eco weavils

One challenge of ethical living is the need vs want tension. Just bought a bathroom - desperately needed one - plaster is falling of the ceiling of current one, the sink is held to the wall with a bit of glue, tiles are cracked and the toilet is so old that it sounds like a rocket launching into space when you flush. So it really needs updated. Lots and more than we could do ourselves. So, Homebase are doing the whole thing and we'll see how it goes. By the way, disappointing information or knowledge about eco or green thinking at homebase; salesperson simply looked nonplussed when I asked for eco options. They did have some which I've gone for - eco toliet and taps, but..... still ........... I find myself dreaming about the cool designed streamline toilets and beautiful taps and whirlpool for the bath and hot air dryer, imagining a glamourous 'cadbury's flake' bathing experience (even though I hardly bath as I always shower). The difficultly is that eco options can be limited and in this case the dowdy plain jane of the bathroom range. I try, in my head, to make 'eco deals' e.g. 'if I get the hot air dryer, then I won't have to use and wash so many towels,' or 'if I get the whirlpool then maybe I could get underfloor heating that would be cheaper and offset the environmental cost.' Truth is I have no idea of how to calculate these things, or even the units to use, I might as well be saying 'if I buy four elephants then that will offset four hippos.' It makes no sense and I'd have to google it, or write into Simon Mayo's 'homework sucks' slot on radio 2 so some bored pHD student with nothing better to do can work it out for me.

Ultimately, imaginary 'eco deals' are the weavils of ethical living; they get into your simple principles and nibble at them till all you have is something that doesn't look or taste anything like the original, and you want to throw it away.

How did I deal with it in the end? I threw away the pretty brochure, on the 'out of sight, out of mind' principle, and went back to basics: 'luxury unnecessary new stuff that uses electricity = bad,' and 'new stuff that is as ethical as possible = good.' Weavils banished. For now.

Good habits

OK, so blogging is harder than I thought and starting the month I had a major interview wasn't maybe the best idea. But things are quieter now, I have a new job, so does my husband and living ethically is raised up the agenda once again. In the last month we did try to live ethically and I thought I'd summarise the successes and failures:

1) ethical superstore - v disappointing. Probably good for gifts and applicances etc, rubbish for weekly groceries. We said we'd collect, the customer service was rubbish - when we phoned to ask for opening times to collect the order they didn't know, when we got there only half the stuff was avaliable. They didn't tell us this, so when we got home and found out we phoned back, they said to come and get the rest, we went up and found out that it was actually all out of stock. Rubbish service at the depot, finally got the rest of our order 3 weeks after placing it, which they delivered to us eventually. So won't be using them again - three trips to get groceries is surely not helpful re carbon footprint.

2) Went foraging. Made nettle and pesto soup, elderflower cordial, elderflower champagne (still brewing). Scary experience, made me realise exactly how dependent I am on nicely packaged and sell by dated food that someone else assures me is OK to eat. Doing it myself filled me with anxiety about had I picked the right stuff and was I going to poison everyone. However, I'm counting this as a success as picking nettles for soup surely must be v eco friendly.

3) Made lots of jam with rhubarb from work's garden. Almost foraging - was sold for 5op for a huge bunch from the OT's. This did for the school summer fair contribution and small thank you gifts for in laws and parents and supervisor. Fairtrade sugar, of course.

4) Present for getting new job was a necklace from fifi bijoux, an ethical jewellry company. Beautiful ethical gold and aqua marine stone pendant. With all the dodgy ethics surrounding diamond and gold mining, this is a company worth buying from, gorgeous designs, beautiful packaging, great service.

5) Have significantly reduced weekend car use by having dog and going for lots of walks.

6) have significantly increased hanging washing out on line. Feel ridiculously happy when dry sunshine smelling clothes are brought in. Tumble dryers can't compete. Am now weirdly excited about 'good drying days'.

7) Attended clothes swap. Got rid of all my old stuff, picked up some new stuff for all the family, all the surplus went to ethiopia. Definite success, even took fairtrade organic wine. Consumption of which might explain the extremely tight short black skirt I picked up which is completely ridiculous in the cold sober light of day. Heigh ho, red cross shop can benefit.

8) Gifts for others: a problem as I am not v organised and birthday presents, especially children's ones, tend to get picked up on the day. Ethical stuff generally needs ordered online and therefore planned ahead. Mostly a failure, although I did pick up an air ambulance helicopter as a present for my son post interview that supported the work of the air ambulance.

9) Food shopping. Doing a big shop at the beginning worked to an extent and no more big shops were needed although did need to pick up some stuff throughout the month, which did not tend to be that ethical. Did not cost any more than normal, as buying in bulk and only going once to the supermarket online saves those impulse buys. Overall a success and can be built on - this month called up last months online list and modified it a bit and reordered, taking a fraction of the time. I'm also getting to be more familiar with things that can't be got ethically (or that are too expensive or yuck e.g. fairtrade oragnic red wine - white is OK), and things that can. Major achievement - discovered Liz Earle - animal friendly cosmetics but the best cleanser I have ever used by far, completely transformed my very sensitive skin and when I next need moisturiser am going to give her's a go. Would definitely recommend.

10)Plastic bags. Failure overall, but have definitely reduced acquisition massively. Will keep trying.

Overall, my conclusion is that it's about forming habits, and when very busy, if the habit is formed it is easier and quicker to go with that. So by forming ethical habits, one by one, and not all at once, then an ethical life can be led. After all, 60 years ago almost everyone shopped, travelled and cleaned ethically. It's just about finding manageable changes, and recognising that it will be slow at first and then speed up. Which all sounds easy but it's true. And some stuff is fun and more pleasant - supermarket shopping online, whilst listening to music at home, going to the farm shop for meat and the kids getting to run round with the farm dog and see the pigs, going to the grocers who know us now, foraging with my daughter and dog - it's all lovely, idyllic and not that difficult to recreate. I know I'm sounding a bit stepford wife there and if I was reading this it would be like 'yeah, right'. But try it, and then tell me I'm wrong.

Taking Stock

Hurrah - have managed 2 full days without acquiring plastic bags!!! I really did not think this particular rule was going to be such a challenge. Spent bank holiday greenly cycling around the countryside, not using the car. In fact the only significant journey I did do was to go with a friend to see Sex and the City 2, the antithesis of green living if ever I saw it. Probably best summed up by a scene where the 4 'girls' (in the very loosest sense) arrive at AbuDhabi airport and as a sign of luxury are driven to the hotel (at $22000 a night!) in 4 separate air conditioned cars. Plus side: saw it at an independent cinema which offered locally produced snacks.

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.

Fake Plastic Trees

Day 2 of living ethically:

There was a song by Radiohead, going back a few years now, which talked about everything being plastic: trees, people, surgery. Everything seemed fake. I'm starting to understand how that feels. I know that there is a profusion of plastic bags in this world but I guess I'd never realised how hard it can be not to acquire them, particularly when you're really trying not to...

We decided to try doing a bulk online shop for this month, the idea being that,

1. we would cut down on car usage by not driving to the big supermarkets once a week.

2. we would not be buying all those little things that are impulse buys as you walk around the shops but only buy what we really need.

3. we could properly compare prices of 'regular' products with their fairtrade or organic alternatives.

As mentioned before, we were going to try to use Ocado - green retailer of the year and all that. Unfortunately they don't deliver to our address at the moment. Odd, given that we're hardly living in the belly button of the navel of nowhere. Anyhow, as an alternative we decided to use a combination of Sainsbury's for the general stuff and the Ethical Superstore for other items we couldn't find there.

It was interesting seeing the difference in price of some of the products. Usually you can see a slight difference between fairtrade and 'regular' products but it was quite amazing and rather disturbing to see that, where we would normally spend around 70p for a bag of pasta, the fairtrade cost for the same size of packet was £2.40 - over three times a s much. It really made us think, is this the price we should really be paying for basics like pasta? Quite startling really.

So, one evening of internet shopping complete (v. exciting way to spend a whole evening but these things take a lot longer when you're trying to be more careful about the ethics of what you buy!), we looked forward to getting all our lovely ethical things...

Then the delivery came.

Plastic bag hell. There were so many of them. Some bags had just one item inside. Some bags were doubled up for no apparent reason.

Now, I'm not sure if I just didn't see the 'no plastic bags' box on the Sainsbury's website (and I'll be looking carefully next time) but this seemed to be an excessive use of plastic for a shop in which they make an issue of asking if you need a plastic bag when you buy in person. Tesco do a green no plastic bags option, that we've always used before. Is this another area for lobbying? The home deliveries all arrive in big plastic containers so surely there is no need at all for plastic bags.

This is so frustrating. Day one and we acquired two bags because of our own lack of thought. Day two we acquire another EIGHT when we were really trying not to. I know we can send them back at the next delivery but this shouldn't be an issue at all.

If nothing in life is free then why are there so many plastic bags in my life?

Later that evening I went out to the local shop to get some milk. The shop assistant automatically put it into a bag. When I said that I didn't want a bag and I would just carry the milk I was met with a sigh and a sneer for the inconvenience I was causing for making them take the milk back out of the bag...

So, like Radiohead said: plastic. Everywhere.

Starfish

Day 1 of living ethically:

Just day one and already this seems impossible! The no plastic bags rule? Already broken!!! We walked down to the village to the local greengrocer, to buy village grown asparagus and leeks, and English everything else. This was all carefully planned, unlike the normal get there and grab something, so I know exactly what we're using when, and nothing should be wasted. Unlike the supermarkets, the greengrocer does not always tell you where things are from, whether they are fairtrade or organic so I found myself asking. "Don't know" was the reply. Whilst I could get reasonably local veg, there was no 'ethical' fruit at all. And then I went to pay and my husband and I looked at each other and realised we'd forgotten the plastic bags. So 2 acquired on day 1.

It is interesting that when you start trying to shop ethically you start realising where the gaps in the market are. Which I suppose brings up the next question of lobbying for an ethical choice to be provided. Which feels a little uncomfortable in the friendly greengrocer shop, but does raise the question of if no one does it, then how will the demand be created to force the supply. At this time of year fairtrade fruit is the main aim as fruit is not seasonal in the spring (though berries will be in soon), so I aim to write a terribly polite letter (I don't do confrontation!) requesting this at the greengrocers.

Then I started thinking about other places such letters could be used. Later in the day, at a children's party, when the party bags are given out there are polystyrene gliders as gifts. Naturally my kids want to open them then and there and I find myself saying "don't be upset because they'll probably break before we get home today." Which they do in a non recyclable, non biodegradable kind of a way. Party bags! The essence of non green living but every parent feels compelled to provide them (the ethical ones are pretty rubbish - I looked for my daughter's last birthday). There is such a niche for cool ethical bags or a new concept to be found by someone far more creative than myself e.g. giving out tickets for entrance to a local (cheap) attraction would probably cost less than a bag full of plastic and sugar.

I could write letters to the (frankly scary) hospital canteen which I am certain adopts none of the principles (they don't even butter your toast before they put the beans on - 'not policy' apparently - how then can I get them to adopt any ethical policies when they won't even butter toast? Or serve breakfast at 2 minutes to 9AM!). What about the cinema, restaurants? Coupled with the failed plastic bags goal it all suddenly it seems overwhelming and precipitates a fit of grumpiness and despondency. I worry I'll turn into one of those people who phones 'Jeremy Vine' or writes into 'Points of View'. Or worse, the Daily Mail.

But then my husband reminds me of the starfish story. For those who don't know, it goes like this: A man walks along a beach where millions of starfish have been stranded. He meets another man who is picking up starfish, individually, and throwing them back in the sea. "What's the point?" the first man says, "How will this make any difference?" The second man throws another starfish back in the sea, "It makes a difference to that one" he replies.

So, fairtrade fruit at the greengrocer is my first starfish.

I later go the the farm shop, whose motto is 'local, seasonal, traditional', and get my butter, cheese and meat. Not much meat, enough for four days of the week only, and chicken instead of beef for the roast as chickens have less carbon footprint than cows (this gets confusing, chickens are 2 times veg, beef is 8 times veg, not sure of the units but I get the principle! Feel like this is more demanding than my degree was).

I'm also going to next work out the non veg/meat things I need for the month, and try and do a whole month ethical bulk shop, either from ethical superstore, or ocado, which sounds v posh and expensive but has won green retailer of the year. And I'm hoping that if I'm buying bulk and once a month only, this will cut down the cost. I've often found that an online shop is less expensive than a supermarket shop because you don't pick up all the things you 'just fancy this week'. So maybe this will work. If it does, and I'm in profit at the end of the month, I'm going to give half to charity. If not, well, try, try again, as the saying goes.

Because, as one high street retailer says, "there is no Plan B".

Setting The Scene

This blog is going to be for 30 days: one month of living as ethically as possible.

I've always tried to live ethically; I have an ethical bank, I held off buying a car for as long as I could, I live in a small insulated house, however, I never really bought into it completely. But over Easter I went to Spring Harvest, a Christian conference and the theme was 'different eyes'. It was all about seeing the world differently, living differently and one of the series of seminars was on ethical living. It consolidated a lot of what I've read and thought into something achievable, so, for one month, I and my family, (one husband, two small children and a dog) are going to live as ethically as is feasible.

I tried this out at the supermarket the other day - as a trial run so to speak. Well, my usual 45 minute shop had to be curtailed at an hour and a half as the shop was shutting and I hadn't even bought half the stuff I needed. I went with a friend and ended up dazed and confused, trying to work out not only what is cheaper, but also was it better to buy organic carrots from Israel, or British non organic carrots, or fairtrade sugar vs British sugar. In the end I decided I needed principles to work from and those principles have to be prioritised.

Or I may never get a shop done. Ever.

The principles I'm adopting are the LOAF principles, LOCAL, ORGANIC, ANIMAL FRIENDLY and FAIRTRADE. As long as what I'm buying fits into that, it's OK. So, if that's the rules for buying stuff, I've prioritised them as local, fairtrade, organic and animal friendly (in fairness, if meat is organic, it's usually animal friendly so there doesn't tend to be a conflict there). This system may make the supermarket possible. I'm getting local meat from the farm shop, but to compensate for the extra cost, go vegetarian for a third of the week. Vegetables will be from the local greengrocer.

For day to day living I've come up with some other goals that I think are achievable:

First: No more plastic bags at all - I've always tried but often forget, but for one month we will not own a single additional plastic bag.

Second: To hang clothes out and not tumble dry as much - all my appliances are at least A or A+ but I can cut energy usage with reducing tumble drying. Also turning off all the little standby lights at night.

Third: To reduce car usage: bulk buy from shops, walk lots, use public transport when possible. Not possible, unfortunately, for my daily commute as I need my car for my job, but we have two cars and to aim to not use cars except for commuting or essential journeys.

That's the general rules and I'm sure during the month more will follow. Because what I'm finding, in the run up to this, is the more you think about it, the more you can do. It just takes some thought. Also, I'm starting to think differently about the way I live. Which is unsettling, I'll admit. This came about when someone raised the point of cost - "but isn't living ethically expensive". Well potentially yes, paying the proper price for fairly traded food and clothes is more expensive. But then bigger questions start, like do you really need to buy 'snacks', the frugal wartime diet was a famously healthy time with less diabetes, obesity and dental problems, do I really need the quantity or type of food I buy? What about food waste? What about picking up vegetables every other day from the greengrocers and menu planning, using the freezer, using leftovers, not buying stuff I don't need, not buying stuff new - all this is slightly uncomfortable for the middle classes - why live as if you don't have money when you do?

But when you look into it there are all sorts of ways to recycle perfectly good stuff. I've gone onto Freecycle, Oxfam online, swapshop, and gone to a clothes swap. Then there are library's, lovefilm, music downloads, all ways of not getting material things. Once you start looking, a whole new world opens up, which I'm about to step into.

It's a lifestyle change, one that we may all have to adopt one day, so I'll try it and keep you updated about how I get on.