Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

It’s now been three full years since we started our waste reduction plan.

Here are a few of the changes we’ve made that have worked brilliantly, and continue to do so after all this time. They’re our sustainability winners!

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T-Shirt Bags

We’ve experimented with all sorts of reusable bags – the green polypropylene ones from supermarkets, crocheted mesh bags, foldaway minis and furoshiki (which I still love), but without a doubt, our favourites and the ones we use almost exclusively now are t-shirt bags. Here’s our simple tutorial on how to make them.

They’re super strong, very durable, sit comfortably on your shoulder and most importantly, they WASH easily. Which means we use them to cart home messy stuff like raw meat and takeaway chicken, then the bags go straight into the laundry afterwards. And they’re made from Pete and the boys’ old t-shirts, so they make me smile every time we use them.

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Beeswax Wraps

Yes, I know, I blag on endlessly about these, but what can I say? It’s not just that they’re an adequate green alternative; in most cases, we find they work much better than plastic bags. This is the pile we currently have on rotation…

And here are our latest veg purchases, wrapped ready for the crisper drawer. A nice, thick beeswax wrap will keep a head of lettuce fresh for up to two weeks…

As I mentioned in last week’s post, I recently spotted a packet of three small wraps (11″ square in imperial terms) for $39.95. That’s too small to wrap one of my loaves of sourdough or a bunch of snake beans from the garden…

By comparison, our homemade ones are 60-74cm long x 46cm wide (that’s about 24-29″ x 18″) and cost us less than $2 each to make. Plus they’re made from fabric that would otherwise have been thrown away (old sheeting is particularly good).

Our tutorial is here, and recently we’ve discovered that putting the fabric through the washing machine and tumble dryer first causes it to plump up, which means it will absorb more wax and therefore last longer. Some of our wraps have been going for over a year now, and we no longer keep any clingfilm in our kitchen…

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Secondhand Clothing

This handsome man would like me to tell you all that secondhand and vintage clothing is not just more sustainable than new, it’s usually much more interesting as well. Over the past three years, Pete’s wardrobe has transitioned to almost entirely used and vintage finds (thanks in no small part to lovely Arnold at Potts Point Vintage). And my engineer who would only ever wear muted blues and blacks seems to have discovered a love for colour in the process (which I’m completely thrilled about!)…

Here he is, fully vintage attired in Japanese denim ($500 jeans that we found secondhand for $12), a 70s tshirt, a thick 1950s suede jacket which came from the performance collection of comedian “Bob Downe”. and a belt made from upcycled firehose by the inimitable Elvis and Kresse. Clothes are so much better when they have a story to tell!

Ok, this photo probably wasn’t necessary and I’ve posted it before, but I’m a bit besotted with it (and him!) and it’s Christmas, so I thought I’d share it again…

 

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Secondhand Everything

It’s been surprisingly cathartic to step back from the new retail market.

With a few notable exceptions – underwear, the odd hardcover book, and purchases made to support young artists – almost everything we’ve bought this year has been secondhand. My Chinese mother finds it perplexing – why would we buy secondhand when buying new on sale can often cost the same?

But it comes down to two things for us: firstly, a wish to limit our consumption of new resources, given the energy and raw materials required to produce these, and secondly..the thrill of the hunt! It’s enormously rewarding to scour opshops (thrift stores), Reverse Garbage and the Bower for the perfect secondhand frame, only to find an even better, imperfect option. As a craft lover, finding everything I’ve needed this year (and…ahem…quite a few things I didn’t) at The Sewing Basket has meant that all my purchases were donated items diverted from landfill. And I’ve returned the ones I didn’t end up using, after “renting” them for a couple of months.

I’m honestly not sure my mental health would have survived 2020 without these creative outlets…

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Cloth Napkins

Our stash of cloth napkins has been going strong for THREE YEARS and we haven’t had a single one wear out in that time. We use them every day, and we even pack our own when we eat out.  They’ve been through over a hundred washes each and occasionally I’ll Napisan a batch after a big curry dinner. That’s a saving of over 4,000 paper napkins to date.

I wouldn’t normally recommend using new fabric to make things, but the tenegui cloths we bought from Daiso have been so durable and low maintenance that it’s hard to fault them. The open weave makes them particularly easy to wash and line dry, and I’ve never bothered to iron them…

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Solar Panels

It’s been a full year almost to the day since we had our solar energy system installed and we haven’t regretted a single minute of it. Whilst we’re still dependent on the grid for about 25% of our energy (because of timing issues and seasonal fluctuations), we’re thrilled to have been able to completely offset our electricity consumption for the past 12 months. According to one of the tracking apps we use, we’ve offset nearly 4.5 tonnes of carbon emissions over the year…

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Worms, Soldier Flies, Chickens

It’s taken a while for us to get our backyard food recycling system running smoothly, but these days almost no food waste ends up in the red bin. Our original attempts included a Bokashi bin, but that didn’t work well for us – waiting for the leavings to break down and then burying them was too much of a smelly palaver.

These days, large scraps go to the chickens, vegetable scraps to the worms, and everything else goes into the soldier fly hatchery. The soldier fly pupae then provide a high source of protein for the chickens. Throwing organic material into waste is one of the worst things we can do with it – not only are the nutrients lost, but once it’s buried and trapped in plastic, it produces large quantities of methane as it decomposes…

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Cotton Dishcloths and Hessian Scrubbers

I took the photo below just before drafting this post – several of the dishcloths shown have been in use for SEVEN YEARS. That sort of track record is hard to challenge! In all that time, I’ve only had to repair one, and only because I cut through the stitches while washing a knife.

These days we use the cotton cloths for wiping down benches and spills, and we clean pots with our homemade hessian scrubbers. The latter don’t last nearly as long, but they’re completely biodegradable, remove stuck-on burnt bits pretty easily, and go through the washing machine at least a dozen times before they need to be retired. And when they’re past their best, they go straight into the worm farm where they break down within weeks – the worms love them!

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Learning to Mend

Again, I know you’re all sick of hearing me say this, but learning to mend has shifted our perspective on material possessions. We no longer look at something and automatically discard it when it’s broken or past its best. And when something has to go, there’s quite a lot of thought given to whether or not we can reuse or upcycle the materials before they finally end up in the bin.

This old laundry bag is a great example – it only cost $1 to buy years ago, and the plastic zip had separated from its base…

I was very close to just throwing it away, when I realised that a few handstitches were all that was required to reattach the zip. It lives to wash another day…or year…

I mended these for wee Sebastian across the road and he loves them…

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Research Pays Off

This isn’t really one for the list, but it’s probably the crux of our sustainability journey. Make informed decisions! Wherever possible, deep dive into a topic as much as you can before making a choice. For example, after a couple of weeks of research, we decided to stick with our Kleenex toilet paper instead of switching to Who Gives A Crap.

Examine the information provided on items carefully – not only for what is provided, but also for omissions – do they advise how to dispose of their packaging? What are the ingredients and additives, and where are they sourced from? Are the items truly biodegradable? (Remember, there is no mandated definition of “biodegradable”, so in theory, everything will biodegrade…eventually).

Before each and every purchase, we try to ask ourselves, “could we source this secondhand? Are we making the most sustainable choice? Is there an end of life plan for this item?” It would be very hypocritical of me to imply that we do this perfectly, but we continue to make imperfect attempts in the hope that we can gradually do better.

I still get caught out with annoying purchases – like the roll of “biodegradable” wipes I picked up at the Salvos recently that had plastic in them. And we continue to eat meat, which is both environmentally problematic and can really only be bought in plastic, although we have reduced our intake substantially this year. But it’s worth noting that even with our imperfect efforts, the difference is still massive – we continue to only throw out one small bag of rubbish each week, whereas before we started this journey, the bin was often full to overflowing.

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So that’s where we’re at, three years into this journey.

We all have different lives and homes, which means we can only do the best we can, but I hope this post will encourage you to think about the small changes you might be able to make.

Not everyone can set up a backyard recycling “farm”, but there may be options within your community that let you manage your food waste and leftovers more sustainably. My friend Carol walks hers down the road to a neighbour who happily collects the street’s waste for his compost – she found his details on our local council website.

The Big Kids hired artificial flowers for their wedding from Faux Fernery, saving thousands of dollars but even more importantly, saving a truckload of flowers from ending up in landfill after just one night. For Christmas, we baked cookies, tempered chocolate and made beeswax wraps for our friends and neighbours – they all went out in sustainably sourced packaging and everyone loved them.

Learn to mend your tea towels – it’s amazing how much wear and tear they can survive with just a little bit of maintenance. And explore your secondhand options – even my mum has learned to love her local Salvos! As a wise friend once told me, it’s much better for many people to be making an imperfect effort, than for just a few to be making a perfect one.

I’d love to know how your green journey is going. Please feel free to leave a very longwinded comment below if you like! ♥

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Here’s a link to our earlier
Waste Reduction Plan Posts