogen-rich) include: food waste, fresh grass, soft leafy plants, fresh leaves and hedge clippings, wilting flowers, tea leaves, plastic-free tea bags, coffee grounds. These items break down quickly and contain moisture so they keep the bin’s contents moist.

Browns (carbon-rich)include: shredded twigs, branches, dead leaves, paper, cardboard, straw, wood chips, sawdust. These contents are drier and slower to break down. They also provide fibre and allow air pockets to form for aeration.

 A mixture that contains half Greens and half Browns is a great place to start for composting. Often people find they have a lot more nitrogen (food waste) than carbon (woody items, dry leaves, paper, cardboard) so it’s a good idea to stockpile these carbon inputs so you have them ready to add with food waste. You can keep them in lidded containers or tied bags close to your composter so that when you add a container of food waste you can add a container of carbon-rich Browns at the same time.

Chopping or shredding woody garden waste (no larger than 5cms) increases the surface area in contact with microbes in the pile.  The finer the compost materials are shredded, the faster the pile heats up. 

If the nitrogen/carbon ratio isn’t ideal the micro-organisms won’t decompose the organic material as quickly. Getting the ratio right can be a case of trial and error but you will learn quickly through paying attention to conditions in the bin. 

Everything has its own carbon/nitrogen ratio but you don’t need a calculator and spreadsheet to work it out. If you plan to balance the amount of carbon and nitrogen in a 50/50 ratio you won’t go far wrong. Adding bokashi bran will also help to speed up decomposition by adding more microbes to the mix.

Your composting ratio might not be something that you get right immediately. Knowing how much carbon to add to your pile is something that compost-makers are constantly figuring out.

WATER

You want your compost pile to be moist, rather than wet or dry. The materials should feel damp like a wrung-out sponge.  The ideal water content is around 50 per cent. You can check this by using a moisture monitor or by doing the ‘squeeze test’:  take a large handful of compost and squeeze – only one or two drops of liquid should be produced.

Microbes struggle if their environment is too wet or too dry. They need water to live, yet too much moisture can limit the amount of oxygen they receive. If compost is too wet, it will start to smell. If this happens you need to add shredded paper and cardboard and mix well to absorb moisture and make the contents drier. 

If you need to add water to compost that is becoming dry, use rainwater from a water butt if you can rather than tap water.

OXYGEN

The fastest form of composting is done by aerobic organisms that need oxygen.  To give microbes air to breathe we need to add air to the mixture by aerating regularly to make sure there’s oxygen throughout the bin.

Wood chips are useful materials to add as they provide pathways for air and you may be able to get them for free from a local tree surgeon if you are able to accept large amounts. You can create air pockets by adding some cardboard tubes from toilet or kitchen rolls whole and keeping cardboard egg boxes whole. Scrap paper can be added scrunched up, as well as shredded, so that it provides pockets of air. You can also create air spaces by pushing a couple of sticks down into the compost and leaving them there – remove them when you aerate and replace them.  

The most common rectifiable issue (we won’t say ‘mistake’ for the sake of those mentioned above who are afraid of getting things wrong) is slimy compost that may start to smell. This is caused by too much nitrogen-rich content (which makes the pile wet) and lack of aeration. A smell is a sign that the compost has become anaerobic (without oxygen) so you need to aerate the whole pile so that aerobic microbes dominate once again. Using a garden fork will enable you to dig down and get air into the whole pile. Also add plenty of chopped or shredded carbon-rich inputs (branches, twigs, autumn leaves, paper, cardboard, wood chips) as described above. Sawdust is also useful in absorbing excess moisture. Make sure to add it in thin layers and mix in well to avoid it forming clumps.

Sometimes the problem is caused by the addition of large amounts of grass clippings in one go. Grass mowings should be added in thin layers balanced with carbon inputs or they might clump together and form a soggy mess. Again, adding dry carbon-rich inputs and aerating will help to bring moisture levels back to the ideal consistency of a wrung-out sponge.

Learning to ‘speak compost

One of our customers teaches groups of people of all ages and backgrounds how to compost using the Green Johanna and she reckons that within a few months anyone can ‘speak compost’.

 In fact, she says that most people she works with go from knowing nothing whatsoever about composting to becoming ‘compost evangelists’.

You have been warned.

The team that delivers more than the goods

If you’ve ever ordered from Great Green Systems your product will have been packed and distributed by staff from Enabled Works, the not-for-profit social enterprise that fulfils our orders.

Enabled Works was founded in 2012 when staff at Remploy factories in Leeds and Pontefract, West Yorkshire, learned the Government was closing the nationwide programme of more than 90 factories. Remploy had been founded in 1945 to provide work for disabled ex-soldiers following the Second World War. The definition of disabilities was later widened to include various health conditions.

Staff were devastated at news of the closure because they wanted to carry on working, so a group of them got together to see if there was a way they could continue by starting their own business, rising from the ashes of Remploy.

The Managing Director of Enabled Works, Tina Brown, was the Factory Manager at the Leeds Remploy factory. She and 12 other staff members decided to put £5,000 of their redundancy money into a start-up pot to fund their own co-operative, owned and run by its own disabled workforce. A local warehouse owner heard they were looking for premises and said he would help out with whatever the group could afford.

‘We asked customers if they would be willing to continue to give us work and it snowballed from there,’ says Tina. ‘We found we were getting more and more work by word of mouth as people recommended us. That’s the best method and something we’re really proud of. You’re only as good as the last job you succeeded in.’

Tina, front right, with other members of the start-up team and Ed Balls, their MP at the time, who helped them to secure some funding.

But the early days weren’t easy. ‘We struggled at first and didn’t know if we would be able to continue for more than a year, not because of lack of work but just managing to balance cashflow.’

The staff of the fledgeling enterprise started out on minimum wage, working more hours than they paid themselves for.

‘Everybody we contacted for help was really supportive. People helped us with things like paying us early to help us until we got going,’ says Tina.

Those days now seem a long time ago. The company’s large factory and storage workspace on the outskirts of Leeds is a busy hive of activity covering many different operations, including contract packing, mailings, distribution, order fulfilment, pallet storage and electrical assembly work. A diverse variety of customers range from major companies, such as Haribo, to smaller concerns such as packing duck food for Roundhay Park in Leeds.

The enterprise also makes hand-spun urns and vases for funeral directors, as well as distributing books for the adventurer and author Alastair Humphreys and the Adventurous Ink book club.

It’s obvious that staff take great pride in their work; Tina says they love to look out for products they have worked on.

The working premises also include offices where training and advice sessions can be offered to help staff to expand work and life opportunities. These offices are also home to the Great Green Systems team, as well as Digital Energy, the web development and design agency who manage our website.

Students from local schools and colleges volunteer with Enabled Works for work experience and might be offered work once they leave education, helping them to get a foot on the work ladder.

When Remploy was closing, Tina spent a lot of time helping staff with interviews and consultations to help them cope with the next stage of their lives. The fact that she went above and beyond her role was recognised by a Director she worked with who nominated her for an MBE, which she was awarded in 2013 for services to disabled people.

‘Just being nominated was enough for me,’ says Tina. ‘I thought that was as far as it would go. I could not believe it when I learned I’d been awarded an MBE. I was just doing what I could to help. I can’t see people struggle, it just breaks my heart.’

She received her award at Buckingham Palace from Prince William at his first awards ceremony, along with Andy Murray and Aled Jones.

Tina swapped the warehouse for Buckingham Palace when she received her MBE.

Tina wears her pin-on medal for formal occasions and might add the impressive initials behind her name on a letter or email ‘if I think I need a bit of extra clout! ‘

The positive attitude of the Enabled Works team is obvious as soon as you walk on site. A poster in the entrance says: It’s amazing what can be achieved when no one cares who gets the credit.

 The website also states: Each of us has an important part to play and we are reliant on each other. Great Green Systems can vouch for the customer-centric culture; everyone goes out of their way to help. As one member of staff said to us, ‘You’re our customers; we want to look after you.’ There is no attitude here of ‘That’s not my job’; everyone pitches in.

This ethos was vital during the pandemic when the team encountered more challenges than most companies because some of the staff were particularly vulnerable.

Pandemic challenge

Tina recalls that with fewer staff at work and of course, lest we forget, the social distancing measures that were in place, life was challenging. This coincided with a particularly busy time for Great Green Systems as people working from home decided to get into composting and orders went through the roof.

‘It was a case of all hands on deck; we were all flying around packing up Green Johannas!’

A memory that stands out for me of how people were affected by that time was a customer who complained at Easter 2020 that her Green Johanna had not been delivered. When we looked into the complaint, we saw that the customer had ordered on Good Friday and was making her complaint on Easter Monday. When we pointed out to her that there had not been a full working day since her order, she was horrified and very apologetic, saying she hadn’t been aware how little time had passed. Those three days had obviously seemed much longer to her as she waited isolated at home and, since every day had become the same, she literally wasn’t aware what day it was.

The Enabled Works team help people who are dealing with a wide range of challenges and often get referrals from employment agencies. When it comes to health, most people these days are aware that many conditions are not obvious, such as mental health issues. A person facing such challenges and feeling fragile may struggle to return to the normal working world, which can seem too pressurised and unsupportive. The Enabled staff know exactly how to help in such circumstances.

Coming back from rock bottom

‘We let people look around and choose what they feel comfortable with and what they would like to have a go at,’ says Tina. ‘It could be working as part of a team or on their own. It could be office work or in packing. They’re given the chance to see if they like it. Some people have hit rock bottom and tried several times to get back into work, or their lives might have taken a wrong turn and they need a bit of support to get back on the right path. Its more than just a job to us, we like to help people to develop. ‘

Anyone who has ever struggled with their mental health, or knows someone who has, knows that a supportive environment is essential to someone whose life has capsized.

Talking to Tina made me feel this is exactly what would have helped me some years ago when anxiety attacks derailed my life. Difficult periods come to every single one of us at some time or another, and when they do you need the kind of support that Tina describes.

A recent report showed that mental health problems are the most common condition among people who are unable to work. As well as the individuals themselves, the economy is suffering as a result too. And yet it doesn’t have to be that way. For some of those people a route back to normal life lies in the supportive environment found at Enabled Works.

The Government could do worse than to listen to the Enabled team, who know from years of experience the kind of support that people might need to get them back on their feet.

As their staff and customers will agree, Enabled Works stand for a lot more than work.

Julie

Wormery tips from Maggie, aged 2

Showing that even the youngest of children can rise to the challenges of worm farming, our friend Magdalena, two, stepped in to look after her worms recently.

One day while feeding the worms with her grandparents, she was quick to spot something new – ants.  Grandma told her this was due to the worm farm bedding being too dry, creating conditions that appeal to ants.

The solution was to gently add some water. Wormery bedding should be neither wet, nor dry. If you squeezed the bedding material it should feel moist with minimal water dripping out.

So Maggie filled up her watering can and got to work, sorting the worms out and making sure they had conditions just as they like them – moist and dark, covered by a few sheets of newspaper as a blanket (or cardboard, or hessian) to keep them feeling cosy and safe.

Then she sensibly washed her hands – which is when things went a bit wrong. As you can see from the photo, the worms and ants weren’t the only ones getting a bit wet!

Maggie somehow got in the way of the water, whether on purpose or not who can say? It’s all in a day’s work for a two-year-old worm farmer.

For a joke I asked Maggie afterwards if she’d had ants in her pants; with an appalled look she informed me that, no, she hadn’t, because she was wearing a nappy. Fair enough. She thought for a second before adding that Grandma had ants in her pants though. You have to keep an eye on these grandmas.

It’s fantastic to see that Maggie now loves worms. When she first watched her older brother Reggie looking after the worms she was a bit apprehensive and took a back seat but now she appreciates them for the wonderful work they do.

Keeping worms cool

It’s important that wormeries stay moist. In hot weather you can flush your worm farm with half a small bucket of water (5L) once a week to keep conditions moist. When doing this, replace the liquid collection tray with a container that will hold the sudden influx of water.

The moistened bedding sorted out the ants issue for Magdalena, but if you have a repeated problem you could follow this advice shared by wormery guru Mary Appelhof in her book Worms Eat My Garbage:

  • Set the legs of the worm farm in coffee cans with mineral oil or soapy water in the bottom. Any ants would get trapped in the oil or soapy water and would not be able to enter the wormery.  

And so to bedding

Worm bedding is a major component of a wormery. It has several functions, providing:

  •  moisture retention
  •  a medium in which worms can work
  •  a place to bury food waste

Bedding also provides a carbon source which will feed the worms; they will eventually consume the bedding as well as the food waste.

The bedding provided in the Maze Worm Farm is coconut coir, which is a great choice as it is clean, odourless, moisture-retaining, easy to prepare and worms thrive in it.

 Cocount coir, often called coco peat, has a fluffy soil-like texture. It comes compressed in a block that expands when placed in water. Because it has good water-retaining capacities, it can also be mixed with other bedding materials to aid water retention. Coir is a natural by-product of the coconut industry. In the past when coconuts were harvested for their meat and juice, the husk was considered waste until its many uses in horticulture were appreciated.

 In the first few days of setting up a new wormery it’s important that the worms acclimatise quickly and they find coco coir to be a hospitable environment thanks to its fluffy soil-like texture. Coconut coir will get your worm bin off to a great start but an established wormery should happily accommodate other freely available carbon sources.  

Other suitable bedding materials:

  • Shredded newspaper in strips 3-5cm wide. You can use a shredder or tear the strips by hand.
  • Leaf detritus from the bottom of a pile of decaying leaves, or compost.
  • Wood chips – some wormery enthusiasts report that these are excellent when mixed with leaves or other materials that are capable of holding moisture.  Wood chips provide bulk and create air spaces throughout the bedding. You can pick wood chips out when harvesting vermicompost from the wormery and reuse them.  

TOP TIP

It can be useful to add a handful or two of soil when initially preparing bedding. This helps to control moisture, acidity and texture as well as adding some grit to aid in breaking down food particles within the worm’s gizzard. It also introduces an inoculum of a variety of soil bacteria, protozoa and fungi which will aid the composting process.

Mary Appelhof is an inspiring champion for worm farming, describing it as a way to ‘save the world – in your own backyard’.

 In her book she says that through worm farming you will see mounds of waste converted to material you can use on your houseplants and in your garden.

‘You will enjoy healthier looking plants, better tasting vegetables and money in the bank.’

Let’s end with her wonderful description of the added value that worm farming provides.

‘Hopefully you’ll also gain a better appreciation of the intricate balance and interdependencies in nature. You will be treading more gently on the Earth.

As your gardens are enriched, so is your life and mine. You will have joined the worm-working adventurers who say, ‘Worms eat my garbage.’ Isn’t that a grand beginning to a task that needs to start somewhere? You, personally, can make it happen.’

Julie

Sustainable dressing for a Big Fat Greek Wedding

When my son and his girlfriend announced they were getting married, it didn’t take long for idle speculation about what I would wear to become a problem that did my head in.

I don’t buy that many new clothes these days and try to make sustainable choices when I do.

According to consulting firm McKinsey and the World Economic Forum, clothing production has at least doubled since 2000, while the average garment is kept for half as long.

 I ran through a sustainable hierarchy for an outfit:

  • Wear something I already have
  • Borrow
  • Rent
  • Buy new from an ethical company.

I’ve read that Greta Thunberg never buys new clothes, borrowing instead from friends for special events. This option works if you’re young, slim and pretty, but most of us have more complex needs.

So began my mission to find a big fat green Greek wedding outfit.

The first option was out because I don’t already own an outfit that’s special enough for a wedding. I know it might surprise some readers to learn that, as someone who writes about compost, I don’t have a wardrobe full of glamorous gowns for red-carpet events. (Perhaps the composting world is indeed full of such events but I just don’t get invited to them.)

My dressiest dress is black so that’s not an option.  Yes, I know that black may well be a very modern stylish choice in some circles, but there is a complication here in that the bride is Greek and the wedding will take place in her home village. I don’t yet know her family and any cultural or religious traditions that may need to be taken into consideration. So I’m wary of committing some cross-cultural faux pas that could possibly echo down the ages, with me being forever referred to as ‘her who wore black to her son’s wedding.’

I looked into renting and also considered my favourite sustainable retailers. I sent off for a beautiful floaty dress from one company but returned it when my husband said I looked like I was wearing a nightie.

Being the mother of the groom, or MOG to use the official industry term (mother of the bride being the MOB), is obviously a big deal. And I can’t be the only MOG/MOB who feels pressured into becoming someone I’m not. (At this point, let me say that if you get irritated by first-world problems you should stop reading now, if you haven’t already.)

In pursuit of an outfit that ticked a long list of boxes, I must have looked at hundreds of outfits over several months. None of them were right. I thought of a friend who spends her life in trousers and loafers but went to her daughter’s wedding in a stiff dress-suit and heels that made her look and feel uncomfortable. I didn’t want that. But there is a kind of blackmail attached to weddings – you have to look as though you’ve made a big effort in order to show that you love the couple. Don’t ask me how it works. But it’s there, this equation between bling and love. Is it the class system, the fashion industry, media pressure? I don’t know. But it’s there, this pressure to adopt a wedding uniform and leave your personality at the door. For some reason we feel funnelled into becoming Joan Collins when we might be more Whoopi Goldberg.

From my experience I can report that most designers assume you have the tall, super-slender figure of the Princess of Wales and that you require the kind of stately dress-coats favoured by members of the royal family at coronations.  

As the days became weeks, I started to lose all perspective and reason – it was like getting the new kitchen all over again.  A sign of how desperate I became is that I asked my husband’s opinion. This is something I usually avoid because I know what I will get. He will say, ‘What are you asking me for? I’m not an expert.’ He will then name an expert in the said field to emphasise just how far away from that person he is and therefore how spectacularly unqualified to offer an opinion.  Depending on the topic in question, I will be informed that he is not Jeremy Clarkson, Gordon Ramsay, David Bailey or Monty Don. In this particular case I was told he is not Gok Wan.

And yet, despite very obviously not being Gok Wan, he managed to weigh in with what sounded suspiciously like opinions.  Apart from the ‘nightie’, other dresses were dismissed as: too boring, too loud, too much, too frumpy and ‘something my nan would have worn’.  Inevitably, when I questioned his verdicts, he complained that he got in trouble for not giving an opinion and in trouble if he did.

‘I don’t know why you’re even asking me,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what you want to look like.’ This must be, in a very crowded field, one of the most ridiculous things my husband has ever said.  What I want to look like? I’m going to my son’s wedding, I want to look nice.  I’m not going to a fancy dress party where I might be wanting to look like, say, Elvis Presley, or a hobbit.

The trouble was that I was trying to compensate for everything I’m not – young, svelte, tall, tanned, stable in high heels – and that’s before I even begin to consider how my delicate Anglo-Irish constitution will cope with Greece in high summer. Since I don’t know my daughter-in-law’s family, I’m obviously anxious to make a good impression, and as a fairly casual person I don’t want to look as though I haven’t dressed up because that might look as though I don’t care about the wedding when the truth is I care too much.  But does making an effort mean I have to be got up like Hyacinth Bucket at a Buckingham Palace garden party?

 I read an article that said the essence of style is to simply be yourself. Stylish people always say this, of course, and it’s alright for them because who they are is a person who’s stylish. I asked myself the question: if I went to this wedding as ‘me’ what would that look like?

Hmmm …..difficult to know the answer to that question when you’re a woman of a certain age with  grown-up kids. I thought back to past versions of me. As a child I liked dressing up; my style was very much ‘more is more’.  I loved adding stuff to my hair, for example. There are photos of me aged three or four going about my toddler business with flowers, scarves, jewellery and any hat I could find plonked on my head. As a teenager in the punk era, my friends and I got clothes from Oxfam and customised them. Memories came flooding back. I remembered buying a man’s beige jacket and painting a picture of Johnny Rotten on the back. I paired my dad’s striped dressing gown with the belt from my young brother’s cowboy outfit. I tied my mother’s necklaces round my legs in what I hoped mirrored bondage fashion, but had to remove them so blood could continue to circulate round my body. The ethos was about making outfits from whatever you could find and not being told how to dress or be. Obviously, this could not be allowed to continue because there was no profit in it, so like everything else this free spirit was eventually crowded out by conformity and commodification.

I wondered where that girl had gone. The parallels with Shirley Valentine did not escape me. Perhaps I might rediscover the real me in Thessaloniki and never come back to Leeds?  

In the middle of this identity crisis, my son sent me a text informing me that as the MOG I would be  required to do a dance at the wedding – a dance of transition – with the bride. This would not be a problem, according to my son, as he would send me a video so I could practice.   

So now, in addition to the cascade of concerns my outfit had to address (including, in no particular order:  middle-aged spread, cross-cultural anxiety, heatstroke, sustainability, wobbly ankles, Greek Orthodox etiquette, and bingo wings) I also had to factor in Zorba’s Dance.  

Potential dance by the Mother of the Groom?

My husband stepped in to remind me what really mattered – that our son is marrying a wonderful girl we’re delighted to welcome into our family. We’re going to love the wedding and getting to know our new extended Greek family. It’s all about joy. Everything else is small stuff.

 I know, I know….but can’t I have the joy and something that covers bingo wings?

In the end I bought new – but there is a sustainable angle. It’s something I will wear and wear – thanks to a wonderful local dressmakers I discovered. The outfit was a navy chiffon layered dress. I was very happy with it (bingo wings sorted, since you ask) but it bothered me that I wouldn’t wear it often because I much prefer trousers. Getting the dress shortened into a long top meant I could wear it with palazzo pants, so it’s now an outfit I will wear forever. I plan to get other clothes altered now I’ve realised how easily they can be made just right. Women often say they have nothing to wear when their wardrobes are bursting. Perhaps it’s because a lot of those clothes don’t fit properly. Using a dressmaker didn’t even enter my head at the start of my search but now it’s right up there on my list of sustainable options.

When did wedding dressing get so out of hand?    

For my wedding in the 90s, both my mother and mother-in-law wore beautiful dress-suits and hats that they rarely wore again, if ever. What a waste.  I doubt that for their own weddings in the early 60s their mothers had bought brand new outfits. And I remember my grandma saying that for her wedding in 1934 she chose a crepe dress that she later dyed forest green and wore many times after the wedding.

Let’s resist the pressure that leads to fast fashion and landfill.   

So now, with my outfit sorted – Big Fat Greek Wedding here we come!

Julie

Turning to Green Johanna after composting flops

 

One bad experience can put people off composting for life.

Something we hear a lot is – we had a composter for years but it just sat there doing nothing.

This was the experience of Adam and Hayley. After a few attempts, despite their best efforts, they kept encountering the same problem – very slow breakdown of waste materials with hardly any compost produced.  

But they were still keen to have another go, this time using a Green Johanna for the first time.

We’ll follow Adam and Hayley’s progress and answer any questions as they arise.

Setting up

Getting their Green Johanna up and running, Adam and Hayley found:

  • Instructions were easy to follow.
  • They were able to assemble and set up the composter in an hour.
  • The instruction manual was handy for answering questions.
  • They were able to get started without any issues.
  • Assembling the Johanna in sections meant it was easy to move around to choose a spot in the garden compared to the pre-built composters they had tried in the past.

Handily, a tree in their garden had fallen down in the wind so they had a ready store of twigs and branches to use as the foundation base in the bottom of the bin to provide airflow and drainage. This stage only took about 10 minutes to sort out.

Despite their earlier disappointing composting experiences, the couple are keen to try again because of the many benefits home composting brings – both to the environment and to the user.

Adam said: ‘I’m really excited to continue to use the Johanna and get some compost.’

We’ll report back on Adam and Hayley’s progress.

Outside the box: Setting up, helped – or rather watched – by Archie the amazing Shihpoo.

Choosing the spot – base in place.

Getting the sections in line.

Adding twigs to create a foundation for drainage and airflow.

Jacket on and good to go!

No-dig gardening is ideal for kids

If you work with nature, she doesn’t fight back with weeds.

 That’s the view of horticulturalist Charles Dowding, the champion of no-dig gardening.

His new book, No-Dig Children’s Gardening Book, shows youngsters how they can work with nature using compost and mulch to create healthy soil, copying nature’s way of feeding plants through the soil. (Keep an eye on our Instagram next week for details of our Coronation Week Books Giveaway competition.)

 Charles believes the no-dig method is ideal for children because they come to gardening with an open mind and no preconceived ideas.

The no-dig method involves creating beds by covering weeds with cardboard, spreading compost on top, walking on top of the compost (a child-friendly activity if ever there was one) to create a bed that is ready to plant into.  

His book includes the following topics:

  • What makes soil healthy
  • How to make compost
  • The power of microbes
  • Upcycling in the garden
  • Attracting wildlife
  • How to be a garden scientist
  • Easy-grow flowers and vegetables
  • Gardening for children with additional needs.

 Charles says, ‘Nature wants plants to grow as much as we do ‘.

He says ‘no-dig’ is simple and quick and will inspire children to make beds any month of the year. They can then watch their plants grow, see how good they taste, and feel their knowledge and happiness growing at the same time.

The method eliminates ‘unnecessary jobs that until now have been done by so many gardeners’.

Anyone who has experienced the benefits of gardening will agree with Charles’s belief that gardening teaches us a great deal, whatever our age.  

The following is an extract from an interview with Charles Dowding in the current edition of The Green Parent.

How did your no-dig method evolve?

 I wanted to grow healthy foods. I started organic gardening in 1982 but realised that was only the first step. It was a gut feeling that there was a connection between soil, plants, animals and people. It led me to think about what was in the soil, what life; at the time nobody was talking about it. But it’s only recently I’ve started talking about it and presenting it to the world.

No-dig frees you up to spend your time in the garden more creatively; how do you like to do that?

You inherit this Victorian notion that plants have to be regimented, grown in rows. I like tidiness, that’s admirable, but what I really want is beauty. I like to introduce flowers here there and everywhere. It’s easier because the biggest bonus with no-dig is that you get no weeds! And the most creative thing you can do is make compost. That’s the ultimate creative act. 

Is no-dig especially suited to kids?

Yes. Older people might find it more difficult to accept that what they might consider the right way to garden is maybe not so clever after all. They have to unlearn, but children come to it fresh. But it all makes sense. Kids love the process; that you’re not disturbing the natural life and creatures below the surface, so that carries on working to keep the soil open and aerated and make nutrition for the plant roots.

What benefits does gardening have for kids?

It’s not just about being in the fresh air. It’s about the good bacteria that are floating around; we pick them up and use them to make serotonin. That’s why we feel good being outside. You find tryptophan in plants and vegetables and that makes your mood better. If you eat a bit of soil that’s got the same biome as a healthy gut, the same microbes.

Taking tea with milk, sugar – and plastic?

Every day 165 million cups of tea are drunk in Britain – and that’s just in our house.

Since today is National Tea Day (April 21), I expect a lot more facts will be shared and the ones I’ll be paying close attention to are those concerning plastic.

Like millions of other tea drinkers, I was alarmed a few years ago to learn that most tea bags contained plastic – polypropylene – used to heat-seal the edges of the bags.

This news sparked health concerns among tea drinkers as well as raising questions about the effect on the soil and wildlife when these tea bags were composted.

  Of those millions of cups of tea drunk every day, 96 per cent are made with tea bags. So if you were home-composting your share of those tea bags you might have been unwittingly leaving bits of microplastic (tiny pieces of plastic less than 5mm in size) in the soil.

As a result of the controversy, manufacturers started to remove polypropylene from their teabags. Naively, I thought that was the end of it and that now in 2023 we would all be taking our tea with milk and sugar but no plastic, thanks.  

While talking to a customer recently, the topic turned to composting tea bags. We both remembered early attempts at plastic-free teabags that led to the bags dissolving in the cup, but we didn’t know the current state of play. I resolved to find out more – more of which later.

 Like many Brits, I feel there are few situations in life that can’t be improved by a nice cup of tea. My day can’t start before a pint of Earl Grey has entered my system and the rest of the day is propped up at regular intervals by yet more tea. Is this a psychological thing? The very words, ‘I’ll put the kettle on’ appear to have a soothing Pavlovian effect on my nervous system. So why, on any given day, are there half-cups of cold tea littered around the house and office? It’s as though the thought of having a cup of tea always seems like a good idea even if I’m not that bothered about actually drinking it.

 I’ve realised I have a blind spot when it comes to wasting tea. I take great care not to waste food but don’t give the same consideration to drinks; it’s as if because they’re liquid they don’t count. So many problems with waste are caused through us being creatures of habit.

Of course, I’m using energy every time I put the kettle on, not to mention wasting the tea, the water and soya milk that’s used if I don’t drink the whole cup. So this is one robotic, wasteful habit that I’m in the process of breaking. From now on I will be mindful not mindless about putting the kettle on.

I stopped drinking my regular brand a few years ago because of concerns about plastic and switched to Hampstead Tea. I was particularly interested to learn about this brand’s commitment to biodynamic farming – an organic, ecological approach, employing the use of manures and compost.

Researching the subject has made me switch to loose leaf tea.  Then I don’t have to think about plastic particles, bag materials or questions of compostability.

Tea bags only became freely available in the 1950s, meaning that many generations before me had to contend with tea leaves and old-fashioned teapots. And they all seemed to cope just fine, along with other challenges such as having to slice their own bread. When I think of family members talking about how hard life used to be, there were memories of poverty, short life expectancy, outside toilets and tin baths, but I don’t recall anyone ever saying, ‘And on top of all that, we didn’t have tea bags!’

Other advantages of being a loose (leaf) woman:

  • Less package waste
  •  The tea itself tends to be less processed and retains more of the original flavour
  • You can adjust the strength and even blend your own.

Modern teapots have built-in infusers, meaning it’s easy to get the tea leaves into the compost and wash out the pot.

If you’re reading this, I’m assuming that you want to home compost your tea bags.  Tea leaves are ideal compost material, providing high levels of nitrogen (even higher than manures) and small particles so compost bacteria have more surface area to work on.

On my internet trawl to find out more about plastic in tea bags, I found confusing and conflicting information, with experts arguing about the merits of bioplastics.  And that’s before you start reading comments underneath articles. The word biodegradable is also bandied about by many interested parties as though it’s an ecological holy grail when all it means is that material will break down eventually, but you won’t know how long that will take and under what conditions.

Online information also quickly goes out of date because some tea brands are still working towards their plastic-free goals, which might have been achieved after articles have been published.

 I’ve spent several hours that I’ll never get back reading through studies and articles; my advice to a home-composting tea drinker would be to contact your favourite brand and find out where they are on the plastic-free/compostable journey.

Points to consider:

  • Many tea brands are still using polypropylene. If tea bags contain plastic, you can compost the leaves but throw the bag in general waste. Plastic in tea bags sent to landfill will still enter the soil.
  • Be aware there may also be hidden plastics in sachets or string-and-tag bags.
  • Many brands that don’t use polypropylene use polylactic acid (PLA). This is a plant-based polymer (sometimes referred to as a bioplastic). It can also be called Soilon.
  •  Plant material sources include corn starch, which can come from genetically modified (GM) maize – but this cannot be used in organic teabags.
  • While PLA is biodegradable, it requires industrial composting to break down because most ordinary garden composters might not get hot enough (44 – 60 degrees Celsius) to break down the bags.  It is thought teabags containing PLA could take several years to degrade, and it is not known exactly how harmful it might be to organisms in the meantime. If your council has a separate food waste collection, teabags made with PLA can be placed into your food waste bin to be industrially composted.
  • Like oil-based plastics, if bioplastics end up in the ocean they can present a danger to marine life.
  • The origins of the tea bag might have been accidental – in 1908 an American tea importer who shipped silk tea bags around the world found that customers, instead of removing the leaves from the bags as he intended, found it easier to brew the tea with the tea leaves still enclosed in the porous bags.

Among comments following an online BBC report from 2019 are some from people who had been putting tea bags in home compost for years until they realised they were having to pick plastic remnants out of the soil – even 15 years later. One reader commented he had stopped composting tea bags for use as garden mulch when he saw birds picking up the bag remnants and using them in their nest building.

At home, our Green Johanna’s contents reach regular temperatures of between 40 – 60+ degrees Celsius; we measure the temperature every day. According to the Carry on Composting website, Composting – www.carryoncomposting.com, the corn starch Soilon can hot compost in 6-8 weeks. The site recommends cutting a couple of holes in tea bags so composting bacteria can easily access the leaves, accelerating the rate of decomposition.

The Ethical Consumer website Is there Plastic in my Tea? | Ethical Consumer features a chart based on information from Feb/March 2022 that lists the following as ‘best brands’: Clearspring, Essential, Hambledon Herbs, Hampstead tea, Heath and Heather, Higher Living and Dr Stuart’s, Pukka, Qi, Postcard, Teapigs, Yogi Tea.

The site also lists middle companies ‘who are using some PLA, or are in the process of switching’, as well as the worst. But bear in mind that the situation might have changed since then.

I’ll end with some ideas for homegrown tea that I read in the Comments section of one article.

 Easily sourced throughout the year from your garden:  
(dried) rosehip tea
(dried) chamomile tea
Fresh peppermint/spearmint tea
Fresh nettle tea

For winter (all easily sourced from one’s larder)

dried/root ginger tea
fennel seed tea
liquorice root tea
cardamom tea

Also recommended: cinnamon stick/star anise/vanilla pod tea.

I’m tempted to try some of these. Maybe my Earl Grey will meet competition.

Julie

Joy and grief on my Covid garden journey

You’ve probably heard of Imposter Syndrome – that nagging feeling of not being good enough.  Well, I reckon there’s also a thing called Composter Syndrome and I’ve got it.

Composter Syndrome is when you think you’re good enough to compost but not to garden. Yes sir, I can compost; throw stuff in and stir, job done. But there’s no way I could get anything to actually, you know, grow.

  From a young age I could memorise facts and regurgitate them, which led to a reputation in my family for being academic but not practical. It was a case of, Oh yes, our Julie can tell you the German for combine harvester but don’t ask her to change a lightbulb! Over time I formed the idea it would be better for everyone if I never got my hands on a hammer, trowel or steering wheel.

Yes, I know gardening is good or you, but am I good for gardening? I convinced myself the earth would be a better place if I kept as far away from it as possible; let those with green fingers get on with it, I’ll just keep my head in the clouds.   

And then a pandemic happened. With nowhere to go and nothing to do, everybody lucky enough to have a garden sat outside and looked at it. But our garden was not much to look at. We had moved in to our newbuild home in the late ‘90s, brought up three sons there and done nothing at all to the garden. So in spring 2020 we found ourselves sitting on the six paving slabs that the builders had thrown down 20 years earlier (euphemistically called a patio) and stared at the plain rectangle of grass that ended in a football net.  We were the ‘Before’ part of a garden makeover show.

For a while we took comfort from the fact that, as we live next door to Yorkshire’s answer to Monty Don, we only had to invent a reason to stand on a chair and talk over the fence to the neighbours to get a fix of beauty from Tony’s garden. There we would see roses rambling up the house walls, clematis climbing trellises, cheerful flowers bursting from pots,  shrubs and bushes of various sizes and textures, a vine-covered archway, tomato plants thriving in the greenhouse, a cat statue sitting at a pond’s edge, a bird-friendly wildlife zone, wind chimes blowing gently in the breeze….I could go on but you get the picture. Everywhere you looked there was something soothing and beautiful to gaze at. We felt like The Simpsons to next door’s Ned Flanders. But there’s only so much garden-gazing by proxy you can do, and eventually I got tired of standing on a chair.

Garden centre overload

One day a gardening brochure came through the door promising the colour that was missing from my life.  Leafing through the Sarah Raven catalogue, I felt it could have been designed with me in mind. The fact that I knew nothing didn’t matter because somebody who knew a lot had put selections of flowers together. I had always avoided garden centres because I was overwhelmed by sensory overload the moment I walked through the door. Garden centres seem to be for people who already know exactly what they’re doing. But here you didn‘t have to know or guess – information was everywhere, even down to how many plants would fill a pot.

So I dared to dream. Surely, I thought, even I might be able to do this.  I started small with one container and some established plants – nemesia in a colour scheme of purple and burnt orange (Summer Fruit Salad Container Collection). I would never have put those colours together but they worked on the photo and, lo and behold, they worked IRL!

 For us – coming from a very low place of paving slabs, gouged grass and football nets – it was a joy. My husband and I sat out with cups of tea or glasses of wine and gazed at our nemesia. Butterflies and bees came to them. The dog weed up them.

 Horticulture police

Emboldened by success, I ordered more – a very pretty combination of Grandaisy Pink Halo and Artemisia along with an elaborate Butterfly Pink Pot Collection. When this lot arrived it was raining so I left them outside and took the labels off. Then I didn’t know which was which and ended up planting the wrong plants together. But you know what? They still survived and looked nice and the horticulture police didn’t come knocking (they couldn’t, we were still in lockdown).

It came as a great surprise that nature could survive me; it turned out that mother nature wasn’t the delicate little flower I had supposed.

Then I got a bit cocky. I went off-piste from Sarah Raven and ordered some geraniums from a newspaper advert which arrived as roots. Unfortunately these strange alien objects had no stickers telling you which way was up, and I must have planted them upside down. I challenge anyone to know which was the right way (OK, Tony/Monty/Ned would have known). I know this sounds like a bad workman blaming his tools, but truly there was no obvious top or bottom. Inevitably, they failed to launch. And I was annoyed – with the newspaper, with nature, and, oh all right then, with myself. What was I even thinking venturing into this green universe of which I knew nothing?

But then, watching Gardeners’ World, I heard Monty Don (the real one, not our Yorkshire version) say that even if you planted something upside down it would still grow because it wants to grow. This was a kind of epiphany for me – stuff wants to grow! I had always thought you had to trick it into doing your will.  Of course, it made sense; throughout history, mankind has managed to survive by growing stuff. They can’t all have been green-fingered geniuses. (Geranium update – they grew the following year, once they realised they were heading to Australia.)

The geraniums return

This gave me confidence. A friend with an allotment told me that sometimes things don’t grow and you don’t know why, you just plough on. Maybe this was a lesson for me, to let go of outcomes and stop being a control freak. My new confidence and scant bit of knowledge gave me a basis for venturing into garden centres once they reopened.

Get me! I think, as I step further out of my comfort zone, watching gardening shows, reading gardening books, following tips from people like Poppy Okotcha, Charles Dowding, Nancy Birtwhistle, Arthur Parkinson.  There’s now a reason to go outside; there’s something to look at, wildlife to watch, things to notice. Things that take me out of my own head, which is no bad thing.

 There’s nothing fancy but it’s lovely to look at our clematis, honeysuckle, tulips, crocuses and the most beautiful cheery yellow rose bush called Tottering by Gently from David Austin that everybody asks me about. People asking me about roses – unbelievable!

Tottering by Gently

My home compost now gets used for purposes other than mulch and it was especially handy when there were shortages of peat-free compost in garden centres during the pandemic.  

 Don’t get me wrong – no one’s going to pay to take a tour of our garden, but we are taking great joy from the little we have created.  

This joy was to provide comfort in the face of sorrow that was to come. Many families lost loved ones during the pandemic and ours was one of them.  My dear uncle was taken into hospital in January 2021, caught Covid there and never recovered.  

It’s a familiar Covid story; he spent three weeks in hospital with no visitors allowed; my desperate auntie spent hours every day trying to get through on the phone to get news. When she got the call to say he would not last the night, she was told that only one of their three children was allowed to join her at his deathbed. In what must have been an agonising discussion, the two sons decided to let their sister be the one. It was to her that they gave their last messages for their father – that he was their hero, that everything they had achieved in life was thanks to him. A short funeral was attended by only 15 of the closest family members. No reception, no way for people to come together to console the family and each other.

As is the case with so many families, this grief remains frozen because the processes that civilised societies have formed over thousands of years to help us deal with death and grief were taken away.

So when, a year later, my auntie had a big birthday coming up, I wanted to get her something nice but felt that any present was pointless.

My uncle had been a miner. I can imagine that it was his years spent working underground in darkness that gave him a love of gardening. Together they were a gardening dream team – Auntie Pauline the designer, Uncle Peter the grafter.

 Remembering my own nemesia from the previous year, I thought of getting my auntie the same collection and planting them in a pot for her. I told her that within weeks they would bloom into gorgeous colours, and they did; she sent me this photo (below).  We both knew Uncle Peter would have loved them.

Compared to grief everything is little. But if watching a bee land on an orange flower brings a moment of grace, that moment is worth having.   

 It’s a feeling I’ve never had before in my garden, but now as spring comes round again and I see green leaves growing where there used to be nothing, it feels as though in some way a part of me is growing alongside them.

If this rings any bells for you, perhaps you should try it too.

Julie

Bokashi bins boost hot compost

When it comes to boosting the composting process, we have found a Bokashi bin to be the perfect partner for the Green Johanna.

We recently carried out trials involving additions of fermented food waste from a Maze Bokashi bin to a Green Johanna and found that temperatures in the Johanna rapidly increased as a result.  

For our trials, we re-started a Johanna more or less from scratch, having previously removed large amounts of compost.  Using a permanently installed insulation jacket and large amounts of Bokashi bran and carbon-rich materials, compost temperatures were around 30 degrees Celsius. 

 We added the contents of a Bokashi bin that had been fermenting for 21 days, followed by a full 1kg bag of Bokashi bran.   We then added some mulch and stirred well with a garden fork, before completing the process with a thin layer of mulch. 

 The Johanna was then left for 48 hours.  Temperatures rose to 66 degrees Celsius whilst outdoor temperatures were in the 0-10 degree range.   After 48 hours we re-stirred to spread heat more widely through the Johanna.    Using two Bokashi bins in rotation we repeated this cycle roughly every three weeks and got the same results.

We used the Green Johanna in combination with a regular kitchen caddy (as the Johanna needs regular feeding to maintain the hot composting process), twin-bin Bokashi system, Insulating Jacket, Bokashi Bran as an accelerant and plenty of mulch.

Photos show starting temperature at 30 degrees Celsius/adding fermented waste from a Bokashi bin/ adding Bokashi bran/temperature at 66 degrees Celsius.

The Bokashi process was developed in Japan in the 1980s; the term means ‘fermented organic matter’ in Japanese.  It involves adding all your food waste, cooked and uncooked, to a specially designed airtight Bokashi bin, with the addition of Bokashi in the form of a fermented bran or spray. The food waste is compressed with a compactor to eliminate as much air as possible as this is an anaerobic process.  Once the bin is full, you close the airtight lid and leave for 2-3 weeks.  Many people use one or two bins to keep the process going.

The bacteria (lactobacilli) in the bran or spray will create lactic acid which will effectively pickle the food waste rather than letting it decompose as it would in a regular food waste caddy.  After a week or so, liquid should start to form in the Bokashi bin which should be drained using the tap.   This ‘Bokashi tea’ can be used as a drain cleaner or diluted for use as plant food.

 At the end of the fermentation period the waste food is a pre-compost mixture that can be added to a composter or buried in soil to become a soil enhancer. Its composition is such that virtually all its original nutrients, carbon and energy enter rapidly into the soil.   No greenhouse gases are released to the atmosphere as they are during regular food waste decomposition in landfill.

Bokashi composting has traditionally proven particularly popular in urban environments where traditional garden composting is difficult. 

Mark

Climate crisis – what we CAN do

How do we find the balance between horror and hope when discussing the climate emergency?

Last week’s warning by scientists that rising greenhouse gas emissions will cause irrevocable damage if we don’t act dominated the news.  

It was interesting to watch the reactions of people watching this news story on Gogglebox. Listening to the scientists’ apocalyptic language, such as ‘final warning’ and ‘ticking timebomb’, the audience were clearly terrified.

One viewer commented, ‘Let’s hope they come up with something’, as if talking about a vaccine. But another responded, ‘No, because if people think that will happen then everyone will carry on as before.’

People’s reactions to climate crisis seem to vary according to whether their personal response to danger is fight, flight or play dead.

This is the dilemma – people need to be shocked into action but not shellshocked. It’s counterproductive to leave people thinking, what does it matter what I do?

The Gogglebox viewers were left in despair. Little wonder that so many people say they no longer watch the news. It’s a great shame that media reports on this subject don’t end with a reminder of, for instance, three practical things that people can do in their everyday lives.  

Every purchase matters – ethical consumerism

The climate change panel of scientists knew they had to end on a message of hope, so they urged world governments to reduce emissions by investing in renewable energy and technologies that capture and store carbon dioxide. Of course, this is the minimum that governments must do but we all need to be engaged in our daily lives too.

 Mike Berners-Lee, author of How Bad Are Bananas?, says that in the first edition of his book he didn’t want to tell people what to do. But this was precisely the question he was asked at every book talk: What can we do?

Apparently there have been more than 30 years of warnings from the scientists behind this latest climate change report. I felt a stab of guilt when I read that their first report was published in 1990. In 1990 I was embarking on adult life in my first job and first home of my own.  As I remember it, the focus at the time was on banking crises, home repossessions and the poll tax. I admit that if the scientists’ report was big news at the time, it didn’t grab my attention. But if it had and I’d banged on about it to friends they probably would have thought I was being over the top. That perception has certainly changed.   

The report in The Guardian of the story quoted two experts. Richard Allan, a professor of climate science at the University of Reading, said: “Every bit of warming avoided due to the collective actions pulled from our growing, increasingly effective toolkit of options is less worse news for societies and the ecosystems on which we all depend.”

 Peter Thorne, the director of the Icarus climate research centre at Maynooth University in Ireland, said the real question was ‘whether our collective choices mean we stabilise around 1.5C or crash through 1.5C, reach 2C and keep going.”

The key word used by both experts is ‘collective’.

  Millions of people worldwide don’t get to have choices in their daily lives, so it’s vital that those of us who do try to make the right ones.

Talking to children

And if this subject scares adults, how must it make children feel? The way to discuss it with youngsters is by showing them what they can do, by harnessing their instinctive love of nature and desire to be useful.  

At Great Green Systems we come across many schools that are teaching children how to compost, which is a brilliant way to empower them. Even the youngest pupil  can throw their apple core in the right bin – one that will be emptied into compost.

To take our own advice about ending on a positive message, let’s conclude with three small action points from How Bad Are Bananas?

  • Try to build up your knowledge of more and less sustainable brands and products. One good source of information is Ethical Consumer – www.ethicalconsumer.org.
  • An aerated showerhead makes less water feel like more, saving water and carbon.
  • Use a lid on pans when cooking, cut potatoes into smaller pieces and boil gently rather than at full throttle. (Efficient cooking can halve the carbon impact.)
Carbon impact of a pan lid

There are much bigger action points as well, of course, and it might seem ridiculous to mention pan lids and showerheads amid talk of final warnings and ticking timebombs, but one of my favourite quotes is this: ‘Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.’ (Edmund Burke). Multiply this attitude by enough people and change happens. 

 I can only vote every five years but I use pans every single day.

If you need cheering up, watch the documentary Kiss the Ground on Netflix.  It’s not a worthy snorefest or despair dripfeed. Quite the opposite. It leaves you with a dynamic feeling of hope. Who doesn’t need that right now?

Julie

Which bin will the core go in?

Spare Parts