Eight Acres

Last week I wrote about how we don't have a microwave and I really don't miss it.  So continuing the theme of "weird things about my kitchen", we also don't have any plastic cling wrap or paper towels.  And we haven't had them for so long I can hardly remember why we ever needed them. I didn't mange to avoid all plastic at the farmers market, but I tried I always thought that cling wrap was wasteful.  Not just from an environmental perspective, but I also didn't like spending money on something that I only used once.  When I was at uni and took sandwiches for lunch, I used to bring home the cling wrap and use it again until it didn't stick anymore.  One year when we did Plastic Free July (I can't remember when exactly - here's what I wrote last year ) we decided to stop using cling wrap.  I used up the last of it recently when we were painting (its really hard to renovate without creating waste) - its handy for wrapping up paintbrus...

This is a post that I wrote in 2012, but I want to republish because I think its an important post about the dangers of synthetic chemicals.  I never really understood the difference between synthetic chemicals and those present in nature until I read this book. **** I just read a book that I couldn't put down, its called Plastic: a toxic love story .  Its about how plastic has became so pervasive in our lives and so dangerous to our health and that of our planet.  I've read about this kind of thing before, particularly in " Slow Death by Rubber Ducky ", but this new book really explained a few things that hadn't clicked before. First, plastic is a new thing .  I was born in the eighties, so I've grown up with plastic, but only a couple of generations before me, plastic was totally new and people were trying to find new uses for it.  While it is true that there are no new elements on earth, there are new combinations of elements and therefore new chemi...

Has everyone signed up for  Plastic Free July ?  The idea of Plastic Free July is to try for a month to actively avoid single-use plastic.  You can sign up for the whole month, or just a week, and you can avoid all single-use plastic or just the TOP 4 challenge (plastic bags, bottles, takeaway coffee cups & straws). This post contain affiliate links from Biome and Rad Pads , as well as advice from my personal experience.  You don't need to buy a whole lot of things to reduce your plastic consumption, there are many things that you can make yourself, I just suggest a few of the items that have helped us and may help you too. Why?  Plastic is designed to last forever, but when we use it for "disposable" items they do not biodegrade and end up polluting waterways or filling landfills.  Each of us can make a difference by just reducing (or aiming to eliminate) single-use plastic. Don't know where to start?  Here's a few posts I prepared earlier,...

A simple life, not to be confused with an easy life, is defined on Wikipedia as follows : Simple living encompasses a number of different voluntary practices to simplify one's lifestyle. These may include reducing one's possessions, generally referred to as Minimalism, or increasing self-sufficiency, for example. Simple living may be characterized by individuals being satisfied with what they have rather than want. Last year I shared a series of posts about simple ideas for living a simple life, and I have one left to finish it off.  Here's what I posted already: Three simple ideas - Saving money on groceries Three simple ideas - Learning basic skills Three simple ideas - Eating local and seasonal Three simple ideas - Cooking from scratch Three simple ideas - Growing your own food Simple: consciously reduce plastic consumption The first step is to be aware of just how much plastic you consume.   Plastic Free July is an excellent way to do this, buy collect...

This July Pete and I took up the challenge once again to reduce and analyse our single use plastic consumption with  Plastic Free July . Throughout July I have shared with you our progress, and lots of tips and ideas, and its been great to see you all join in. Now its time to look at our dilemma bag of plastic that we ended up with in spite of all our good intentions, and think about ways to improve.  If you are going to post about your dilemma bag too, please link in the comments, it would be great to see what everyone learnt from joining in with Plastic Free July. In Week 1 I wrote about  food shopping and food storage , and for Week 2 the topic was  rubbish and recycling , the next week I wrote about  plastic in the bathroom  and finally, last week was plastic free cleaning .  I offered a giveaway sample bag of soap nuts, which is a plastic free option you might want to try.  The winner chosen at random is: Fiona from Life at Arborda...

When I occasionally walk up the "cleaning" aisle of the supermarket I am baffled by all the different products, gadgets and essential items required to keep our house clean!  I have never made a secret of the fact that I don't particularly like spending time cleaning the house.  I have much more interesting things to do in the garden, but I do try to keep in to a minimum standard (and to be fair, Pete is the chief toilet cleaner).  We don't buy any cleaners from the supermarket these days, but we do occasionally clean the house.... more on this in a minute.... This July Pete and I have taken up the challenge once again to reduce and analyse our single use plastic consumption with  Plastic Free July . Throughout July have to shared with you our progress, and lots of tips and ideas, and its been great to see you all join in. I have one more giveaway, so join in, share your ideas and have a chance to win some plastic-free products this July! In Week 1 I wrote about...

I often forget how much plastic is in a "normal" bathroom.  Bottles, tubes and tubs of shampoo, conditioner, bodywash, deodorant, hairspray, hair gel, hair dye,  moisturiser, cleanser, toner, eye wrinkle cream, make up remover, make up containers x a million, toothpaste, tooth brush, toilet paper packaging, razors, shaving cream etc.... more on that in a minute.... This July Pete and I are taking up the challenge once again to reduce and analyse our single use plastic consumption with  Plastic Free July . What's plastic-free in my bathroom? Homemade soap (details here and here ) Homemade deodorant ( recipe here ) Homemade skin salve ( recipe here ) Damadi moisturiser (made in Australia, packaged in glass jars that I reuse for the above) Shaving stick and brush homemade salve What's still plastic? Toothpaste (Miessence organic, in a plastic tube, something I should make, any suggestions?) Toothbrushes (just the normal supermarket version, I tri...

Ironically, this July is the beginning of the end of recycling in the South Burnett Regional Council area.  Yes, you read correctly, from July 2014 we will no longer have curb-side collection of recycling, its all going to landfill.  Not to recycling at the landfill either, we don't even have the option to take our own recycling to the tip, there is simply no facility for it. Essentially our council tricked us into this change.  They sent out a survey and asked if we wanted to pay extra for another bin for recycling.  We were happy with our one split bin - half for rubbish and half for recycling.  Unfortunately the options weren't well explained, and our region didn't vote for the second bin, our council is now only providing one bin for rubbish, no more split bin.  Apparently they are now "looking into" providing recycling facilities at our landfills, but at the moment there is no local recycling options.  More on that in a minute.... image source ...

This July Pete and I are taking up the challenge once again to reduce and analyse our single use plastic consumption with Plastic Free July .  Throughout July I am going to share with you our progress, and lots of tips and ideas, so I hope you will join in too. Three reasons to avoid single use plastic: All plastic is made from non-renewable fossil fuels: Plastic is made from oil, and increasingly, natural gas.  Its not so bad to use these resources for long-lasting useful applications, but when we are just pumping out plastic junk, its literally a waste. Plastic does not degrade : All plastic ever made is still in existence. Apart from newer truly biodegradable plastics, most plastics just break into tiny particles over time, but they never decompose like natural materials do. Plastic is toxic , because plastics (and many ingredients in plastic) are man-made, our bodies do not recognise them, and they can disrupt normal biological processes. Resuable containers...

As I wrote back in June, I decided to participate in Plastic Free July properly this year and keep a "dilemma bag" with all the plastic that we still used, even though we were trying not to use any at all.  It is now time to look through the bag and analyse its contents..... Things that we managed to do without: muesli bar wrappers - by making homemade muesli bars rubbish bags ( lined bins with paper ) plastic cups (we don't buy anything in a cup and I always use a real cup when I make myself a drink) straws (again we never buy anything with a straw) shopping bags (used fabric bags, I put a stash in each car, so no excuses!) plastic bottles (we are in a very lucky position of producing our own milk, and I make fermented fizzy drinks and Pete makes beer, so we didn't have to buy any plastic bottles) plastic wrap (I used some of the tricks in this link ) Things that ended up in the dilemma bag and what I might do to reduce this waste: Various wrappi...

During Plastic Free July we have been saving any single-use plastic that would normally be thrown away, so that we can assess at the end of July just how much plastic we consume and how we could reduce that.  Throughout the month I also tested ways that we may reduce that plastic as we go.  This isn't a competition, its a learning experience, so its not cheating if you start to change some of your routine as you realise where all the plastic is coming from. One thing that I knew was going to be an issue for us was muesli bars (granola bars for those in the US).  We go through around a box of 8 per week, and at over $4 a box, they're not cheap.  The brand that I buy is in a cardboard only box, but the bars are individually wrapped in plastic.  I don't think that there is any alternative bar that we could buy that is not individually wrapped, so I started to think about making an something similar at home (also because I bought kgs of organic rolled oats in...

I bought these neat little Fregie sack reusable bags from a health-food store recently and found them really useful at the Nanango markets last week.  I probably should sew some of my own, but this was so easy and convenient! I used them for almost all the produce I bought (just one sneaky bag with pineapples, sometime the salespeople put things in bags before you can stop them!) The Freggie sacks

How is everyone going with Plastic Free July? Personally, I'm finding it completely impossible, so I thought it was a good chance to all share some plastic/packaging MINIMISING tips! The reason this is so difficult is there are many food items where you have NO choice on packaging.  For example, cheese only comes in plastic.  OK, I should be making my own cheese, but I can't make decent cheddar yet, so we're still buying it because we love cheese.  I could just not buy it in July, but that's not changing a habit, which is surely the point of the exercise. There are some changes that we can make permanently, and there are the ones that I want to try to make into new habits in July.  So here's the start of a list for minimising plastic consumption, please add to it if you can think of anything else: Take "green bags" (or fabric bags, as green bags are made of plastic!) with you everywhere, leave some in your car, feel EXTREMELY guilty if you go to th...