We don’t actually believe in new year’s resolutions. Life is hard enough, particularly at this time of year, without putting yourself under added pressure to do things perfectly of even better! But a new year is a good time to draw a line, and start again…accept we didn’t do everything we wanted to do last year, but that we made progress!
With that in mind, we are ‘resolving’ or at least hoping to do a few things specifically with our ‘Waste Not Want Not’ hats on! Here’s where we are headed in 2018!
CHECK OUT THE RE-USABLE OPTIONS
2018 is going to be all about ‘re-usables’ for us! We managed a whole year using ‘re-usable bowl’ covers by Covermate last year – a blindingly simple product with a thousand different uses, all reducing use of cling film, aluminium foil, and food spoiling. Just a little bit of extra effort in giving them a rinse made a big difference. So we will be trawling the market for other cunning products to help us in that quest which we will gladly share. (You can find them at Lakeland for just £2.29 a pack).
KNOW WHAT WE ARE BUYING
We also want to know what I am buying – whether it is the right product in terms of impact on the environment, be it in pack size, origin or ingredients, and whether the products are labelled effectively and appropriately. This is definitely a pet peeve of ours – people are buying products blindly because of in appropriate labelling.
We will also be looking at the ‘price of convenience’! We love a little bit of minutiae and analysis, so we’ll be taking a good look at those ‘quick wins’ and working out which ones are acceptable investments!
RECYCLE BETTER
And we will most certainly be improving our own recycling habits! We have better knowledge than most of what can and can’t be recycled in our area but if our teacher were marking our paper, we’d get a definite ‘could do better’! Of course, the fact that recycling varies so much from area to area is massively confusing, and councils are fairly poor at communicating what they should. So we will be doing our best to get pro-active and inform where we can. A sign at our local recycling centre resonated with us – if we all recycle effectively we can save around £3 million a year which can be spent on other vital services!
RE-USE AND WASTE LESS
And of course, we will be trying to throw away less and re-use more, be it through craft projects, pickling, jam making or just feeding to various livestock! There really is no excuse for the amount of waste that most of us produce, and packaging and convenience products are so often to blame for that! We’ll be bringing you lots of tips and ideas on how you can do all of this too! First up, using my Christmas lemon glut on lovely lemon curd!
Happy new year everyone, and most of all look after yourselves!
