Frugal Archives - Eco Thrifty Living

Intelligent or remote heating controls – what’s the point?

Zoe — Thu, 15 Dec 2016 08:00:00 +0000

Remote heating controls are all the rage at the minute, with Nest* now available in the UK, Tado* having been around for a little while and British Gas’s Hive* being pushed really hard on the radio and TV as well as a growing number of lesser known alternatives.

So what’s the point of an internet connected heating thermostat? How will they save me money and will I actually use it?

This is a guest post from Mr ETL and it contains affiliate links which are marked with a *. The content of this post was not affected by the links, it won’t cost you anything extra if you buy through them and if you do it will help to support the blog – thanks!

Every house it’s different and each family will want to heat their houses at different times and to different temperatures. The traditional thermostats allowed you to set schedules for your heating, normally by day or weekday and weekend and allowed you to set lots of different times and temperatures during each period. Those of us who did make good use of these were probably saving more than those who just set a morning and evening temperature and a lot more than those who just had the heating on the whole time. They normally allowed you to override the settings as well so giving you quite a lot of flexibility. So again, what’s the point?

Well the main point is every time you are not at home when the heating has been set to come on, you are wasting energy, which directly impacts your heating bills and the environment. Although you probably are able to predict when you will be at home and when you won’t during the working day, it isn’t always easy to predict which evenings you will be in or out and what you will be up to over the weekend. With a heating system that you can control on your mobile phone, you can delay it or turn it off for the evening if you decide not to come straight home from work and you can also tell it to start heating your home when your plans change and you come home earlier than expected. Although there is an initial outlay, over time these products should be able to save you moneyThe three main products on the market are all slightly different and here are some of those differences

Tado*

We have had Tado installed for over 2 years now, It is really simple and easy to use and controllable via your mobile phone. You set the temperature you want the house to be when you are at home, and the temperature when you are asleep along with what time you wake up and go to bed. Tado knows if you are at home or not by seeing how far your mobile phones are from the house and so as long as each member of the family has a mobile it knows if someone is home or not. The further away from home you are the cooler it will let the house get when you are out and it starts to warm it up as you get closer. They have recently also released some intelligent radiator valves which have the potential to save you even more money, we have had some for a year now (not Tado) and I’ll be giving you my thoughts on them soon. Tado has gone for a simple and neutral looking thermostat unit, which shows current temperature and you can manually adjust it (although ours is a first generation which has no manual controls).

Nest*

Nest has gone for the pretty thermostat prize and it looks good. This thermostat needs to be taught what to do. To start with you need to change the temperature on the unit manually for a week or so – when you get up, you turn it up to a comfortable setting, when you leave for work, turn it down and so on. Within a few days it starts working out what time you get up, go to bed and everything in between. If your schedule changes you need to manually adjust the settings and after you have done it for a few days, Nest learns. It also has a movement sensor on the thermostat in your house, which will turn the heating down if it hasn’t seen movement for a while (you need to walk past for it to know you are there, so it needs to located in a place you would frequently walk past) and they have recently started integrating with their other smart technology to improve this. If you have their smoke detectors for example (which should be spread around your home) they also have movement sensors which can feed information into the heating system. You don’t need to have a mobile phone for Nest to work (you can control it via your laptop or tablet) but they have recently introduced a function for Nest to know if are at home or not via your mobile if you want it to.

Hive*

Hive is going for a much simpler approach, a traditional schedule thermostat with the ability to remotely adjust the temperature. So if you go out for the day and forget to turn the heating off, you can use the phone app to turn it down, or if you’re coming home at an unusual time you can turn the heating up a bit earlier.

All of the products say they will save you money by giving you more control of your heating. How much you save and which is right for you will depend on your individual circumstances. So for instance, if you have a quite fixed schedule and just want to be able to control the temperature manually then maybe Hive is good enough for you. If you like your gadgets to be good looking and functional then Nest may work for you. If all the people in your house have mobile phones and you are at home at different times then maybe Tado is the thermostat of choice.

I might be biased towards Tado as I have one of their thermostats, but I did my research beforehand. Do yours and think about how often you are out and the heating is on or how often you are sitting on your sofa thinking it would be great to keep the heating on another hour.

Which intelligent thermostat would you choose and why? Let me know in the comments below.For more tips on how to save energy check out my post on 6 easy ways to reduce your heating bill!

Coming up next: Look out for my blog post next Monday which asks the question – does going zero waste mean you can’t have fun (especially with events like Christmas and New Years Eve coming up)?

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DIY batgirl costume

Zoe — Wed, 26 Oct 2016 17:32:00 +0000

It’s nearly Halloween. Time to carve spooky faces into pumpkins and make pumpkin soup. It’s also time to get dressed up! Costumes can be costly so making one yourself from stuff you already have is an easy and inexpensive option. When I got invited to a superhero themed birthday party I raided my wardrobe. I was able to quickly make a DIY Batgirl costume that didn’t cost me anything.

How to make your own Batgirl costume

I already had a black dress, a black evening scarf, which I wore instead of a cape, and black boots.

I had a rummage through my kids fancy dress box and found a yellow batman belt and a black eye mask. The only thing I needed to make for this outfit was the yellow bat on the front of my dress.

I found some yellow fabric in my fabric stash (TIP – build up a fabric stash by viewing old clothes as fabric) looked up the batman logo picture and drew out a similar looking bat on a piece of paper.

To make the bat symmetrical I folded it in half and cut it so that each side matched. Then I drew around the bat on the fabric, cut it out and hand stitched it onto my dress. When I had finished being batgirl, I unpicked the stitches and voila – I had my dress back!

This costume was simple to make, didn’t cost me anything, isn’t clogging up my wardrobe, didn’t harm the environment, wasn’t scarily flammable and was fun!

If you’re interested to learn more about zero waste celebrations I have more tips and tricks here.

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How not to upcycle a necklace!

Zoe — Fri, 08 Apr 2016 19:00:00 +0000

The necklace in the picture was left at my house during a clothes swap party (read more here). The beads are made out of old magazines and I really like it. I don’t think it really suits me though as it is too long for me and I have only worn it once or twice since I got it.

I decided that it would be a great idea to turn it into a necklace and a bracelet and thought it would be as simple as chopping it up in the right places and then tying the ends.

The chopping part went really smoothly although a few beads fell of the ends as you can see pictured below.

The tying it back together part went far less smoothly. The plastic twine the necklace was on did not want to be tied and the beads kept falling off and it was very frustrating to say the least.

I decided to give up and use thread instead, which would tie better. I put some thread on a needle and threaded it through the beads. After doing that I realised that was no good either. The problem was the size necklace I wanted was too small to get over my head. What I actually need is some stretchy string or a clasp and I have neither of those to hand so for the moment the beads are all sitting in a glass jar awaiting the right materials!

Sometimes I find I ruin things in an attempt to upcycle them and think I should have just given whatever it was to a charity shop in the first place! On the other hand it is a learning experience and I now know how not to upcycle a necklace!

Have you ever tried to upcycle something that didn’t quite go to plan?

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Introducing a new concept – upusing!

Zoe — Mon, 22 Feb 2016 19:52:00 +0000

Have you ever felt really frustrated because you couldn’t quite place a word you wanted and then felt so relieved when it eventually comes to you? I had a concept floating around in my head and I decided there wasn’t a word out there that was working for me. I had a burning need to put a word to it though, so I made one up and here it is: upuse – ta-da!

I might not be quite the Oxford dictionary, but here is my definition of upuse:

To use something for more functions than it was originally intended for without altering or damaging the original object in any way.

The reason this was bugging me so much was because it is something I have started doing semi-regularly. The closest descriptions to it I could think of were making do, but I didn’t feel that was specific enough and upcycling but I think that implies that the item is altered in some way.

Some examples of upusing I have done around the house include:

I used to have large mixing bowls and similar sized serving bowls. It honestly had never occurred to me that I could use my serving bowls for mixing (or vice-versa), but the mixing bowls disappeared during my Year of Eco Challenges (read more here) when I was buying nothing new for myself and it didn’t take long to realise that my serving bowls, which were rarely used previously, would work just fine as mixing bowls. Now I make bread dough in them regularly. Incidentally it turns out after getting Mr ETL to read this post before I published it, he has been been doing some upusing of his own and we do still have them!
I used to put the plastic bags I brought home from the supermarket in a plastic bag dispenser. Now I use the dispenser to store and dispense reusable cloth wipes for use around the kitchen (read more here)!
I have written about this quite a few times on the blog, but I now use a freezer bag to keep food cool and hot and as a kind of thermal cooker – perfect for making yogurt in or to keep bread dough warm .
My kids decorated some mugs at a club last summer, which I haven’t used because we didn’t really have room for them on our shelf of mugs. I didn’t want to get rid of them, so now they are being used as attractive and personalised pen and pencil holders!

The benefits of upusing things:

Looking at things with upusing goggles on might mean that you don’t need to buy something new (or replace something which is broken and can’t be repaired) if you find you could do the job with something you already have.
Upusing can also help guide decluttering – looking for the multiple uses in your stuff could help you identify duplicate equipment you might not have noticed before that you don’t really need.
Upusing doesn’t alter or damage the object in anyway, so it means you can still use it for what it was originally intended for as well.

I’m sure this kind of thing happens all the time and I’d love to hear your examples of upusing!

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Epson EcoTank ET-4500 Printer Review

Zoe — Sat, 13 Feb 2016 19:55:00 +0000

I was recently sent an Epson EcoTank ET-4500 printer to review. It is an all singing, all dancing faxing, photocopying, scanning and printing machine, which can connected to your home network with a cable or wirelessly! I was offered it for review as it has a tank for the ink instead of cartridges and the ink is meant to be sufficient to last 2 years.

As far as printers go it seems like a really good one so far. I have been doing a lot of decluttering recently and managed to free up a cupboard which has power in it and love the fact I can keep it in the cupboard and print to it through wifi! This printer is not zero waste as it came packaged in plastic and the ink to fill up the tank was provided in disposable plastic containers which were again wrapped in plastic. The benefit of these over other cartridges though are that less of them are needed and there is less ongoing waste with this printer. Also as the ink can be refilled, although it is an expensive initial outlay, it is likely to work out cheaper in the long run than using a printer which won’t allow cartridges to be refilled.

Putting the ink into the machine was quite simple. Working out how to get it to work with my computer was a little complicated but once we got it all set up it has been easy to use. I particularly like being able to scan things in like my kids artwork, so that I can then put the originals in the recycling or use it to wrap gifts without feeling too guilty :). As much I would like to reduce my printing there are times when I need to print and it came in really useful for printing out pictures for one of my kids homework recently.

You can adjust how quickly the printer goes onto standby with the eco setting and it is worth changing it so that it isn’t on fully for too long (or even better turn it off when you aren’t using it). It isn’t going to cost big bucks either way though. We plugged it into a plug-in energy monitor and worked out that if it was left on all year (without printing) it would cost us around £6 a year in electricity costs and if it was on standby (again without printing) it would cost us only about £2 for the year!

There is a range of these printers to suit different needs, which you can find out more about on the Epson site.

UPDATE: I have found that I have struggled to keep the printer connected to my laptop via WIFI, I don’t know if this is something to do with my home network, laptop or the printer though.

Disclaimer: a printer was received for review and affiliate links have been used in this article, but the opinions were my own!

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20 ways to help halt climate change!

Zoe — Thu, 24 Sep 2015 11:57:00 +0000

I recently read Naomi Klein’s, This Changes Everything as part of the Sustainable Book Club (read more about that here). It is a scary book and it is trying to shake us and tell us to wake up – climate change is on our doorstep. It would easy to read the book, pretend I hadn’t and move on because what difference can one person make to this vast issue? Well I think doing even just one thing is a whole lot better than not doing anything. To quote Lao Tzu – ‘a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step’.

There are 20 ideas below for things each of us could do to help halt climate change! They may not all be for you (they aren’t all for me) – but let’s do what we can

How can we help climate change?

1.Switch to a renewable energy provider

2. Compost garden, food and other biodegradable waste

3. Avoid using paper wherever possible. Take a look here into how to stop unsolicited mail.

4. Conserve energy around the home

5. Walk, cycle and take public transport where possible

6. Don’t buy anything new for a year (read about Jen’s experience of that here)

7. Grow your own fruit, herbs, vegetables

8. Boycott palm oil and anything containing it (read more here and here).

9. Boycott fossil fuels and fossil fuel products (you could switch to a renewable energy supplier).

10. Avoid meat and dairy products or at least reduce your intake of them. Ease yourself into it by having meat free Mondays.

11. Move your money away from banks which fund the fossil fuel industries read more here

More ways you can help climate change

12. Write to your MP – e.g. to ask for a fracking ban.

13. Start up a government petition (or several) here

14. Susie suggests joining your local councils community panel – read more here

15. Take good care of the stuff you do have and make it last

16. Join in with protests and marches over environmental issues

17. Spread the word about climate change and what we can do about it even if it is just sharing stuff on social media sites.

18. Host events in your home – a sustainable book club, clothes swap, a food swap…

19. Give unwanted food to friends, family and neighbours before it goes off. If you don’t know anyone locally to do that with, set up a food sharing group (read more here).

20. Give talks about climate change and what we can do about it – if you have kids do a talk at their school, if not volunteer to do one at a local community centre or library. Talking about climate change in person and what can be done about it brings the subject to life and connects with people who may not want to read about it.

Disclaimer – this blog post contains an affiliate link. All words and views are my own.

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How to make a lavender wand the zero waste way!

Zoe — Wed, 29 Jul 2015 21:21:00 +0000

Want to know how to make a lavender wand the zero waste way? Look no further!

Lavender is in season and I have loads of lovely fragrant lavender growing in my garden right now. There are many uses for lavender, but my current favourite is to make lavender wands. I don’t use them for casting spells – I use them to keep my clothes smelling nice (but if you or your kids want to make one for casting spells, don’t let me stop you :)).

These wands make great gifts and one year, I made a load as going home gifts from my kids birthday party and they went down a storm!

I’ve shared my instructions for how to make a lavender wand below:

How it is zero waste?

I made use of lavender growing in my garden, so it was unpackaged, home grown and used up. I also made sure to leave plenty for the bees, as that was the main reason I decided to grow lavender in the first place!

The ribbon had been sitting in my cupboard for years and needed using up. I also save ribbons from clothing, gifts and more to reuse for this kind of project. I store my ribbons in an old toiletry bag!

It is really simple, doesn’t take long and they make great gifts!

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Stop buying new clothes now!

Zoe — Sat, 07 Feb 2015 20:20:00 +0000

If you care about the environment, yourself and people in general, then you need to stop buying new clothes and you need to stop doing it now – at least until we run out of secondhand clothes and fabric, which I can’t see happening any time soon! Our clothes buying habits are seriously messed up and we are ruining peoples lives all over the world as well as potentially our own.

Here are some of the problems with buying new clothes:

Are you being poisoned by your new clothes?

When textiles are made they are filled with hazardous chemicals. These range from bleaches to dyes to substances which make the textiles non-iron (e.g. formaldehyde) or antibacterial (e.g. triclosan). These are not chemicals you want leaching into your skin or being pumped into rivers and potentially bioaccumulating in the food chain but that is exactly what is happening. Greenpeace is working hard to convince brands to change their ways, but they aren’t there yet. As things currently stand every time you buy new clothes you are putting yourself and the environment at risk as this infographic explains:

Discarded clothes are polluting our land and potentially our air

Most clothes are not made entirely from natural fibres, they come from a mix of fibres and once they have reached the end of their life, if they cannot be reused or recycled, they will end up on landfill or in an incinerator. According to WRAP ‘around £140 million worth (350,000 tonnes) of used clothing goes to landfill in the UK every year’, ‘More than 30% of our unwanted clothing currently goes to landfill’. Landfill is bad and incineration is worse as it produces dioxins which although in theory prevented from being released into the air by filters it may not always work in practise. Dioxins known as Agent Orange were used in the Vietnam war and years later the effects are still being felt with babies being born with birth defects. Watch Jeremy Irons ‘Trashed’ film to find out more about the problems with landfill and incineration.

Washing our clothes is contributing to the plastic problem in our oceans

Recently a blogging friend dropped what was for me a bit of a bombshell, @polytheenpam of Plastic is Rubbish informed me that ‘washing machines shed..thousands of microfibres into the sea’. I had no idea that from washing my clothes made out of synthetic fibres I was polluting the sea with plastic. That is not something I like the idea of at all!

The ugly truth about cotton

Even when natural fibres like cotton are used, which can be composted at the end of their useful life and don’t contribute to the problem of plastic in the ocean there are problems. To produce cotton takes a large volume of pesticides, it ‘soaks up 11-12% of the world’s pesticides’. Pesticides can be very damaging to the environment and to those that work with them. There are even more problems with cotton – water diverted to cotton plantations has been blamed for the drying up of the Aral Sea (read more here).

Factory workers lives are being put at risk to bring us fast fashion.

New fashion trends are being turned around so quickly that factory workers are being put under tremendous pressure. In 2013 the Rana Plaza disaster brought to light the shocking practise of locking factory workers in until their work was finished. Tragically more than 1100 workers died and over 2500 were injured when the factory collapsed. This factory produced clothes for well known brands ranging from Primark to Benetton. Have things changed in Bangladesh since then? I don’t know but I don’t think fashion hasn’t shown any sign of slowing down.

Private companies are profiting from our charitable donations

If you donate your old clothes to charity to make way for your new ones, you might imagine someone else in your local area will soon be wearing them, but actually that is pretty unlikely. Most of the clothes donated to charity in the UK are purchased very cheaply by private companies who then sell them at a large mark up to vendors in developing countries (this site says at a 1000% mark up). According to WRAP ‘around 50% of clothes are
re-used, and over two-thirds of these
go overseas’.

We are contributing to loss of skills and culture in Africa.

The clothes sent overseas are often sold at markets and although they may be cheaper than new clothes, the market stall owners still need to make a profit. The effect on developing countries and in particular Ghana is that they are paying good money for our secondhand clothes and losing their own local textile industry in the meantime. This results in skills lost, textile making equipment and facilities lost and culture lost as instead of wearing traditional clothes, they are now wearing western ones. (read more here)

What should we do instead?

What do you think? Look out for my next blog post with my thoughts on this.

If you liked this post please click like on Facebook and follow on Twitter – thanks so much!

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Why You are in the Pocket of Big Recycling

Zoe — Thu, 20 Nov 2014 14:38:00 +0000

I don’t usually publish guest posts on my blog, but I found this one really interesting. I have the mantra ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ (in that order) at the back of my mind, but I generally think in terms of the options available to me i.e. what I can do at home. This article got me thinking about what is going on outside of my home and how the government/ local councils seem pretty focused on recycling.

Why You are in the Pocket of Big Recycling

Since the 1980s, recycling has been the figurehead of the
environmental movement. Politicians keen to court the green vote have
championed recycling as a kind of cure-all solution to ‘the environment’, but
in our willingness to do the right thing ecologically, have we been taken in by
‘Big Recycling’?

In the waste reduction hierarchy, which was first introduced by
the European Union in 1975 and updated as recently as 2008, reuse is a flatly
better option than recycling, and for good reason.

Over the last few years, studies by the Waste Resource Action Programme
(WRAP) have definitively demonstrated that reusing is both more financially and
environmentally prudent than recycling.

So why does recycling continue to be viewed as the best way to
be eco-friendly?

The Big Business of
Recycling

In an article for Forbes, Amy Westervelt outlines a
number of reasons why recycling continues to dominate the environmental
movement.

She shows how attitudes to recycling have been manipulated to
encourage overconsumption despite having real inefficiencies.

In this way, we can see how recycling has become motivated by
money while potentially causing more environmental harm than good.

Recycling Encourages
Overconsumption

In her article, Amy claims recycling has: “given the
manufacturers of disposable items a way to essentially market overconsumption
as environmentalism.”

Fundamentally the idea has been sold to people that it is okay
to consume tons of disposable items as long as they recycle them.

Recycling is Motivated
by the Economy Rather than Environmental Issues

Furthermore, she explores how recycling has become a “commodity
business”.

One example typifies this completely: a few years ago demand
for recycled paper declined which resulted in a price drop, but as a result,
recyclers warehoused a great deal of cardboard in the hope the prices would
rise.

In certain instances where storage became an issue, much of
this cardboard was eventually landfilled.

Not All Recyclable Items
Are Recycled

Items actually being recycled depends on a number of factors:
consumers must actually dispose of the items properly, a collection system must
be in place, and the recycling must be deemed to be financially justified.

Westervelt focuses on PVC and bioplastic as case studies. Both
of these are indeed recyclable but are not commonly recycled. When PVC is recycled the resultant material
has colour problems and is therefore not marketable. Also, polylactic acid,
which is the most common bioplastic, will contaminate the recycling stream and
there isn’t enough of it to financially justify recycling it separately. As a
result, it is disposed of as waste.

Some Recyclable
Materials Cause Harmful Emissions When Recycled

While recycling some materials undoubtedly lowers greenhouse
gas emissions, there are others which emit dangerous particles during the
recycling process.

In the Forbes article, Westervelt focuses on the
environmentally damaging recyclers of glass, plastic and metal. In particular
she cited Oakland, USA, where recyclers were named among the city’s top
polluters.

Reuse as an Alternative

What is Reuse?

Reuse means passing on an item to be used again in its current
form only if it is still in working order or can be restored to working order.

Manufacturing new products, even recycling old products, is a
massive drain on the planet’s limited resources and pollutes our environment.

Combined with this is the financial expense of disposing waste
in landfills, recycling items, and making new items. Reuse is by far and away
the most environmentally and economically friendly solution.

Stigma of Reuse

For many, while reuse is on the rise due to austerity, there
remains a distinct stigma associated with reusing second hand items as Jane
Stephenson, chief executive of Resource Future, asserts in an article in MRW Magazine.

Reuse and the Circular
Economy

According to WRAP, a circular economy is: an alternative to
a traditional linear economy (make, use, dispose) in which we keep resources in
use for as long as possible, extract the maximum value from them whilst in use,
then recover and regenerate products and materials at the end of each service
life.

Rufus Hirsch from clearance company Clearance Solutions, frequently deals with
clients that need full-scale home removals. “The kind of items that we clear
ranges from living room furniture to a kitchen sink” he says, “but thanks to
our networks like London Community Resource Network, we can find a new home for
almost anything.”

The LondonCommunity Resource Network is responsible for the London Re-use Network
which collects and repairs unwanted or broken furniture, appliances and household
items. The repaired items are then either sold or donated to community groups,
schools and homes.

Environmental Benefits
of Reuse

In 2009, WRAP published Meeting the UK Climate Challenge: The
Contribution of Resource Efficiency. This found that increasing reuse could
reduce UK greenhouse gas emissions by an average 4 million tonnes CO2 eq per
year between 2009 and 2020.

In 2011, WRAP published Benefits of Reuse Case Study: Office
Furniture which found that around 200,000 desks are reused in the UK every
year. This is approximately 14% of desks that reach the end of their life cycle
each year.

In this example, the practice of reusing avoided 3,600 tonnes
CO2-eq that year.

Economic Benefits of
Reuse

In a Waste Resources Action Programme (WRAP) study published in
2011, it was found that only 14% of office desks and chairs that reach the end
of their life cycle in the UK each year are reused. The rest go to landfills,
energy recovery and recycling plants.

A large amount of these items could be reused. If these
reusable desks were, in fact, reused and not dumped or recycled, both the
financial benefits to businesses and the environmental benefits would be
enormous.

Financial Benefits of
Reusing for Business

Businesses that reuse as much as possible will have to make
fewer waste disposal trips. They will also have less need for raw materials. In
the long run, small changes could help to save a substantial amount of money.

Depending on the business, money can be saved through reusing:
refillable toner and ink cartridges, wasted printer paper, durable utensils,
crockery and tableware (as opposed to disposable styrofoam and plastic
equivalents).

Even if these options aren’t available, similar cost-effective
results can be achieved with the resource saving Industrial Symbiosis plan.

In this practice, businesses can create collaborative networks
where waste is moved free of charge. It works on the premise that the waste of
one business is a fundamental aspect of another.

Reuse Encourages Job
Creation and Opportunities

In a report from Friends of the Earth called “More jobs, less
waste”, favourable statistics suggested that turning waste into a commodity can
help the environment and encourage new business plans and job opportunities.

Indeed, if a 70% recycling rate were achieved by 2025 in the
UK, nearly 19,000 additional jobs would be created as a result. And most of
these additional jobs would be in the reuse and remanufacturing sectors.

If more businesses made strong efforts to reuse rather than
recycle, we could witness the rise of a new form of industry based on the
utilisation of waste resources for other purposes.

In a recent example of this kind of collaborative enterprise,
the waste heat produced by a glass manufacturing plant was used to stimulate
food production in a greenhouse. This agreement not only saved vast CO2 emissions, it also saved a lot
of money for both companies.

The bottom line on
recycling and reuse

While they’re both better options than discarding, recycling
seems to have taken centre-stage over its more environmentally friendly
counterpart: reusing.

The increased awareness of our responsibility for the
environment has been influenced in part by councils insisting on separate
collections for different kinds of waste. For example, in Thurrock recycling
bags will not be collected if certain types have been mixed.

With this kind of public push that associates the idea of recycling with
helping the environment, the feeling of contributing to a worthy cause can
become blinding in everyday aspects of life.

Instead of promoting a focus on using sustainable materials
that can be reused again and again, we’re still facing products with far too
much unnecessary packaging and being encouraged to think that it’s okay because
we know how to recycle the plastic.

Buying coffee in a cardboard cup that proudly announces its
100% compostable and recycled history should not be worthy of a well deserved
slap on the back. Especially not when the recycling plants that make such
drinking containers are actually responsible for C02 emissions that rival
industrial power plants.

Reuse doesn’t always come with the satisfaction of posting
items into clearly delineated bin slots or bags because it requires a little
bit more effort. But that effort can prevent resources from needlessly entering
the waste stream when they could be put to good use.

Disclaimer: This is a sponsored guest post

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A mendathon!

Zoe — Thu, 08 May 2014 09:58:00 +0000

Ages ago I put a whole load of things that needed mending in a large laundry bag, which I then didn’t look at again until yesterday. I tipped everything out of the bag and I was pleasantly surprised to rediscover some clothes, bags and even a pair of sandals that I had forgotten about. I decided that it was time I went on that mending spree I planned to months ago (plus I promised I would mend at least 5 things this month – read more here) and I was quite excited about the prospect of being able to wear/ use the things that needed mending again. I had a kid free day and was able to just sit for hours and fix things. I managed to mend 12 things in total including a shopping bag, a handbag, a dress, 3 tops, a rain coat, a belt, a pair of shorts, a cardigan, some sandals and an apron! In the last few weeks I have also mended a dishwasher cutlery container and a backpack.

I started off my mammoth mend with a rain coat that had a broken button, a missing button and problems with the seams under both arms. It was a frustratingly slow mend to start off with and took up the entire morning. I began to wonder whether I was being ridiculously idealistic about the whole mending thing and whether I could really justify spending hours mending one jacket. As the day went on though I felt more relaxed, the mending got easier and time flew. In the end I actually really enjoyed the day.

As I was mending things I was thinking that each mend might be the first of many mends. We have a backpack (the one mentioned earlier) which we take everywhere with us when we go out with the kids and we have mended and mended it. Things wear out. Better quality things last longer and taking good care of them helps but eventually almost everything that gets used will wear out. So the mends I did yesterday may well just be the beginning in a long line of mends on each item.

It got me thinking about two things:

there is no better incentive to only buy good quality long lasting items than the prospect that things can’t just be chucked out and replaced i.e. I will have to mend them when they break and that
although I did enjoy my day of peace and quiet and mending, if I’m going to be mending things regularly it would have been more fun if I had some company (and I would be more likely to do the mending more frequently).

I didn’t need to spend a whole day mending by myself, some of the mends only took me 5 to 10 minutes. I could have very easily done a mend or two an evening while watching tv with my husband.

I also could mend in the company of other menders:

I could go to the monthly Brighton Repair Cafe – find out about them here, although they are more there to help with mends that people don’t know how to do themselves, or
I could start up or look for a more local mending group… I’m now getting why people go to stitch and b*tch or the more politely named knit and natter groups

For the time being though I’m really happy that I have crossed 12 things off my mending list and I’m going to be publishing a series of blog posts showing some of the things I mended and how I did it, so watch this space!

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