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Category: Sustainable lifestyle

Joy and grief on my Covid garden journey

Posted on by Julie Halford

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

Climate crisis – what we CAN do

Posted on by Julie Halford

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?

A journey to becoming a green gardener

Posted on by Julie Halford

With compost again in the spotlight (Compost Week UK runs from March 13-19) it’s timely that Nancy Birtwhistle’s green gardening book has just been published.

Nancy first came to national attention when she won The Great British Bake-Off in 2014 and she is now a best-selling author on green issues.

She’s also an inspiration to anyone wanting to live a more sustainable life; the tips in her books and on her Instagram feed are simple but effective, with something for everyone.

We had pre-ordered a copy of her latest book, The Green Gardening Handbook, and we’ve been busy this week reading and learning.

Here’s how Nancy sums up her life’s green journey:

‘Several years ago I began my green journey and this way of thinking has permeated every part of my life, from the way I clean my house to the way I resist single-use items, recycle and upcycle where possible, am mindful about the use of valuable energy and utilities, and also how I have been able to apply this way of thinking to my garden. I became more informed through researching and reading while considering the plight of our natural world and am now converted to methods that, once the penny drops, actually make utter and complete sense, and are logical and sensible. Once we learn how to work with Mother Nature and understand how the seasons work, how plants behave and how we can harness the wonder of it all, the reliance on any destructive chemical, synthetic or harmful methods for home growing are utterly superfluous.’  

 She also talks about her respect for the tiny creatures that make this soil food: ‘I found that once I embraced a greener approach to living – in the garden and in relation to my food – I was ever more appreciative and amazed by the wonder of nature, especially the creepy crawlies, and because of this will continue to do my very best to cherish and preserve it wherever and whenever I can.’

Summing up how all compost enthusiasts feel, she says, ‘I take huge satisfaction each time I add something to my compost bin, knowing that it is one less item going to landfill.’

We’re still reading the book – and noting down our favourite tips – but here are a few quick points Nancy makes about her journey in composting.

  • Finding the traditional Browns and Greens compost terminology confusing, because not all green items are Greens (i.e. nitrogen-rich) and not all brown items are Browns (i.e. carbon-rich), Nancy prefers to think in terms of Wet and Dry contents. (Michael Kennard, of Compost Club, makes the same point in his booklet Hot Compost – The Basics. He encourages beginners to think in terms of nitrogen and carbon content to help get the ratios right.)
  • When gardening, use biodegradable jute twine and wooden plant labels so that any oddments that fail to be removed before composting will decompose along with everything else.
  • Invest a few pounds in a compost thermometer – it will keep you entertained for hours and is a great talking point with enthusiastic gardening friends.
  • Use your compost to fill planters, top dress rose bushes and fruit trees, lay a good thick layer over veggie plots in the autumn and early winter and the worms will do the job of taking it below the surface – no need for digging it in.
  • Make your own compost scoop out of a plastic milk container:  Cut the bottle in half – the top half to be used as a compost scoop or planting funnel and the bottom half to be used as a simple seed pot or planter. Make a starting hole in the centre of the bottle using a hot skewer and use this as an entry hole for the scissors, making it possible to make a neat cut. To use one half as a compost scoop – leave the cap in place and use the handle with the bottle neck in the upside-down position to scoop your compost to take to your pots or tubs. With a scoop there is less spillage than using your hands or a trowel.
  • If you buy compost make sure it is a peat-free variety – peatlands are hugely important for plants, wildlife and humanity. They also store vast amounts of carbon which must be kept in the ground to avoid contributing further to climate change.

(Sales of peat to amateur gardeners in England will be banned by 2024.)

Small steps to reach for Net Zero

Posted on by Julie Halford

With Net Zero Week coming up, we have compiled a list of small eco-friendly actions that can have a big cumulative impact.

 Net Zero is the world’s answer to stopping climate change through emission reduction and removal – that means reducing greenhouse gas emissions to their lowest amount and removing remaining emissions from the atmosphere. 

Some of the ideas we’ve included are about making your own produce and products, which can be fun,  economical and empowering.  Doing it yourself also raises your awareness of what ingredients are added to the products you buy.

We took inspiration from some of our favourite books and it was a reminder to constantly re-read eco books – there’s so much you forget. We hope some of these ideas give you inspiration too.

GARDEN

Grow it yourself: Food shortages, higher prices and environmental awareness have prompted many people to try growing their own. To make it cost-effective, grow vegetables that have a reliable heavy crop, such as chillis, tomatoes, courgettes, salad leaves, herbs and cut-and-come-again leafy greens such as kale and chard.

Try homegrown fertilisers. Comfrey is one of the best. Grow Bocking 14, which is sterile and won’t self-seed everywhere.  It can be used to make compost activator, liquid feed and fertilising mulch. Harvest it a couple of times a year, steeping leaves for a couple of weeks in a bucket of water. Nettle leaves are a good source of nitrogen and steeping them is great for feeding leafy plants. Use gloves to pick them. Decant the liquid into plastic bottles for storage and put the decomposing leaves in the compost bin. Dilute one part of the liquid to ten parts water.

Troublesome weeds can be controlled quickly without weed killers or path clearing products – pour over boiling water straight from the kettle followed immediately by a light sprinkling of table salt.

HOME

Many are the great tips to be found in the books and Instagram of eco-influencer Nancy Birtwhistle (Green Living Made Easy) but some of the best are her recipes for cleaning creams.

Cream Cleaner

200g bicarbonate of soda

70ml vegetable glycerine

20ml eco-friendly washing-up liquid

A few drops of essential oil for perfume – optional

500 ml jar or tub

Place all ingredients into the container, stir to a thick smooth paste and it’s ready to use.

Pure Magic  (kills germs, destroys limescale and smells fresh)

200g citric acid

150ml just-boiled water

20ml eco-friendly washing-up liquid

10 drops organic tea tree oil or other scent of choice.

400ml spray bottle

Place citric acid crystals in a heatproof jug and add the water. Stir until the liquid is clear and the crystals have dissolved, then simply add the eco-friendly washing-up liquid and tea tree oil and mix well using a small whisk. Leave the jug to cool completely, uncovered, for a few hours to prevent crystallization then pour into a spray bottle and it’s ready to use.

  • If you would rather buy than make your own, look to the Bide brand. The cleaning products (laundry powder, washing up liquid, toilet fresheners and dishwasher powder) are zero-waste, vegan, non-toxic and home compostable. They are hand-made at kitchen tables throughout the UK by a network of home workers from historically marginalised groups, such as ex-offenders, refugees, single mothers.  The business has just switched to manufacturing on demand using a pre-order system with delivery times of up to three weeks. Products can be bought in bulk. Fans who love the company’s ethos as well as the quality of the products will no doubt be happy to pre-order and wait a little longer.
  • In her book The Miracle of Vinegar, cleaning expert Aggie MacKenzie lists the many uses of this natural wonder – from cleaning yellow armpit stains in shirts and freshening baby clothes to keeping loo limescale at bay.
  • Use an EcoEgg for laundry instead of chemical detergents, helping to save tonnes of washing detergent from polluting water systems every year. The washing beads inside the egg last for 70 washes until you need to get refills.
  • Wash clothes only when needed – fluff in the washing machine is your clothes getting worn out as you clean them.

Eco-author Jen Gale points out in her book The Sustainable (ish) Living Guide that in the UK we recycle less than 50 per cent of our waste and lots of reusable items are discarded every day. So reduce what you buy and reduce what’s already there. Decluttering can feel overwhelming but here’s a way to turn it into a game that even children could get involved with. Not only are you freeing up space in your own home but you’re passing things on to other people that they might need or would love. The game is recommended by the minimalist gurus, the Minimalists. Its suitability depends on how crammed your house is.

The Mins Game

Pick a month and on day 1 you get rid of one thing and on day 2 two things and so on until you’re getting rid of 30 things on day 30. By the end of the month you will have cleared your home of 465 items. One suggestion is to reverse this and do 30 items on day 1 when you’re feeling most motivated.

KITCHEN

  •  If you’re turning on your oven, maximise its shelf space. With a bit of planning you can roast a tray of fruit as a cake cooks. Set time aside to cook a few meals with similar base ingredients, using all the shelves.
  • Use up limp veg in soup. You can also chop up wilting veg and add them to a bag in the freezer labelled ‘soup’. Then with the addition of a stock cube and a bag of lentils you have a dish that is cheap, easy and healthy.
  • A well-stocked freezer means there’s always a meal on hand. Divide dishes into different portion sizes to minimise waste and freeze things flat to maximise space.
  • Bigger and better value bags are often to be found at international grocers or the international aisle in supermarkets.
  • Can you get more tea from your teabag if you make it in a teapot?  We read recently that one teabag can make four cups.  This may need putting to the test in the GGS office.
  • Look up home hacks by the media star Armen Adamjam, such as the tip that made him famous on social media – how to grow an onion.  You can actually place the chopped-off white ends of a spring onion into a cup filled with water and regrow them. 
  • Another Adamjam tip to regrow a pineapple: Twist off the top from a pineapple then peel off the bottom four layers of leaves. Leave the top to dry out for two days. Place over a glass of water somewhere well-lit and away from direct sunlight – only submerge the leaf-free part in the water. When roots have grown, get a pot with soil in it. Make a hole in the middle and plant the top. Water it from above only.
  • Making your own butter is satisfying and saves pounds. A friend found this tip on Instagram and inspired me to try it – £1 of whipping cream can make £7-worth of butter. Whisk the whipping cream until you get a separated buttermilk liquid and butter mixture.  Add salt or other flavouring if desired. The butter lasts for a week in the fridge or you can freeze it and get small amounts out as needed. Next time I try this I will use a large bowl so I don’t end up splattering myself in the process…
  • Another friend has inspired me to make my own yogurt after giving me her tasty homemade version made from milk and a pot of live yogurt cooked in a slow cooker wrapped in a damp towel.
  • In his book How Bad are Bananas? Mike Berners-Lee recommends eating less meat, especially beef and lamb.  If you do buy them, try to ensure they are from mainly grass-fed animals that are not on deforested land or land that should be used for crops (good options would be British hill sheep and cows).
  • Buy only what you know you can eat. Give away food before it goes to waste. Check what needs eating before you go to the shops.

SHOP:

  • Buy sustainably – Clothing that I’ve bought from Thought and Traidcraft (now called Transform Trade) are still going strong years later. They wash and wear well and often prompt compliments.
  • Textiles made from plastic bottles are used to make Weaver Green’s outdoor rugs, throws and cushions. These can be left outside, don’t fade or rot and can go in the washing machine.  Wrapping up in a cosy outdoor blanket can also mean an extra hour or two in the garden if the evening gets cool. The company’s founders drew inspiration for the fabric when they saw a fisherman in Turkey unravel discarded plastic bottles with a knife and then heat bond it to form a rope.
  • Patagonia has a target to use only recycled and renewable materials by 2025. 
  • Swimwear made from discarded fishing nets and other plastic fished from the sea is the brainchild of the sustainable clothing brand Stay Wild Swim.
  • The UpCircle Beauty company uses used coffee grounds as raw materials. Instead of ending up in landfill, discarded coffee grounds are turned into vegan-friendly cosmetics such as scrubs, cleansers, creams and moisturisers. The company get the coffee grounds free from more than 100 cafes. The cafes also save on disposal. Win-win.
  • FoodCircle Supermarket is an online retailer selling energy bars, healthy snacks and other foods that haven’t made it onto shop shelves for various reasons – perhaps because stock has been overproduced by the manufacturer or has short shelf life or minor defects.  Products are sold at discounts of up to 50 per cent. In its first two years the company had saved 500,000 food items from landfill.
  • I had never heard of visible mending until I read Jen Gale’s book. This is a form of repair – or ‘codesign’ – that emerged in the early 2010s in response to issues of overproduction, pollution and worker insecurity in the mainstream fashion industry. The philosophy is that clothing is customizable, not disposable. This is a community that wears their mend with pride. See the website visiblemending.org and Instagram. The examples shown look like works of art.
  • COMPOST!

As compost-heads, we can’t end without encouraging you to encourage everyone you know to compost. Turning your food and garden waste into compost to rebuild soil is a no-brainer. This is even more important if your local council is one of the 50 per cent in England who have not yet implemented a separate food waste collection scheme, meaning tonnes of food scraps are still going to landfill or incineration.

Let’s spread the word, spread the love and spread the compost!

Julie

The Queen’s ‘Make Do and Mend’ Jubilee generation

Posted on by Julie Halford

The Platinum Jubilee celebrations bring to my mind not just the Queen herself but all those of her generation, born in the shadow of the First World War, who have been role models for the rest of us.

The dedication to service that we admire in the Queen is a trait commonly found in people of her generation, no matter what their background.

The Great War must have had a lasting impact on those who were too young to have lived through it themselves but were raised by those who did. It must have been difficult to moan about your own problems when those around you were either traumatised by the trenches or haunted by the ghosts of those who never came back.

In many respects the Queen appears to be more a child of the 1920s than she is a product of palaces, tied more to the time rather than the place of her childhood.

Edward’s trousers

I remember an official photo of the Royal Family that appeared in newspapers around 1980. Journalists had a field day mocking the fact that the hem on young Prince Edward’s trousers had clearly been let down, leaving the old trouser line visible.

The response from Buckingham Palace press office was that the Queen did not believe in wasting anything and liked to get good wear out of her children’s clothes. Just because her son had had a growth spurt was no reason to throw out a good pair of trousers. This wasn’t a fashionable attitude at the time; it seemed laughably fuddy-duddy. This was the dawn of the Eighties; the ethos was not so much Make Do and Mend as Chuck Out and Spend.

But as with so many things, the cycle has turned again and the Queen’s distaste for waste is now fashionable because we know it’s essential.

My great-aunt Margaret was born in the same year as the Queen – 1926.  Although their lives couldn’t have been more different, they shared many common values.   

Orphaned as a toddler, Auntie Margaret was raised by my great-grandmother, who was a widow in her 50s at the time. Her last year in school involved no education at all but was spent knitting socks for soldiers and filling out ration books. She would have loved to become a seamstress but no jobs were available at the time, so at 14 she went into the woollen mill where my grandma also worked to become a weaver.

 Noise of looms

‘I grew up the day I walked into that mill,’ she used to say. The incessant noise of the looms in the weaving shed was deafening and most weavers ended up profoundly deaf by middle age.

Margaret never married or had children, never owned her own home, worked past retirement age scrubbing floors in a doctors’ surgery at night while also caring for elderly relatives. She loved to cook, bake, clean, knit, darn, sew, embroider and tend her potted plants. She never wasted a morsel of food or scrap of material. When she died, I inherited her sewing box full of what she would call ‘bits and bobs’. I can’t for the life of me think of a use for many of these random scraps but I hope I will grow into the sort of person who can.  

Gardener extraordinaire

Another great example of this generation is my husband’s grandfather Sid.  A veteran of the Second World War, in peacetime he was a factory foreman as well as gardener extraordinaire in his free time. When the family were lucky enough to get a corner-plot council house in Redditch with a larger than average garden, Sid made full use of it, growing his own veg and flowers.

  My husband remembers his grandfather in his trademark cravat and hat –  an immaculately-dressed model of working-class diligence and decency. Never one for leisure, Sid also made toys for his three children. While he was busy in his shed or greenhouse, his wife Edna would be baking her locally-famous apple pies and knitting for England, providing jumpers and cardigans for all the family, right down to her great-grandchildren, only stopping in her eighties because of arthritis.

Like my Auntie Margaret, if there was anything Sid and Edna could make or do for themselves and those around them, they did. Their lives were a world away from the Queen’s but in values they were much the same.  In the Queen, whom they very much admired, they saw not merely a monarch but a kindred spirit.

I think of Margaret and Sid and Edna as being in their own quiet ways as responsible for the good things this country stands for as the Queen.

Name that composter

When we discovered at Great Green Systems that some of our customers had given names to their Green Johanna or Green Cone composter, our family was inspired to do the same.  There wasn’t much debate about what that name should be. For his love of gardening, his self-sufficiency, his recycling habits before people even knew the term, it had to be ….Sid.

There is something very reassuring about Sid the composter’s presence in the garden, watching over us as he gets down to work turning our food and garden waste into compost so we can feed our plants and soil. Sadly, Grandad Sid died before hot composters became a thing, but we know he would absolutely approve of this naturally efficient way of turning waste into something wonderful.

Neither myself nor my husband are green-fingered, but I feel that ‘Sid’ is watching approvingly as we finally follow in his footsteps by growing our own veg and flowers.  Sometimes he must be rolling his eyes and thinking the apple has fallen very far from the tree, but hey… every journey starts with a single step, as they say.  

We have a plant in our garden that is a cutting of a cutting from one in Sid’s garden in the 1950s and every time I look at it I feel that we are trying to walk in his footsteps. They are big footsteps to fill.

So on Platinum Jubilee Day on the 3rd of June, in our house we will raise a toast not just to the Queen  but to all those of her generation we have been lucky enough to know and love.

Julie

Green ‘Sid’ – complete with cravat and hat – in Jubilee mood

The perfect no-waste supper for Burns Night

Posted on by Julie Halford

One of the funniest things about the film My Big Fat Greek Wedding is the Greek father’s attempts to prove that everything originally came from Greece. In my experience, Scots share a similar belief – that everybody originally came from Scotland.

Years ago, while accompanying a group of French students on a trip to Glasgow, I discovered, to my surprise, that I was actually Scottish. I was ordering a round of drinks in a pub when regulars at the bar heard my accent and asked where I was from. The news that I was from Yorkshire was greeted warmly, as God’s Own Country was obviously considered a Little Scotland. Then they asked my surname – Watson. This was greeted even more warmly as it was proof that I was really Scottish; I even had my clan’s tartan cheerfully pointed out on a big chart hanging on the wall. Then when I mentioned my mother’s Irish maiden name, it turned out that her family weren’t really Irish, they were Scottish too! Another tartan was duly pointed out. There were so many tartans on this chart it looked like even the French visitors might discover they were actually Scottish too.

This bond formed the basis of a great night and our party were treated to free drinks all round (Scots mean? I’m sorry, you just haven’t met the right Scots.)

One of my relatives. Probably.

The fact that my husband’s family is Scottish needs no investigation. His grandfather’s family walked (literally walked) from Dundee to Birmingham in the 1930s in search of work. Looking into his family tree, my husband found his relatives weren’t actually from Dundee but a wee place called Inverkeilor. A family pilgrimage is being planned – by car this time, not foot.

I say all this to head off any accusation of cultural appropriation when I share a haggis recipe for Burns Night (January 25th).

It was on that glorious trip to Glasgow that I first tasted haggis – the dish popularised by Robert Burns in his poem Address to a Haggis. Had I been offered haggis at any previous time, I would have declined due to the very thought of it. Something to do with sheep’s stomach….eurgh, pass the sick bucket etc. But on this happy occasion I had to be polite and tuck in because I was staying with a wonderful host family who had cooked it for us. Oh my word, it was fantastic. To think if I hadn’t been on that trip, I would never have tasted it.

Having so far praised all things Scottish, there is one thing I can’t let them get away with – Burns Night or no Burns Night – their problem with pronunciation.

While a student in France on my year abroad, I made two great friends who were also studying French – Alison, from Glasgow, and Anna, from Donegal. We became the best of friends and our ears gradually adapted to the newness of each other’s accents – ‘gradually’ being the operative word.

One evening over a meal of spag bol, Alison asked me to pass the paper. I turned to the desk behind me, picked up a pad of notepaper and passed it to her. She stared at me nonplussed and asked again for me to pass the PAPER. I responded by thrusting the notepaper more urgently towards her.

 ‘I said PAPER,’ she said, raising her voice as if I were deaf.

‘AND HERE IT IS!’ I shouted back.

Honestly, what’s wrong with her, we both thought.

This went on for a few more seconds, while Anna sat firmly on the fence grating a lot of parmesan on her pasta. Finally, Alison got up, walked round the table, picked up the pepper pot, with a meaningful look at me, and took it back to her place.

‘If you wanted the pepper,’ I asked, ‘then why did you ask for the paper?’

‘I didn’t ask for the PAPER, I asked for the PAPER,’ she retorted.

Talk about being divided by a common language. Thus, we came to realise that Scottish people have a problem with differentiating between the pronunciation of certain words. Or rather I realised that; Alison probably came to a different conclusion.

Eejit test

I honestly don’t know how Scots differentiate between pepper and paper when talking to each other. Maybe they use hand signals, or perhaps they think the context would make it obvious to anyone but a total eejit. I just hope I am never in a critical situation where the confusion caused by a Scottish pronunciation of pepper and paper could mean the difference between life and death.

The point of this blog – and there is one – is that haggis is a delicious waste-free meal. Don’t wait as long as I did to find out.

 Looking up haggis recipes to try out, I was happy to learn that sheep’s stomach has generally been replaced by casing, and the work involved with the offal ingredients means it’s easier to buy ready-made, which is what we’ll be doing tonight for Burns Night. It will be served, of course, with neeps (mashed swede) and tatties (mashed potatoes) and we’ll be raising a toast to my husband’s Inverkeilor relatives and all my distant unknown clans.

My recipe search also came up with a veggie version that’s just as tasty, with whisky sauce to serve.  

Happy Burns Night to all Scots – including all those who don’t yet know they are.

Julie

Vegetarian Haggis – Serves 6

  • 2 large portobello mushrooms, roughly chopped
  • 1 medium sized brown onion, finely chopped
  • 1 large carrot, grated
  • 50g salted butter
  • 100g pinhead oatmeal
  • 55g split peas
  • 55g pearl barley
  • 1/2 tsp mace
  • 1/2 tsp black pepper
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp nutmeg
  • 600ml vegetable stock
  • 1 1/2 tsp marmite
  • 1 1/2 tsp black treacle
  • Oven 180 degrees C

Instructions

  1. Boil split peas and pearl barley in two separate saucepans – split peas for 25 mins and barley for 20 mins.
  2. Fry onions in 25g of butter, add the chopped mushrooms and when soft, stir  in the grated carrot.
  3. Make your stock, stir in the marmite and black treacle until they both dissolve.
  4. Add the oats to the frying pan and then 400ml of the stock.
  5. Add the salt, nutmeg, pepper and mace and stir while gently heating.
  6. Drain your split peas and pearl barley, add both to the frying pan, Allow the stock to reduce down, stirring gently.
  7. Add 25g butter and the remaining 200ml of stock.
  8. Cook the mix over a medium heat until the stock has reduced completely, stirring often to avoid it catching on the bottom of the frying pan.
  9. When the mix is cooked through and the stock has reduced, taste to make sure flavour is balanced, adding more spices, marmite or treacle as required. The flavour should be warming and peppery with an earthy undertone and a little sweetness.
  10. Spoon the mix into a well-greased loaf tin and place into the preheated oven for 20-30mins, or until the top of the mix is crispy and darkened.
  11. Once the haggis is cooked take it out of the oven, place a length of tin foil over the top of the haggis and then an upturned baking tray. Gently turn upside down so you end up with your haggis, out of the tin. on the foil on the baking tray.
  12. Place this back in the oven for 2-5 mins to crisp the outside of the haggis.

(scottishscran)

 

 Whisky sauce

  • 2 finely chopped shallots
  • 300 ml double cream
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • ¼ teaspoon black pepper
  • 1 tablespoon butter
  • 3 tablespoon whisky
  • 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard 
  •  Fry shallots in butter for 3 to 4 minutes until soft.
  • Pour in the whisky and allow it to cook for a minute and reduce.
  • Add the cream and mustard and bring to a simmer. The sauce should be slightly thickened. Season to taste.

(greatbritishrecipes)

Resolutions to do better this year

Posted on by Julie Halford

Putting the decorations away after Christmas is a good time to think about what can be done better next time around.      

No, I’m not recommending that you hit the sales for presents and stash them at the top of the wardrobe. We can’t all be like my mother-in-law.  

 I’m thinking more about making resolutions to do better waste-wise so that the festive fails of Christmas Just Past will be this year’s gains in reducing the family seasonal carbon footprint.

 Every year I try to make little improvements and write my ideas down while they’re fresh in my mind. Then I put this list on top of the decorations box for the new me to find in December. Those of a certain age might remember the advert that coined the phrase Vorsprung Durch Technik (Progress Through Technology). I like to think of my New Year’s resolutions as Vorsprung Durch List-making.

 You may make resolutions now but, believe me, you will forget if you don’t write them down.

Top tips from my list:

  • Write a memo to self – If you’re the sort of person who buys presents early, remind yourself where they’re stored and who they’re for. If not, you may not remember where you put Auntie Ethel’s present and who you bought the novelty gorilla slippers for, apart from the fact that it wasn’t Auntie Ethel. They’re not her size.
  • Ditch the selections – Don’t buy selections of food items if your family won’t eat everything in them. For us, in the dips selection, it’s thousand island dressing; in the cheese selection, it’s anything smoked; in the cheese biscuit selection, it’s the plain crackers. So only buy the cheese, crackers, dips etc that your family love. This leads me into a great idea from my sister-in-law.
  • DIY hampers – Get a box, add a bit of straw, then fill with items you know the person loves – drinks, preserves, pickles, biscuits, tea bags, chocolates etc. You can buy a box, as my sister-in-law did, but you could also just use a shoe box, or any box and decorate it. This would be a great idea for children to make for relatives and it could be as cheap or expensive as you like. It would also work for birthdays or Mother’s Day gifts.

Next year – make a DIY hamper

  • Stop roasting the same old chestnuts – Ah Christmas…it must provide enough material to keep therapists busy all year. It means different things to different people; the pull of obscure childhood memories leads us into bizarre behaviour. We can see everybody else’s craziness, of course, just not our own. What, I wonder, drives my mother every year to make me batches of mince pies, Christmas pudding and Christmas cake when I hate them, and have always hated them? I’m not going to start eating them just because she keeps making them. Either I disappoint her with the truth (again) or end up with a lot of waste if I can’t palm them off onto someone else. She seems to need to fill her kitchen with the smell of all those Christmas spices. Is it a subliminal desire to become Mrs Cratchit and feed up Tiny Tim? Who knows, but next year I will get in early and find some other grateful mouths for her to feed.
  • Make a request – None of us want to become the kind of person that people cross the street to avoid for fear of getting an eco-lecture, but surely we can ask those closest to us to buy eco-friendly Christmas cards for us and to wrap our present in recyclable paper, even if it’s as simple as avoiding glitter, foil, plastic etc?
  • Do advance research – Check out toy rental companies, such as Whirli, and companies that rent Christmas trees. If you leave it too late you’ll probably forget your good intentions.
  • Avoid Oops, I Did it Again syndrome – Don’t overcook. I read an article that said no one needs more than two side dishes, three if you must.  Regular readers (Happy New Year to you both!) might remember my plan to hold a family vote to limit my Christmas Day veg dishes to three. I texted my three sons to ask for their choices. Was the ensuing chaos an attempt by various parties to derail the democratic process to ensure they got mushy peas? I have 11 months to sort this out for next Christmas. Don’t ask how many dishes there were on the big day, it’s embarrassing.
  • Have a Christmas Dinner debrief (with yourself, you don’t want this to get weird) – I resolve next year not to simply plough ahead thinking of my guests as a faceless group but to see them as individuals, i.e.  how many vegetarians, how many 90-year-olds with tiny appetites, how many dietary requirements etc. I also resolve to believe my guests, even those I gave birth to, when they say they hate something. Broccoli was the biggest waste item – two of my sons say they hate it, and have always hated it, and will not start eating it just because I keep cooking it. (Uh-oh, this sounds familiar…)
  • Keep successful leftover recipes – we had great success withCheesy Sprout Bake, Boxing Day Burritos, Sprout Leaf Bhajis and Leftover Veg Fritters – the fritters went down especially well but are still not an excuse to cook too much broccoli.
  • Make the break – If you’d like to suggest that perhaps you could stop buying a present for your 35-year-old nephew who’s an investment banker, now is the time. If he really wants a Lynx gift set, he can surely buy it himself.
  • Unwanted gifts – If you don’t have an arrangement with everybody to keep receipts, put these gifts to one side so they can be kept pristine to be donated to the next fundraiser or a charity shop. If you plan to regift, attach a note saying who gave them to you to avoid embarrassment. Excess gifts of chocolates and biscuits can go to the foodbank. Don’t save them; you’ll forget where you put them until they’re out of date.  
  • Follow the recipe – I made the best-ever chocolate log thanks to Nancy Birtwhistle’s recipe – fruit puree filling in the Swiss roll adds the perfect necessary tartness. But next time I will follow the recipe faithfully. If Nancy says 200g of chocolate, she means 200g of chocolate. Don’t think you know better and that sounds a bit stingy so bang in another 100g.  Turns out there is such a thing as too much chocolate. Always remember, Nancy knows best – and not just at Christmas.  

Best-ever chocolate log – well, the remains of it after dinner.

Julie

How to compost Christmas

Posted on by Julie Halford

‘Tis the season to be jolly glad you’ve got a composter.

Any unused food waste will now be breaking down in the compost bin along with suitable wrapping paper, and after the New Year you’ll have Christmas cards and perhaps a tree to recycle too. It all helps to reduce the gigantic waste mountain of the season, as well as avoiding scenes such as this, below, taken last year as general waste bins awaited post-Christmas collection.

Our family used our food waste in several recipes, including one trying out our new air fryer by making leftover veg fritters. (Mash up your leftovers, form them into fritter shapes, brush both sides with vegetable oil. Air fry at 200C for 12 minutes, turning them over once.)

Leftover veg fritters – no, they’re not burnt, your device’s battery must be running low.

 Keep in mind the following tips for recycling your festive waste.

Food waste

 It’s good to know that after reusing or freezing your food waste, your leftover leftovers can be put to good use feeding the microbes in what I call the Bacteria Cafeteria in the composter.

Regarding composting food waste, we are sometimes asked about whether bones can be added to the Green Johanna. We hear many different stories from customers about this. Some tell us they add chicken carcasses to their Johanna and the bones disappear completely; others say bones have been stripped down but are still visible in the finished compost. This means that the bones need to be picked out of the compost and if you have dogs there could be a danger of them getting hold of the bones. For that reason, we don’t recommend that bones are added to the Johanna. They can be added to the Green Cone, however, which doesn’t produce compost.  

We were fascinated to hear the experience of one customer who found a dead duck by her pond and disposed of the body in her Green Johanna. She said the duck disappeared – the only part that was visible when she came to remove the compost was the bill!

Packaging

Did I mention I’ve got an air fryer? I try to work it into most conversations. I know I’m a bit late to the party, but I like to wait until I’m sure some new-fangled thing really does work before I dip a toe in. Once I’m convinced about the air fryer I might move on to that Internet.

A sign of how composting can get under your skin is the joy I felt unpacking the air fryer and realising what great air pockets the craters in the cardboard packaging would make for the composting micro-organisms. The air fryer sat abandoned as I prioritised ripping up the cardboard.

Perfect packaging for the compost bin

If cardboard is being sent to be recycled, flatten any boxes to save space. Keep them dry as they can’t be recycled if they get wet and go mouldy.  

Christmas trees

You’ll soon be turning your mind to taking down the tree – unless you’re like a relative of ours who puts it up the day after Halloween and takes it down on Boxing Day.

The following tips from Rod Weston’s carryoncomposting.com website are useful.

  •  Shred the tree first to increase the surface area exposed to the composting microbes to speed decomposition. If a shredder is not available, branches can be cut into thumb-size pieces, but these will be slow to compost and it’s easier to donate the tree to the local authority to be shredded into chippings which are then used locally in parks. Local authorities often arrange drop-off points in January.
  • Pine needles are tough with a waxy coating and take a long time to break down. Shred them first if you can and avoid dumping a lot of them in a thick layer. Mix them in with something that encourages airflow such as dead leaves or scrunched up newspaper. You could also make the most of their slow decomposition by sprinkling them over muddy paths. Pine needles are acidic when they fall from the tree but after composting they have a nearly neutral pH. (gardeningknowhow.com)
  •  There is increased interest among the eco-conscious in eating (yes, eating) various parts of the tree. I didn’t know until reading an article in The Observer that fir trees can be used in ice-cream, to pickle eggs and vegetables or crushed to flavour gin or vinegar.

Food experts say the needles can be used like rosemary or bay leaves in cooking, creating a flavour of citrus and pine. They’re also a good source of vitamin C. The wood can be burned to make pine ash, which can be used in gardens and for cleaning.

 The baker and food writer Julia Georgallis, author of How to Eat Your Christmas Tree, has been working with Christmas trees for years. “You can pretty much eat the whole thing,” she says.

She recommends wearing gloves to handle a spruce tree, as they can be spiky. She hopes that eating pieces of their Christmas tree will help people to reconsider what is waste and what can be reused.  

It’s important to use only organic trees, grown without pesticides.  Fir, spruce, and pine are the most commonly bought trees and these are safe to eat but avoid cedar and cypress which are inedible. Yew trees are poisonous and should never be eaten.

Christmas cards

  • Compost suitable cards to provide carbon content in your composter. Any cards decorated with glitter, foil, cellophane, plastic or anything laminated can’t be composted or recycled.

Parts of cards such as this, featuring gold ribbon and foil, should be disposed of in general waste, but the plain paper part can be torn off and composted or recycled.

  • If recycling cards at supermarket drop-off points or household recycling sites, remember to remove any items that can’t be recycled, such as decorations mentioned above and batteries that might be in musical cards.
  • Make gift tags: You don’t have to be creative to make gift tags from old cards – both Christmas cards and ordinary birthday cards – so you never have to buy them. Save string to use as tags. Or cut out images for children to make their own cards next year.

Make your own gift tags

  • Make banners or bunting (easy to store, put up, take down) or turn cards into mini calendars.
  • Schools can recycle cards by showing children how to turn them into postcards for next Christmas or festive bookmarks.

Wrapping paper

  • Compost suitable, unadorned wrapping paper.
  • Remember the slogan ‘Scrunch it to sort it’.  If your wrapping paper stays in a ball when you scrunch it up it can be recycled (providing it’s not covered in glitter). If it unfurls itself, it can’t.
  • Remove plastic tape. 
  • Reuse – I know I’m not the only person who goes round picking up wrapping paper as it’s discarded in the unwrapping frenzy. Smooth it out (iron if necessary) for reuse. It can also be used to line drawers.    

Calendars

 I came up with my own recycling idea as I was dismantling last year’s office calendar. It’s a Royal Academy calendar with beautiful pictures that I often use to make colourful wall displays.

The calendar pages have images but also the days of each month, of course. I use the pages as personalised gift wrap with the birthday girl or boy’s name emblazoned on the date.

Corks

  • Cork is compostable because it’s made from plant-based material from the bark of the cork oak tree – it grows back without harming the tree.
  • Use as a carbon-rich input in compost, but not if the cork has been used as a stopper for chemicals.  
  •  Check it’s real cork not plastic made to look like cork. Cut open to check.
  • Break or chop up to compost quicker. You can also rub it on a grater to crumble the cork (although we find this time-consuming).
  • A cork that’s added whole may not break down completely so pick it out and put it back through the composter.
  • Remove plastic or foil or wax coverings.
  • You can send corks to recorkeduk.org – a recycling scheme.
  • Make gardening ‘eye protectors’ by making a hole and putting them on top of garden canes.
  • Use corks to suppress weeds and hold in moisture around potted trees.

Wreaths

Plant materials can be composted once any glue, plastic, glitter and wiring is removed. Holly is best shredded and used to make leaf mould separately.

Julie

Our 12 tips of Christmas

Posted on by Julie Halford

Are you struggling to convince your family that green doesn’t equal mean when it comes to Christmas?  We’ve compiled a list of tips to help you along the way.

1. Buy to recycle – If Christmas isn’t Christmas for you without cards – and a message on Facebook just doesn’t cut it – then buy with care and an eye on recyclability.

This means avoiding cards decorated with glitter, foil, ribbon, cellophane etc. It’s incredible how many cards feature these in abundance. Manufacturers, please stop using glitter to create the illusion of frost! Customers, stop buying these cards and perhaps manufacturers will take notice.

Support small businesses who have taken the Naked Cards pledge. This is a campaign by designers and illustrators to stop wrapping cards in cellophane. Millions of cards are sold this way. Cellophane is a single-use plastic that takes a long time to degrade completely in landfill. The campaigners hope to cut down on plastic one card at a time by keeping cards ‘naked’ – either sold in paper bags or with small peelable stickers keeping card and envelope together.    

Also look for cards that are Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified so you know the paper used has been sustainably and ethically produced. FSC certified means the card is generated from well managed forests.  

2.Decorate with cards – Christmas cards make great free decorations. I save my favourite cards and reuse them every year. Yes, it does make me look as though I have hundreds of friends. Beautiful cards are small, cheap works of art. Why would you throw them out? Keeping cards from loved ones who are no longer here in person keeps them close at Christmas.

A few years ago a friend showed me an idea on Pinterest that I just had to copy (this is why I never go on Pinterest). It was a wall display using Christmas cards arranged in the shape of a Christmas tree. It looked fantastic, or so I thought.  It was only when I was taking the display down in January that my husband asked wonderingly, ‘…Are those cards shaped like a Christmas tree?’

The card tree took quite a long time to make so I haven’t repeated it; I came up with my own lazy version instead. The large picture over our mantelpiece depicts an African landscape. It’s fine for 11 months of the year but, of course, it doesn’t exactly scream Christmas, so to make it festive for December I create a display on top of the frame’s glass by blutacking Christmas cards onto it. With a bit of creative manoeuvring you can’t see the original picture underneath. Ok, you might be able to see the odd bit of original picture but it’s Christmas, chill out.

DIY decorating with cards

3.Save your stamps – Don’t forget you can save stamps – including new or used, first or second-class and foreign – for many charities. Stamps are sold by weight so the more the better for raising much-needed funds. Cut the stamp off the envelope making sure to leave roughly 1cm of envelope bordering the stamp.

4.Give pre-loved – Not long ago, giving a second-hand gift risked giving offence. In some quarters it still might, but times have changed. To more and more people, giving a gift that’s ‘pre-loved’ doesn’t mean you don’t care and couldn’t be bothered.  It looks like you do care and you are bothered – about the planet as well as the person.

 As someone who has always shopped in charity shops, I would be delighted to receive a second-hand gift, but I would only gift second-hand to people who feel the same way. It depends on the recipient; with some people it’s a no-no, but there could be others who are open to the suggestion, especially the young. Why not have the conversation?   

Keep up to date with the second-hand choices available – the market is expanding rapidly as supply keeps up with demand. I only discovered recently that the second-hand site Vinted is not just for clothes but includes toys, homeware and books.

Steven Bethell, co-founder of the used clothing chain Beyond Retro, says second-hand shopping is booming as people try to save cash and live sustainably.

‘I think there is a category shift, in sensitivity and understanding of the environment, you can’t go back from, ‘ he says. ‘You can’t uncare that the planet is burning up. ‘

Also look out for church fairs throughout the year.  Parishioners are generous with donations and save their best things and lovely but unwanted gifts for the church’s summer and Christmas fairs.  

I read that Nigella Lawson doesn’t give gifts to adults. This strike me as very sensible. It’s too late for me this year – that ship has sailed – but perhaps I’ll start sounding out family members next summer. That’s still early enough for everybody to be free from the gravitational pull of the emotional blackmail that comes with Christmas. People are still able to think straight in July and the words ‘Scrooge’ and ‘Grinch’ are on summer holiday.

5. Use reusable crackers – (keepthiscracker.com) – These crackers slot together for you to fill yourself and they can be used year after year. In reviews, customers say they are easy to put together, a good size to fit things in and the designs look good on the festive table.

This is also a fun activity to do with children, especially if you write your own jokes! All you have to buy new is the snaps that make the bang. You can also get low-noise snaps for those who don’t like loud noises.

6.Buy ethically – Support charity websites, B Corp companies and small businesses that prioritise sustainable ethical practices. Look for gifts made from sustainable materials, such as organic cotton, bamboo, hemp and recycled materials. Check out peacewiththewild.co.uk/  goodthingsgifts.co.uk/ greentulipco.uk/ sustainablecards.com. Cards that contain seeds in the paper are a lovely idea – you plant the card in a garden with just a bit of water and it grows into flowers (eco-friendlycards.com).

Look into Green Grads – a scheme that supports makers using recycled or waste materials.

Visit craft fairs and makers’ markets – these are popular with people who want gifts to be handmade, not mass produced.

7.Make presents – If you can sew, knit, cook, bake, draw, grow or make stuff then apply these skills to making your own gifts. It’s a way of saving money but no one can argue that you haven’t made an affort; it requires a lot more thought than a click. Home-made gifts used to be fairly unusual but they are becoming increasingly popular as a way to show you care but don’t want to give unwanted presents.

These are the gifts that people remember. Last year a neighbour, remembering that I had told her my dad would much prefer spicy food to the traditional turkey, came round on Christmas morning with plates piled high with freshly-made samosas. She’s of Pakistani heritage so they were delicious. Samosas go great with roast turkey dinner, we discovered. The thoughtfulness of this homemade gift really made our Christmas.

8.Offer your time – Adults love the offer of baby-sitting or gardening services, for example. Earlier this year a friend who wanted to thank me for something said it with flowers – no, not a bouquet; she came round to our house with some cuttings from her garden and, knowing I’m a rubbish gardener, planted them for me. All summer long I thought of her every time I looked out at her colourful handiwork. So much nicer than a box of chocolates.

You can also buy experiences as opposed to gifts A friend told me that earlier in the year she had filed away a comment made by her daughter-in-law that a certain restaurant was her favourite place to eat. My friend then phoned the restaurant to buy a meal voucher as a gift. This has the added benefit of showing that you really listen to people!  I’ve also gifted vouchers for a local beauty salon – this keeps money circulating locally, boosting the high street.

9.Borrow Christmas – The rental market has expanded dramatically. As well as clothes you can also rent toys and bikes and, if you’re expecting an influx of guests, you can rent tables, sofas and even table decorations.

10. Avoid food waste – We know that when it comes to food, reducing waste is best. For great ideas see the Kitche food waste app at kitche.co and Love Food Hate Waste.

The key to reducing waste is planning meals. This involves knowing how many people you’ll be catering for and how you’ll be using any leftovers. Love Food Hate Waste has a handy portion planner to help you avoid over-buying.   

Reasons why people end up with so much waste at Christmas include: wanting to indulge, worry about running out of something and the feeling that everybody else is doing it.  

Planning is important so map out the meals you’ll be serving, checking in your cupboards, fridge and freezer for what you’ve already got.  

Think of batch cooking dishes you can easily scale up, such as curry or chilli. Do a shopping list and stick to it.

Don’t feel the need to stick to tradition by making things that family members don’t really like – perhaps that means turkey, sprouts, Christmas pudding, parsnips, mince pies? If it does, find alternatives.

11.Compost what you can – if you’re reading this you are probably a composting enthusiast so enjoy the fact that in putting your organic waste through the composting cycle it will return to you as soil food in the spring.  

You also won’t have the problem of storing growing piles of bin bags while awaiting the first refuse collection in January. Our family got notice this week that our first collection after December 22nd will be January 8th – that’s a long time to store mounting rubbish.

12.Dial it down – I’ll sign off for Christmas with my biggest tip, one that comes from the lived experience of many Christmases – some more successful than others and a few consigned to the waste bin of family history: Focus on what matters.

You don’t have to dial everything up to the max just because that’s what the adverts show. In fact, tread carefully with all those ads. Don’t believe the face of the cook as he/she smiles serenely, feeding the 5000 sitting expectantly at the table – they’re models and actors.

Also remember that no one’s stomach expands magically like Mary Poppins’ bag just because it happens to be December 25th. Let’s not forget that those ads will change on the stroke of midnight, as fast as Cinderella’s ballgown, from encouraging you to gorge yourself silly to suggesting it’s high time you joined a slimming programme, Fatty.

 Last year our induction hob stopped working on December 23rd.  Despite fearing I was going to have a meltdown, in actual fact I came to my senses. While waiting for the electrician, I realised that this really wasn’t a disaster; if we had to eat tuna sarnies for Christmas dinner, would it really matter in the scheme of things? This year’s mishap is next year’s anecdote. Too soon? Ok, whenever.

In the end the electrician saved the day but the lesson I learned still stands. Time for a reality check. However you choose to spend Christmas, just enjoy it in your own way. It’s allowed.

Julie

Can you love Christmas and the planet too?

Posted on by Julie Halford

What would your dream green Christmas look like?

 I recently joined a ‘Crap-Free Christmas’ webinar (online session) hosted by Jen Gale, author of the Sustainable(ish) Living Guides and website, and all of us taking part were asking ourselves this question.

You know the waste hierarchy of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle? Jen has added another layer that’s especially relevant for Christmas – Rethink.  As in, let’s rethink Christmas. We had a go at this during the session.

The problem

  • Twenty per cent of gifts are unwanted. One in 10 go to landfill.  
  • £220m is spent on Christmas jumpers every year. A quarter of these will be worn only once.
  • £280m is spent on office Secret Santas.
  • The miles of wrapping paper used at Christmas would almost reach to the moon.
  • A third of festive food is wasted – 250,000 tonnes; that would make 4.2m Christmas dinners. Two million turkeys and 74 million mince pies go to waste.
  • Council waste collections rise by 30 per cent at this time of year.

Some solutions

 First ask yourself, what do I want Christmas to mean to me and my family?

We are made to feel we should want a festival of excess and consumption. But when asked that question in the webinar most people answered:  down time, daft games, shared times, rest, relaxation. If your ‘love language’ (the way you express love) centres on presents, try to imagine alternatives, such as offering experiences, home-made gifts or volunteering your services.

 We discussed how to take away some of the tension that builds up at this time of year.  One suggestion was to slow down and avoid panic buying.  Then start a conversation with the like-minded souls in your life about how you might do things differently.

And start small – aim to change just one thing this year.  

Gifts

  •  Don’t guess, ask!  Why buy random things in a mad spending rush just to get it out of the way when you could find out exactly what a person would like?   And play your part too by having suggestions ready when people ask what you or your kids would prefer.  

In her blog about the (Festive) Waste Hierarchy, Jen gives the reminder that the last stage of the hierarchy – Rot – also includes composting. She advises those who don’t yet have a council food waste collection to ‘consider asking Santa for a hot composter to go in your garden.’ We couldn’t agree more!

  • Make a pact to keep receipts so gifts can be exchanged.
  • Do a family Secret Santa (someone suggested Elfster – the online Secret Santa gift generator). Or a second-hand Secret Santa – get a second-hand book, for example, or give a book that you’ve enjoyed. Try WOB (World of Books) – the second-hand online book shop.
  • Resist novelty gifts – they’re usually wasted.
  • Try charity shops for stocking fillers and Christmas jumpers.
  • Buy locally and ethically. Make a pact that 50 per cent of gifts will come from local shops.
  • Make treats as gifts and look out for containers throughout the year to present them in. (This is especially good for pupils to give to teachers). Jen recommends her favourite fudge recipe which can be adjusted with festive flavours.  I tried this out last week as a thank you gift for some work colleagues, one of whom is vegan. So I made a vegan version by using coconut ‘double cream’. I’ll admit that something went a bit wrong with the consistency – I don’t know if it was me or the coconut cream. Let’s blame the cream. To avoid accusations of fudge fraud, I renamed the treats vanilla drops. They were still delicious, even though I had to issue a health and safety warning to suck rather than chew or they’d superglue themselves to unsuspecting teeth. They were greatly appreciated, especially by the vegan recipient. It’s the thought that counts, I told him.

It’s the thought that counts – festive vegan ‘vanilla drops’.

Wrapping

  • Use gifts bags and keep recirculating them.
  • Babipur and Cascayde sell paper-based tape that can be recycled.
  • Furoshiki is a Japanese custom of wrapping gifts in a square piece of reuseable cloth. There are methods online that take seconds to learn.
  • Use fabric samples to wrap gifts. The recipient can reuse the fabric afterwards for crafting.
  • For larger gifts, use wallpaper samples, which can also be used to make gift tags.
  • Tie up presents with co-ordinating jute twine, cotton ribbon, or long thin strips of fabric.

Cards

The carbon footprint of cards comes not just from the card and paper but also the postal service.  Could you send an e-card or make a phone or video call instead to loved ones, especially those in far-flung places?

The modern custom of pupils giving cards to everyone in the class uses two trees’ worth of card and paper per school. Start a conversation about this – suggest the children send one card to the whole class and put them on display or have a Card Secret Santa. This would of course also alleviate the stress of getting kids to write 29 cards or giving up and writing them all yourself. Yes, I’ve been there. Madness.

Food

  •  Beef and lamb have the biggest carbon footprint as a Christmas dinner. Turkey has three times the carbon footprint of chicken. My son who moans every year ‘Why can’t we just have chicken?’ will be delighted to hear this.
  • Have an ‘Eat me first box/shelf’ in your fridge to avoid food waste.
  • Use the Olio app, which helps you to beat waste by sharing and finding things in your local area. 
  • Make a meal plan for the festive fortnight.

Christmas outfits

  • How about suggesting that your children’s school holds Christmas jumper swaps (or Buy a Jumper for £1 stall)? You could also swap other dressing-up outfits, such as Halloween, or World Book Day.
  • If you already have a Christmas jumper, you don’t need a new one. The one you’ve got will last for, oooh…..life.

Rudolph’s return – you can wear him next year – and the next….

Tree

  • If you have a fake tree already, the most sustainable option is to keep on using it and pass it on if you decide you no longer want it. We’ve had our fake tree for years and – humblebrag alert – we bought most of the decorations when we moved into our first house in 1990. We don’t do fashion when it comes to Christmas. Because it’s Christmas.  
  • Rent a tree – look up local firms that offer this service: you rent a tree in a pot and return it after Christmas to be replanted.    

At this point in the discussion Jen showed us photos of her alternative trees – there was the green-painted egg-box tree (don’t try this at home) but also the more successful and lovely pom-pom tree that all the family had a hand in making, using freecycled wool. Her husband has also made an impressive pallet tree, which I think has a cool Scandi vibe.

During the webinar, it was great to see people sharing their own easy wins in the chats.  One commentator said she cooked most of the Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve to make the big day easier.  Hearing other people’s ideas opens your eyes to what’s possible.

To finish off, we all made commitments for ourselves. I decided that our Christmas Day meal should only include three vegetable side dishes. Yes, I am aware of how pathetic this sounds now I’ve written it down but don’t judge me, I’m resisting decades of family conditioning here – my mother never met a vegetable she didn’t serve up on Christmas Day. Jen suggested that we could have a family vote about which dishes should be included. This is such a good idea because if anyone complains I can blame Jen. It stands to reason that the more side dishes there are the more waste there will be.

As we signed off, I felt cheerful and optimistic. Crap-free Christmas, I think I’ve got this.  

Update

Since the webinar, I’ve done the following:

  • Asked people for their gift preferences: My mum, a war baby eco-warrior, asked for bokashi spray for her bokashi bin. I will take her at her word but also give her a voucher for a meal at her favourite local restaurant. My sister-in-law asked for her favourite perfume and told me how long it usually lasts (I’ll take that as a hint). My adult sons were offered a choice between boxer shorts and socks, bought from the Impact Positive company Bamboo Clothing).
  • Taken the jam jar idea a stage further by filling them with an ‘I owe U’ for each of my sons, who love eating but not cooking, promising them a meal of their choice cooked to their faffy specifications (without complaining).
  • Sought everybody’s opinions on the turkey/chicken question and there were no objections to having chicken.
  • Tried furoshiki – this is a revelation. It’s so easy and looks nice. You could buy square scarves from charity shops or just use remnants.

A gift wrapped furoshiki-style, above – so much easier and prettier than how this gift came to me from my son last Christmas, below. Before you reproach me for being harsh to a child, can I point out he’s 29?

  • Had a side dish vote – oh my word, why was this so hard? My phone kept pinging with questions – Are potatoes included in the three, or are they assumed? Can two forms of potato – roast and mash – count as one vote? Can’t we just do a long list in order of preference? Are two pea choices – mushy and garden – one choice? This is an ongoing process. I should have started it at Halloween.
  • WOB – another revelation. I bought second-hand books for my husband, sons and myself. (I came across Cold Comfort Farm, which I’ve always wanted to read. I’ll regift it afterwards.) Julie

For more ideas check out:

Spare Parts