New Year's Resolutions! ✍

Even though you don't usually follow them for that long, it is cool to get yourself worked up about something to make your life better. My usual resolutions are 'practise my musical instruments more' or 'don't buy books, get them from the library' etc. But how about you make them more Eco-friendly? And then try harder to stick to them?😂

First of all, you'd need to know about what things are currently going on that you could help change and take action. Right now, you can go online and visit websites that will tell you what is currently happening. This website: UN Environment tells you loads of facts, however mostly about 2019. But if you search up about things in 2020, you will probably find some interesting up to date information. 

Then, you can make your resolutions, based on what you find. It might be things like having a Veganuary (my family are going as far as pescatarian this January, which I am all year round anyway😂) or no-meat-Mondays. Saving one meal of beef can save the same amount of emissions as driving 348 miles in a car. Or you could go litter-picking - or 'plogging' as I wrote about in this blog - once a week, or every other week etc. When litter picking, you should make sure you keep the recyclable and non-recyclable things separate, maybe in different bags, so that things don't go to landfill if they don't need to. Another thing is buying less/thinking about what you buy when you go to the shops, even if it is just grocery shopping. This is focusing on the 'reduce' and 'refuse' bit of the five Rs, which are: refuse, reduce, reuse, rot, recycle (sometimes there is re-purpose and repair too). It's not just refusing the cashier when they offer you something, but also refusing things that are wrapped in too much plastic.

Thank you for reading this blog! I hope you had a brilliant Christmas, if you celebrate it. See you next week, where we will be in 2021 - hopefully a better year!

Violet

         xxx

Christmas in numbers!💯

Christmas is just around the corner, five days away I think, and I'm so excited! I don't want to lower the spirits of anyone who's celebrating, but I do want to make sure everyone knows how to make all their celebrations less harmful to the environment. 

1. We buy 6 million rolls of Sellotape to wrap our presents with every year in the UK. What's wrong with sellotape? Well, it is made of polypropylene (a plastic that people often think is recyclable when it is not) and this then makes recycling the paper harder.  So, also thinking about using newspaper or brown paper you can actually find in some Amazon parcels that I mentioned in my first blog Wrapping Presents, try to substitute plastic sticky tape for something else. I have paper tape, which I believe is good for the environment, and works just as well as plastic ones - or you could go for the old string or ribbon.  And make sure you save the string or ribbon around this year's presents to use next year! 
2. We spend £1.6 billion on food at Christmas - as a nation - and we waste around 17% of that (I think, if I calculated correctly... well, we waste £275 million of it anyway, if you want it exact). We also waste around 270,000 tonnes of food at Christmas - which includes 74 million mince pies! I've already talked about food waste before, and how to stop it. You can easily do leftover food buffets, which is where you get all the food you didn't eat at meals, and then make a buffet out of it, unless of course the food is moldy. This will probably save a lot of food, since if you make too much of something it is so bad if you throw most of it away.
3. 1.7 billion Christmas cards are sent every year in the UK. That's almost 2 billion... and since sending one produces around 140 grams of carbon dioxide, sending 2 billion would be a crazy amount. Then, there's also looking at what is on the card, what it's made out of and where it was made. If there's a lot of glitter, or even just a tiny bit, it will be harmful to the oceans and indirectly to humans; then considering product miles, there will be a lot of greenhouse gasses released in the air, depending on what its transport is. So, maybe either try making your own cards and sending them (so that the card doesn't travel from where it was made to where you buy it) or somehow tell them in another way that you 'wish them a merry Christmas and a happy new year'.

Thank you for reading! Next time I write, it will be after Christmas and the countdown to the 25th December will begin again!😂 

Violet

         xxx

What do you find in Christmas Crackers? 👐

Up until last year, my family have always used Christmas crackers when we are eating our Christmas dinner. They are very popular, so you probably use them too. But have you ever thought about all the plastic waste that are probably entering landfills? There are so many plastic toys and things that are in there, that we really only use once - and so I believe they could be just as bad as plastic bottles (that isn't a fact, just my opinion.) 

There have been loads of tests to see which brand's cracker was the most eco friendly, and the tests (which were done in 2019, I think) looked at the life-length of the toys, the material the actual cracker is made from, and the recycling information. The results showed how the least eco friendly ones were from Tesco, since the toys came in plastic packaging and there was no clear recycling information; and the most eco friendly ones were from Waitrose, since the toys were long lasting and not wrapped in plastic, and the crackers were mostly recyclable (however there was still glitter in them). But, as you could tell from the sustainability, Tesco's were the cheapest per cracker and Waitrose was the most expensive per cracker. 

So, what are the more eco-friendly options? 

First of all, you should always go for the ones with less glitter, and clear recycling information. This means you can check which things won't go to landfill, and therefore be more eco friendly. If you want to go a step further, you could make your own ones! Here is how to make them: Make your own Christmas crackers or Plastic-free Christmas crackers (scroll down a bit to get to the instructions). 

You can also buy eco friendly crackers.  This year, my mum surprised us with completely eco friendly crackers from Sainsbury's, which are 100% recyclable and 100% plastic free, as it says on the recyclable and plastic free box. It contains a gift, hat and motto (sadly not a silly joke), however it is made in China, so there are some product miles adding to the carbon emissions - product miles are how much a product travels before going on shelves, including the materials that travel before being made. 

Did you know 30% of extra waste is made during Christmas time every year? That's quite a lot. But anyway, thank you for reading and I hope to see you next Sunday, where it'll be almost Christmas!

Violet

         xxx

 

Making Christmas Decorations! ✂

It's December, and the run up to Christmas has begun! I'm sure we've all made our own decorations before (as a child at least), made of plastic ball balls and red and green glitter, or something like that. Of course, glitter, as I mentioned before in my glitter blog, is terrible for the environment, because it is microplastics and can slip through filtration systems into the sea and then be consumed by the sea creatures living there. So, there needs to be other, more eco-friendly, ways to make your own decorations!

• Find a rock and paint it!
• You could go on a walk around your neighbourhood or in a nearby park, collect some good sized pebbles or rocks and take them home. Making sure they are clean and dry, you could get some paint (if you have some, I would also recommend acrylic paint pens since they are easier to use, but don't buy them if you don't have them) and paint some festive things onto them!
• Make (inedible) salt dough ornaments!
• Making salt dough is like biscuits, but you can't eat them, they don't crumble and you can hang them on your tree! (This may be weird, but I'm pretty sure I still have one of these that I made years ago). You cut them with cookie cutters, then decorate them however you like when they are baked - however, it takes a long, long time to bake, I think. Here's a recipe: https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/howto/guide/how-make-salt-dough-recipe.
• Or make paper ornaments!
• You can get your old magazines and cut out some rectangular pieces, in different sizes (maybe 10, 12, 15 and 17 cm in length, and 3 cm in width), cut out two of each size - this is to make one ornament. Take the 10cm strip, and staple the top and bottom with the 12cm strips on each side (the 12cm ones should bend) then do the same with the 15 and 17cm strips. You can punch a hole in the top and tie string or ribbon around it. 

• Create a cardboard landscape. 
• Get some cardboard (if you have some lying around, like from all those Amazon boxes!), and use a pen to draw a landscape that you like - you can get inspiration from the internet. Cut out the outline of your landscape, then fold at the corners so it will stand up. If you make a Christmas tree, cut out two tree-shapes, then make a thin slit at the bottom of one and at the top of another, and make sure the slit goes almost to the top or bottom, but not so it splits in half. Then, slide the two together, and you have a standing tree. It should look a bit like the ones on this website
  

Of course, there are a lot more things you can do, and all you need is imagination! So, instead of going and buying new things, how about you make one of these? Thank you for reading, see you next Sunday! 

Violet

         xxx