Anyway: my biggest success of the last 2 days has been to make chicken stock and drastically reduce the amount of food waste. Buying local, menu planning and buying bulk items that can store means less waste and more ways to use up leftovers. Chicken stock making is something that has always filled me with horror, partly due to memories of boiled giblets smell growing up which still makes me nauseous just thinking about it. However, I bit the bullet and it was surprisingly easy and smelt of nice chicken soup, thankfully. So I've got a litre of stock, plus the boiled off meat from the carcass and veg I fished out (minus bones) and gave to the dog, saving a can of dog food. And if this happened every fortnight that's 25 cans a year, a saving for me of £12 - not much but, as another ad campaign goes, every little helps.
The downside is that there are some things that are impossible to source ethically - at least I can't seem to find them: size 8 women's professional looking shoes, children's shoes (they need to be tried on and fitted properly, not bought online), tights. Also tricky are soaps and cosmetics, where, due to sensitive skin, I have more brand loyalty than for anything else I buy. To get me to change soap or moisturiser, after years of trying to find ones I don't react to, is a tough challenge and maybe one for the future after a considerable amount of consultation!
The biggest challenge to ethical living is to try and go back to a time of less convinience. I'm becoming increasingly aware of the amount of times that I rely on appliances to do stuff that, if I had planned a little better, wouldn't need doing. An example would be using the microwave to defrost meat, rather than getting it out of the freezer that morning, putting the washing on when it's convienent for me, rather than doing it the night before to hang out in the morning, going out for single trips, rather than combining trips. It takes so much thought, although I suspect with a little perseverance it could become habit, as it did for my grandparents generation.
It is an effort to live ethically, and at times it feels easier to give in. I spent time thinking about why it's important, and I suppose the biggest motivator for me is social justice. Why should the rich indulge, Marie Antoinette style, whilst the poor don't get a fair price, die due to pollution from pesticides on cotton, work in sweatshops so we can have cheap new clothes that we don't really need, have their crops ruined by our carbon dioxide changing the climate. When I think of it like that, it is hard not to find perspective, hard not to persevere with ethical living, because my whinges and complaints sound rather hollow when you think about the hardships that others in the world have to face.
I mentioned that this was inspired by Spring Harvest, and it seems to me fairly obvious that it's what Jesus would do, given His pioneering teachings on social justice - anyone remember the rich man being asked to give everything to the poor?
Thinking about it, Jesus gives a pretty good example of living ethically - no posessions, having only what's needed, not what is wanted etc. This is carried on in the early church, which lived sharing everything with each other, making sure everyone had enough and helped each other. These ideas are the basis of new schemes: the fairtrade movement, stop the debt, streetbank, freecycle etc, moving towards a more communal, sharing, just world and it has to be good to support such things.
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