Home Truth

My daughter told me the other day that when you point at someone, three fingers are pointing back at you. I assumed she had been told this at school, but it turns out it was on some American sitcom!

It dominated my thoughts as I was reflecting on yesterday’s comments. Maybe the only way to bring about change in my home is to stop pointing at others and start focussing on my own shortcomings. By being a good example of how not to waste, I may achieve more. I will not use the tumble dryer on sunny days. I will walk to the gym. I will turn the light off when I leave a room. I will work out the right amount of rice to cook. I will be inventive with leftovers. And perhaps I will even cut up scrap paper and secure it with a bulldog clip to use as a list pad like my Dad has done for years.

And most importantly, I will stop teasing (verging on mocking) those who are thrifty (is that the best word for the non-wasters among us?) and start encouraging and praising any act of waste saving that I see or hear about.

My Dad does not need to be ashamed that he has no need to buy notebooks. Joan does not need to be embarrassed that she is well prepared for electricity rationing. My friend Rita does not need to hide the fact that her outhouse is piled high with newspapers for recycling.

Let’s point the finger for the right reason - to draw attention to these role models for sustainable living.

Filed under: sustainability, recycling, simpler lifestyle on June 26th, 2007 | 2 Comments »

I hate waste. Here are ten of the worst offences that make me see red on a regular basis:

1. Books that are bought and never read

2. DVDs that are only ever watched once

3. The lake of milk left in a bowl of cereal when all the cereal has been eaten

4. Drawing on only one side of a piece of paper

5. A bath that has taken more time to fill than the time actually spent in it

6. Half full cups of juice left on the table at the end of meal

7. Children who leave food on their plates and then return hungry asking for something different half an hour later

8. Christmas presents that have still not been opened and played with by the following Christmas

9. Toys that are stood on and broken because nobody could be bothered to put them away

10. Appliances that are left switched on day and night so that the batteries have run out when you actually need to use them

….that is only the start of it. Think of all that is thrown away at kids’ birthday parties….of perfectly good furniture and furnishings that are discarded just because we fancy a change…I could go on and on and on.

So imagine my joy on Saturday morning when I chatted to Joan at the Fair trade coffee morning. She never cuts string; she unties it and reuses it. She has a drawer full of candles collected from Christingle services over the years. She even used to unravel her sons’ jumpers and reknit them in a bigger size. “Green is not new” she points out. “Anyone who lived through the war knows how to save - anything and everything.”

It set me thinking. In a climate of hardship and ’just enough’, people knew how to reuse and recycle and ration themselves. But how hard is that to do when we live in a land of plenty?

Our boys were astounded at the weekend when they heard that only 8% of the world’s population own cars. We may not be as rich as the people next door. But in the world’s terms, we are definitely rich. How do we stop our kids taking food and water and shelter and healthcare and education and cars for granted?

How do we stem the tide of waste?

Filed under: Reduce, recycling, simpler lifestyle on June 25th, 2007 | No Comments »

My boys tell me that gullible is the only English word not to appear in the dictionary. I don’t know why. It gets used in our house to describe me all the time.

I consider gullibility an endearing feature. It shows a trust in people, a faith in humankind, a lack of the destroying cynicism that pervades our age.

Take last week, for example. I was enjoying a day out with the love of my life. It was sunny. We were alone. Before us were two beautifully presented sandwiches, a fruit smoothie and a cup of steaming fair trade coffee. Or so I thought.

Eavesdrop for a moment:-

Me: Isn’t it amazing how fair trade coffee is so much more widely available now?

Him: This isn’t fair trade.

Me: It is. Look, the fair trade logo is even up there on the board.

Him: That’s just next to the tea.

Me: But look at this (picking up the info leaflet off the table). This tells you all about it.

Him: But surely you don’t believe everything you read.

Me (getting a bit defensive): No. Obviously not. But I do when the company’s strapline is ETHICAL HONEST FAIR.

Him (warming up for a rant): That’s like thinking that everything that says it’s organic really is. Unless it’s certified by the Soil Association, there are no guarantees. Same with fair trade. Unless it has the Fairtrade certification, who knows?

Me (getting a bit defeated): So your coffee is possibly ETHICAL in some way or another; obviously not completely HONEST and in many ways, including ruining our moment, definitely not FAIR. Enjoy!

Silence. The sandwiches become the object of our full attention.

Gullible’s world is shaken yet again.

Filed under: fair trade on June 19th, 2007 | 1 Comment »

“Just a spoonful of Fairtrade sugar makes the world a fairer place.” according to the Fairtrade Foundation. I don’t know about just a spoonful - since I’ve been baking regularly, I’ve been getting through sugar mountains. All sorts - raw cane, golden caster, Demerara, Muscovado - in all sorts of yummy recipes (see below*).

During the celebrations of the abolition of the slave trade 200 years ago, which took place earlier this year, I saw a great documentary about a black Londoner tracing his roots back to Nigeria via the sugar plantations of the West Indies. A fascinating story with a far from straightforward outcome. Of course, the most ironic thing is that many are still enslaved by sugar production around the world today. Exactly what the Stop the Traffik! Campaign has been aiming to highlight.

That’s why fairly traded sugar is so important. Traidcraft’s sugar is mainly sourced from Craft Aid in Mauritius, providing work for disabled people. Malawi, Paraguay and Costa Rica also harvest sugar cane for the fair trade market.

A spoonful of sugar in your tea or a sprinkling on your strawberries will help. Baking with fair trade sugars will help more. Buying biscuits, snack bars, confectionery and chocolate made with fairly traded sugar and bearing the fair trade mark will help even more.

I’m waiting impatiently for the production of fair trade golden syrup. Anyone out there got any plans to bring some to our supermarket shelves? There’s definitely a market for it - me, me, me!

Recipe - Apple Cake

• 200g self raising flour
• 100g margarine
• 100g fair trade caster sugar
• 1 egg
• 200g peeled fair trade apples
• Milk to mix
• 1 tbsp fair trade Demerara sugar

1. Rub the margarine into the flour until the mixture is like fine breadcrumbs.

2. Add the sugar and the egg.

3. Dice the apple and add it to the mixture.

4. Stir in enough mild to give a slow dropping consistency.

5. Put into an 18cm greased cake tin.

6. Bake for one hour in a moderately hot oven (400F, 200C, Gas Mark 6).

7. Turn out carefully and top with Demerara sugar.

8. Put in cupboard for treats for all the family. Avoid putting anywhere Gadget Man might find them when he’s searching the cupboards for a late night snack!

Filed under: fair trade, cooking on June 17th, 2007 | No Comments »

It’s always good to find someone struggling with the same ethical dilemma as yourself. Perhaps that’s why I enjoyed Martin Love’s article “The end of the road?” in the Ethical Observer magazine this weekend so much. Mind you, his Volvo sounds in a much worse state than our minibus. Give it time.

He reaches the conclusion that his old friend the Volvo will have to go (I wonder if anyone will ask him in a month if he has indeed got rid of it yet or not). In contrast, we have come to the decision to keep our minibus (think depreciation, economic viability etc) for two more years until our eldest son reaches seventeen and has agreed to help with transporting the other kids around in exchange for some driving lessons. Fair deal.

However, we will do what we can to “green our ride”.

“When you can, cycle, walk, take public transport..” Sound advice for Martin Love from Dr Lane, a leading environmental consultant. Completely ignored by the majority of car owners if the crawling queue of cars with one person in that I see on the hill outside our house every morning is anything to go by. We do OK: Gadget Man cycles to work (with “necessary” GPS gadgets to get him there!), I walk to the gym, oldest child is an expert bus user. No doubt we could all do better though with a bit more thought and planning.

Then there’s regular maintenance, correctly inflated wheels, no unnecessary weight, changing gear at the right time, avoiding excessive acceleration…these all make some difference to carbon emissions and some has to be better than none.

And so the minibus lives on. As does our ‘slightly weird’ identity. And don’t forget tomorrow is National Car Sharing day.

Filed under: sustainability, travel on June 13th, 2007 | No Comments »

I realise now that yesterday, I let slip something that I have been hiding for months from you. Not entirely deliberately, you understand, but I was a little fearful of your response, I have to admit.

We are not an average two car family. We do not even own a car. We have a minibus, our very own Scooby Doo Mystery Machine, as the family members of my son’s football team affectionately call it.

Two years ago, we had a problem. We had five children, a girl from Albania living with us, friends of the kids going everywhere with us…and a seven-seater mini-people carrier with no boot space. We believe in car-sharing and often ended up giving lifts to others, so our local travel life frequently turned into a logistical nightmare. By the way, did you know that 14^th June 2007 is National Liftshare Day and I’m doing as I’m told by sharing this message with you…

“liftshare estimates that a typical carsharer will save themselves around £1,000 and 1 tonne of CO2 per year by sharing their daily journey.
Please forward this message on to friends, family and colleagues and encourage them to ‘Save a Tonne!’ and share their journeys.”

Anyway, back to our dilemma. A minibus felt like the only solution - albeit a weird and wacky one, disapproved of by friends and family alike. We were the butt of people’s jokes for months and being only 5ft2, I felt a right idiot behind the wheel of a 12-seater minibus. But everyone began to see the benefits and enjoyed outings in the ’tourbus’. So much so, that when we told everyone recently that we were thinking of getting rid of it, there was an outcry! “You can’t do that, it’s part of your identity!” Great - what kind of identity could that possibly be?

You see, now that we’ve given it a go, we’ve come to realise that most of our journeys are trips to Asda on our own or ferrying just one of the kids to tennis or football or a party or something. And so we feel guilty for environmental and financial reasons, as well as putting up with the obvious lack of comfort and weirdness status.

I’m leaving the decision to my wise and sensible husband, who will look into all the options and consider all the factors and reach a clear conclusion (all in the next three weeks before the MOT and insurance are up for renewal - go to it, my man!). Mainly because I can’t be bothered to get informed and anything must be better than being caught speeding in a minibus….or parking a minibus…or being dropped off for a night out at a nice restaurant in a minibus. Let’s hope the green gods rule in my favour!

Filed under: sustainability, travel on June 8th, 2007 | No Comments »

I am one of the lucky ones. I got caught speeding recently. In a Ford Transit minibus no less. I did not get three points on my licence. I got to attend a three hour speed awareness workshop instead. And this was where I was introduced to the idea of the cultural acceptance of speed.

And then I watched “Ugly Betty” and saw, as Wilhemina put it, “my first public inning” (for the uninitiated, it’s the moment where the up and coming male designer is uncovered as being straight when he has been pretending to be gay to get on the business).

And then I heard on the radio that one in six adults in Britain now has an alcohol problem, although talking about that at any social gathering is strictly a ‘no-no’.

See where I am going with this? Who decides which laws are OK to break and which are not? Who decides what is socially acceptable and what is not? Where does our cultural acceptance come from? Religion? Nationality? Age? Gender? Profession?

And what about the cultural acceptance of greed? It is socially acceptable in our nation to want more, waste more, share less, care less. How can we stand against it? Who will stand against it?

The Speed Awareness Workshop Scheme was organised by the local police force under pressure from the government to re-educate the nation about speeding. The government has the power to bring in legislation, to fund advertising campaigns, to bring about change in cultural acceptance. Let’s hope our nation’s greed and the resulting poverty around the world are high on the agenda of our new Prime Minister. Let’s do what we can to make sure it is.

Filed under: culture, simpler lifestyle on June 8th, 2007 | 1 Comment »

Yes, it is, it really is!

On the same day that I heard of a student returning home from university for a summer break of FOUR MONTHS (!), I received my first mail order Christmas catalogue of the year through the post. I haven’t even got our summer wardrobe out of the loft and we are being encouraged to plan for Christmas. Unbelievable.

We are still three weeks away from the day that marks six months until Christmas. The perfect day to have a birthday. I should know. It’s my husband’s!

Actually, I can remember the day on our summer holiday last August when we sat and seriously discussed our plans for Christmas. Because Christmas is a real trial for me. I so much want it to be a celebration of the birth of Christ, but my tightrope walking has not improved over the years.

I’m referring to the tightrope of trying to find the perfect balance between waste, debt, greed, extravagance and indulgence and failing to make Christmas a fantastic experience for my friends and family. I know I am not alone. This was the subject of another late night conversation at Pontins.

And it’s not new, either. I can clearly remember my teenage brother fasting on Boxing Day many years ago in protest against what Christmas had become. As an eight year old, I thought he was just a miserable spoilsport. Now I’m tempted to do the same (and inflict it on the whole family!).

We’ve tried fair trade gifts and considered donkeys and toilets in Africa. We’ve experimented with giving the kids a trip to DisneyLand Paris instead of a heap of presents. I came across a family where instead of receiving presents, every family member could choose an activity to do over the Christmas period with the rest of the family: I am not brave enough to give that a go.

What I would love to do is to rent a massive house in the country and have an alternative community Christmas with people of like mind - all the fun and games and laughter and excitement with none of the materialism and over-consumption.

So maybe it is right to think about Christmas now. Not to be writing my shopping list but to be pursuing my dream, before I’ve left it too late yet again!

Filed under: Uncategorized on June 6th, 2007 | No Comments »

During the recent Bank Holiday weekend, I found myself with a group of people from all walks of life, with very different outlooks and very different opinions about everything! We were thrown together at Pontins in Southport (wow!) with one thing in common: we all had sons who played for the same football team - and who won the competition no less!

It was a great time. There was too much shouting from the sidelines, too many sunburnt (or maybe windburnt) faces, too much running round the balconies shouting and screaming (that was the kids, honest!) and inevitably, too much alcohol consumed.

One woman was drinking organic wine, because she had been told that it gives you less of a hangover. She may be right. She was in better shape than most.

It set me thinking. Drinking organic wine can feel better for you. It feels less bad. It feels more healthy. The same with fair trade wine. It is benefiting the producers and so we can raise a glass with a clear conscience. It tastes as good as any other wine out there so we are not even sacrificing quality for the sake of our ethical values. Result.

So is getting drunk on fair trade or organic wine more acceptable? Probably not, but I’ll have fun constructing the argument and persuading my Pontins pals!

Drink wise. Drink responsibly. Surely that can be more than just the number of units we consume. Here’s to a clear(er!) conscience. Cheers!

Filed under: shopping on June 4th, 2007 | No Comments »

I’ve never been what I would call a fashion victim. I’ve always cared too much about cost, practicality and comfort to become enslaved by the latest trend. In fact, I now have two questions about everything I try on:-

1. Am I too fat for this?

2. Am I too old for this?

I have to admit a percentage of my wardrobe is made up of other people’s cast offs, at least last year’s fashion at a guess…. but full marks go to me for the ethical art of re-using, don’t you agree?

I had a really interesting chat with my niece the other week. She has given it a go in the fashion industry in Paris as a journalist and now works in a trendy retro boutique. She has amazing strength of character and a real sense of adventure..only she could spend a year as part of her French degree in Martinique! But now in her mid-twenties, she’s ready to turn her back on the industry. She had to find out for herself.

“The Devil wears Prada” and “Ugly Betty” have more than a grain of truth in them, it seems. The victims of fashion are diverse and numerous - from the emaciated models to the uber-ambitious designers; from the enslaved teenagers on our high streets to the sweatshop slaves in the developing world.

My niece wants out so I’m sending her an article I found about the highly successful retro Oxfam shop in Nottingham. Fashion with a conscience no less. Maybe just what she’s looking for. It’s a great idea on the part of Oxfam - value added secondhand clothes and accessories forming a vintage range. It makes the task of the secondhand fashionista easier if less exciting - no more hours of rooting around through racks of grannies’ cardigans to find the one priceless gem.

But it still feeds the greedy fashion monster, doesn’t it? It still gives the fashion industry credence and supremacy. It still encourages the throwing out of perfectly good clothes for this season’s latest. It still gives greater importance to outward appearance than inner beauty (“Beauty and the Beast” and “Shrek” have the right idea - and “Ugly Betty“ possibly although I’m reserving judgement until the end of the series).

I do think it’s worth celebrating Oxfam’s engagement in a creative way with the fashion industry. It’s good to win the small battles along the way, as long as we never forget that the war is still raging.

Filed under: fashion, recycling on June 2nd, 2007 | No Comments »