Using Eco-Friendly Cleaning Products!🧽

My house is very clean all the time, a big thanks to my mum. For a while now, she's been using eco friendly products to clean. I'm going to list a few and describe how they are better for the environment.

1. Ecover. Ecover have products for dish washing, laundry, overall just household cleaning and personal care. They also said that by 2020 (so this year) they are going to use 'clean plastic', where all of their bottles are going to be made out of recycled plastic. 'Most of our ingredients are made of biodegradable plant-derived substances' as they said on the website, and their factory was designed and built with over 90% of renewable materials. 
2. Ocean Saver. These cleaning products are quick, easy and eco-friendly to use.  When we got one from Sainsbury's, it came with a little blue packet (there are different colours for different cleaning purposes) and a bottle. You drop the packet into the bottle, add a specific amount of water and shake the bottle. Then you can use it to clean! You can also use a cleaning bottle if you already have one at home, but it has to be the right size. They are plant-based and non-toxic, and zero plastic waste (if you re-use the bottles they come with). 
3. Bio D. These products, like the others, do all the different types for things you need to clean (laundry, bathrooms etc). They are vegan and cruelty-free (don't test on animals). They have ethically-sourced ingredients and 100% recyclable packaging.
4. Smol. My mum has a Smol subscription. This means their cleaning products are delivered at a regular time. Smol are laundry capsules and dishwasher tablets that you can use to replace the powder or whatever you use before you start your machine. They are brilliant because everything is recyclable. The package they come in is paper (not plastic!), and the little tablets and capsules are wrapped in plastic that dissolves in the wash. So you end up with clean clothes and dishes and no waste.
5. You could also replace window cleaner with a vinegar and water mixture to clean windows, however it doesn't really work if you don't like the smell of vinegar. 
   

There are obviously loads more, but these are the ones I know from my mum. I hope you didn't mind this rather long, maybe a bit repetitive blog, but these can make a difference! So next time you finish a cleaning bottle, maybe try one of these out? Or try your own. See you next Sunday.

  Violet

        xxx

Using Your Re-usable Things!♻

In 2018 (two years ago; how?), figures revealed that plastic bag sales dropped by 86% when we added the 5 pence charge for them in 2015. So this is equal to about 19 bags per person in England, compared to 140 in 2015. It's also been said that, equivalent to 150 per person on Earth, the world uses over 500 billion plastic bags a year. However, there are quite a few ways you can swap plastic bags for better. Things like canvas ones, or reusing them until they physically can't take anymore (we still have a few that we've been reusing for ages) could help. 

Then there are plastic straws (which I talked about here, in May) and bottles. About 150 plastic bottles are found on UK beaches per mile. Do you know how many plastic bottles you use? I know right now not many people are in work and school but I know people who buy a new plastic bottle every day when they arrive at school or lunch. I've never bought a bottle from school and I'm pretty sure I haven't used one in a few years. I have a Chilly bottle (a metal one) and I love it a lot. However, metal bottles can be expensive so using plastic ones which are not single-use is still better (as long as you actually use it). 

Right now, where I am at least, you're not allowed to bring your own coffee cup or anything if you go to cafes. You have to use the paper or plastic ones they give you. But, when this ends, you can buy your own cup. My mum has a glass keepcup which she used to use a lot. You can also get a cork or silicone material from other places too. 

I know things are more difficult because of the pandemic, but try not to forget to avoid single use plastics like these. Thank you for reading this blog and I hope you liked it!

Violet

         xxx

Getting Fruit and Vegetables in Season!☀

It's July (as you know). Which means there are a whole load of fruits that we associate with summer that we are so looking forward to eating. (Well, I am). For example: watermelon, strawberries, apricots, blueberries, kiwis etc. However, as nice these fruits may be, they are not always in season for the summery times we like to eat them.  

When fruits and vegetables aren't in season, it means they need to be shipped from places where they are so we can have them in our shops. Trains, boats and trucks are primary methods of moving large amounts of food around the world and all of them consume fossil fuels. This means it causes an increase in greenhouse gas emissions.   What I'm trying to say is that you should try to check how far away the food you're buying has come from so you know if you should buy it or not. 

We should not only get in season fruits and vegetables because of the impact it has with fossil fuels but also because when they are in season, they are usually tastier and more nutritious (not to mention probably cheaper too). Some vegetables that are in season right now (summer) are: asparagus, radishes, spring onions and spinach - and some in season fruits are: blackberries, blueberries, nectarines, watermelon, raspberries and plums. 

There are obviously loads more in season and you would need to know them for other seasons too and there are websites like the Vegetarian Society and the Unicorn website who will tell you about it. A few months ago I got a poster from the Unicorn Grocery which tells you which fruit and vegetables are in season. It's very useful! 

Thank you for reading my blog this week, and hopefully you'll come back when I post next Sunday!

Violet

         xxx

Things You Need to Know About Palm Oil🌴

Palm oil is a part of many usual products: chocolate, shampoo, popcorn, toothpaste, margarine etc. It is used because it has a high melting point which means it can keep products and food from drying out or make a thicker texture. Palm oil is sort of a vegetable oil that comes from a pulped, ripened fruit of the African oil palm. The fruit has a fleshy outer part and stone inside, and both of these make oil so a palm fruit is far more productive than coconut, soya beans or sunflower which are alternatives.

People are demanding palm oil even more, so animals are losing their habitats as we burn or chop down rainforests in Malaysia and Indonesia so the native animals are killed, captured or driven away. About 300 football fields of forest are cleared away for palm oil plants every hour, estimates the World Wide Fund for Nature. The fires release a very high level of carbon dioxide when we burn the forests down and have been blamed for the neighbouring countries having major air pollution. 

So we should be buying products which don't use palm oil, right? Not necessarily. You see, avoiding palm oil makes farmers grow substitutes which are even worse for the environment. We should instead look for products which have the label RSPO (Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil which formed in 2003). This label shows that the product it's on has been produced with sustainable palm oil. If you buy products which have the label, or urge companies that don't to use one, you could make it better, since palm oil needs less land to grow than other vegetable oils. 

Thank you so much for reading this post about palm oil. I hope you learnt things from here, I certainly did while writing. I got my facts from the Teen Breathe Earth-Saving Acts for Eco-Warriors. It's a very interesting magazine and I gathered a lot of information from it.🙂 See you next Sunday!

Violet

         xxx