Sustainability

Recently, there has been a lot in the news about climate change, largely thanks to a plucky teenager named Greta Thunberg. Greta started the school strike for the climate last year and it has gone global. Well done Greta for proving that one person can make a difference. Her bravery is exceptionally humbling. There are not many adults who could give a speech to the EU but Greta nailed it. Go girl!

The symbol for the Extinction Rebellion.
The circle is the Earth and the
hourglass is time running out.

The other group in the headlines has been the Extinction Rebellion. Although, I have noticed a difference in the reporting with this group. The exposure has been less and also the emphasis on the reporting has been about Londoners being inconvenienced by them rather than actually reporting what the protest was about. Shame.

I believe that the difference in the reporting is primarily because the school strikes were by children, whereas the Extinction Rebellion is organised by adults. That said, even the children striking was criticised by many as irresponsible in the UK. Oh, the irony of that statement!

As an individual household, we have been making small changes for years towards reducing our carbon footprint. Missy was taught in infant school about climate change and was active in the school's Eco group for a while (until she realised that the other kids weren't particularly serious about it). Since, Missy has carried on her research independently at home and regularly discussed it with us around the dinner table.

Missy has also been regularly going around our neighbourhood picking up litter for the last 2 or more years. It breaks her heart when the following week she can see that there's even more litter everywhere. I'm very proud that she's sticking at it after so long. If only there were more people who thought about it. Several of Missy's friends will often join her for an organised litter pick up, so I do have hope that her generation will be better than ours.

That said, what school age children can do is limited as they don't have control over household decisions. They can't even vote yet so they can't influence officials easily. Greta did the only thing she thought that she could. She striked from school with the message that if we (the older generations) don't care about her future (on this planet), then why should she care? She has a really good point.

As the parents of these plucky kids, what can we do to help? 

The obvious thing is to vote for the party that best aligns with your values. The children can't vote, but we can. Take a look at each party's manifesto to determine if they are right for you. Interestingly, after our recent elections, the two major parties (Labour and Conservative) lost seats. The Independents and the Green Party picked up most of these seats. It looks like change might be around the corner in the UK and about time.

I've been tactically voting for years to keep out the worst party rather than voting for my first choice (Green), until recently. I couldn't see how they would ever get in when all my life (in my 40s now) it's been a two party race. I'm hoping that the two party race is now over and others with (hopefully) more progressive views have a chance to influence more.

As parents, we can also help our children to write to manufacturers and organisations expressing what we would like to see change. For example, supermarkets are slowly moving towards less plastic use thanks to public pressure. We can also write (or email) companies that we are impressed by and encourage them to lead the way for change. As a nation we are quick to complain but not so fast to tell someone that they are doing well. Letters of praise can help businesses to keep up momentum.

On the subject of consumption, adults have the power to vote with their money too. We don't have to buy products from companies that don't align with our values. We are trying to cut down on plastic packaging on foods for instance. Therefore, we choose to buy loose fruit and veg using our own reusable cloth veggie bags. (Affiliate link) We cook everything (just about) from scratch so we don't buy any processed and heavily packaged foods. Our weekly rubbish has halved with this one small change alone! We have the power to boycott businesses that need to do better and it doesn't always cost more money. We have reduced our food bill by about a third by cutting out processed foods as I discussed before.

Even better, reduce consumption all together.

Everything that we buy has some cost to the planet. All the resources to make consumer products start in a humble form, like metals mined from the ground, plastics made from crude oil, cotton grown in fields, and so on. Everything costs the Earth something. So why not be more intentional about what we buy (and already have) and make them last as long as possible? Reuse items before they are (hopefully) recycled. Recycling isn't the answer alone as the recycling process itself costs us energy resources. I believe it's better to fully use up what we have before buying again, preferably second hand. If we all reduced our consumption of goods by 10% imagine the difference we could make!

This is a journey that we, as a household, started about 9 years ago. It started because of lack of money but we quickly realised that many of these efforts were also helping to reduce our impact on the Earth by reducing our carbon footprint. Shortly after, Missy became passionate about Eco issues and we've carried on refining our habits each year since. Saving money and looking after the planet mostly seem to go hand in hand for us. It's a great incentive. I'll have to write a few posts about the changes that we've made as many were so easy that I kick myself for not doing it sooner.

The journey continues...

Homemade laundry detergent saves loads

Laundry detergent, it is soo expensive! I mean, even the store own brands are a lot. But do we really need them? I say no.

Actually, they are extremely bad for my health with all the chemicals and fragrances in them. I've had a problem with some detergents ever since I've been doing my own laundry (a long time now as I'm no spring chicken anymore). The big brands are worse than the cheaper ones too. 

I never really knew why they got to me so much until in recent years when my chemical sensitivities got more and more severe. Now I know it's the hundreds of different chemicals used to produce various "fragrances". So while I'm talking about the undisclosed ingredients in these fragrances, let me ask you, what does clean actually smell like? It smells of nothing. Mind blown!!

As a side note, look up the documentary on Netflix called 'Stink'. A single dad investigates into why his daughter's Christmas pyjamas smell so strongly of chemicals when she opened her gift. It opened up a whole world of toxic chemicals that we don't even know are in our lives and are not regulated for. Scary, scary stuff. 

We have become to think over the last 50 plus years that everything has to smell fragranced to be clean. A great example is with the use of bleach in hospitals. A massive bugbear of mine. You only need the smallest amount of bleach to do the job of sterilising as it's extremely potent. You shouldn't be able to smell it after the area has been cleaned and is dry. So what is that hospital smell that we are all familiar with? Chemicals in cleaning fluids, that's what. It's a dangerous place for me to be as it makes me sicker.

I'm pretty sure that we, as a society, use too much of these cleaning fluids because we think that these fragrances/chemical smells mean that something is clean. But really, if you spray body spray on top of dirty skin, the skin is still dirty! Teenagers, I'm looking at you!

For the past 2 or 3 years, I've been making my own laundry detergent. Ok, I do have a cheap brand (that I'm not reactive to) as a backup plan in the cupboard but I've never needed it unless I've been too lazy to make another batch of mine.

I looked on Pinterest (a wonderful place) to find various recipes and there were several to chose from. I settled on a liquid recipe and over the last few years have tweaked it to suit me. I've made what I think is my best ever batch, by accident, this weekend.

Please note that there are a few affiliate links in this post that will earn me commission at no extra cost to you if used. Thank you.

All you need are soda crystals, borax substitute, liquid Castille soap (I like Dr Bronners almond scented as it smells subtle and doesn't irritate me, but there are cheaper unfragranced brands too) and water. I use a large stock pot on the stove to make it in.

• To make it, add 5 cups of water to the pot and add 1 cup of Castille soap. Warm it on the stove until it starts to gently bubble then turn off the heat. 
• Add 1 cup of borax substitute and 1 cup of soda crystals to the pot. Stir until all the solids are dissolved. It took me a while this time as my borax substitute had gone a bit hard, but it still worked fine. You will feel this bottom of the pot turn from a sandy texture to a smooth slimy texture as you stir. 
• When everything is dissolved, add 5 cups of cold water to the pot and mix well. 
• At this point, I leave the mix to cool in the pot while I go off and do something else. 
• Once cooled you will find that the soap tends to separate out into layers. I used to whisk it by hand to mix it up again but I found a little bit of magic this weekend all because I have a very painful arthritic shoulder. So rather than struggle with a whisk, I got out my electric hand blender. I thought I was being lazy but wow! What a great pearl of wisdom this turned out to be. The mix turned into a smooth set custard-like consistency. It was awesome and so easy. 
• Finally, spoon your laundry custard into large jars until use.
• When I use it in the washing machine I only need 1 tablespoon measure (from the measuring spoon set) or 1/2 tablespoon for a half load. 

A batch of homemade laundry custard detergent 

My first attempt years ago was like a thick sauce but my others were a bit more runny. I thought it was due to the storage temperature in my laundry room being colder but maybe I just wasn't beating the mix enough. The other major difference is that I now use liquid soap as I find grating a bar of soap hard work (again, thank you arthritis) and then I get bored waiting for it to dissolve in the warm water. So laziness (or self-preservation from pain) meant I switched to liquid soap and I much prefer the results.

I bought the ingredients for less than £19 (unless I upgrade to Dr Bronners soap which is more expensive). I only used half the borax substitute, about a 1/4 of the soda crystals and a 1/4 the bottle of Castille soap so there is plenty left over for another 3 batches is you buy a second borax substitute. I don't know how many loads I washed (as I don't count) but one batch lasted my family of 3 a full year. I even give a small jar to my mum.

My approximation of cost is £23 (with the extra box of borax substitute) for 4 years worth of laundry detergent for my family. That's less than £6 per year!!

I've had to look up the cost of Bold laundry pods (25 pods) as I haven't bought any for so long. I was shocked to see it is on Amazon for £20! That would last about 1 month. With these calculations, it would cost £240 per year for Bold compared to my £6 per year by making my own laundry detergent that works just as well. A saving of £234 per year to go in our early retirement pot!!

So making my own detergent not only helps keep me well (my main motivation for doing this) by avoiding unnecessary chemicals, but it's also very eco-friendly (especially if you use a bar of soap that is wrapped in paper rather than plastic). Then, of course, it's so much cheaper that you have to wonder why we pay so much to have it made for us with all those nasty chemicals added.

I seriously recommend you give it a go sometime. It took less than 30 minutes in all (with cooling time in the middle). That's a very good monetary return on your time.