Or do we need to stop telling people that being environmentally friendly Is easy?

[Jackfruitburger]

Just to clarify I am not perfect, I am less than halfway on my zero waste journey. I'm on the Facebook groups thinking 'wow that sounds like a good idea' I'm not doing much yet!
The thing that really winds me up is people saying that doing these things are easy. I currently use reusable nappies, I buy loose leaf tea and I've started refilling my own Nespresso capsules. I refill my washing up and laundry liquid. All of it is a complete ball ache. There's not one way which is easier than buying the alternative.
Teabags, much easier and cheaper to Chuck one of those into a mug rather than get my tea out, fill up my filtered teapot, then afterward scoop all the bits into the food waste.
Until we start saying to people 'look this won't be easy but this is what the planet needs' we won't succeed. I feel deceived by everyone saying that all these changes are so 'easy and straight forward' when they're not!

Mesh

@creepy .... some of the companies producing teabags use plastic/polypropylene in the paper used to make the teabags to heat seal them ...

I don’t understand how 6 apples from New Zealand can be the same price as 6 apples from Kent. I did our carbon footprint and it was appalling so I’m trying to do things to reduce it including buying British due to food miles.

We recycle as much as possible and our rubbish bin is 90% nappies and plastic packaging and never full. Why everything needs to be in a non recyable bag is beyond me. Manufacturers could reduce this stuff in an instant but they need to be told - look how much of an impact charging for plastic bags has made, it would not have if shops could have chosen themselves whether to do it or not.

Our council website definitely states teabags can go in the food waste bin. It then goes off to be broken down into fertilizer and biogas which is used to power some vehicles

Ours does too.

Tbh I'm more pissed off at my own compost heap having this unecessary crap in.

I have made beeswax covers to replace film and foil. We use reusable nappies. I make my own soap, washing powder, deodorant, shampoo and home cleaning products.

All food waste is fed to the chickens, all paper is recycled or burned in the wood stove.

Our heating is a wood stove so renewable.

We hunt our own meat rather than buy

The only thing we can’t cut down on is petrol and car use.

I had no idea.

Oh also we keep bees and make our own maple syrup so we don’t buy sugar

Hunting your own meat sounds laudable but it doesn't scale very well does it!

A few years ago my aunt was talking about fishing the remains of the teabags from her " cooked" compost. We didn't notice any remains in ours at that point.

Much later she also put me onto Yorkshire Tea. It all makes sense now, lol.

The big stuff - not flying or driving, not buying new electricals, keeping heating in your house down, eating as seasonally and locally as possible - are fairly easy IMO. As is generally consuming much less than average.

Cutting out all plastic is harder, especially on a budget. Lidl and Aldi seem to put everything in a plastic bag.

Hunting your own meat is totally impractical for most people I would have thought.

That sounds lovely Redneck, except wood stoves are highly polluting and petrol pretty high on offending list. It would be very hard to do a lot of things you do living in an urban area with good public transport or walkable amenities unfortunately.

@babbscrabbs agreed edpecially with the driving. Far too many people make unnecessary car journeys when they could walk.

Tbh I accept some stuff will go to landfill. Tokyo has built artificial islands with theirs. Interesting to look and learn from perhaps.

Selling / Shipping recyclables on is not responsible.

DH and I have this discussion all the time - he's a pessimist who believes the things we do on an individual level have no impact, I'm more of your kumbaya, let's save the world together type.

It is absolutely clear to me that the responsibility for being environmentally friendly in the developed world is sitting with consumers, instead of where it belongs which is with the producers. It doesn't matter how well you recycle unnecessary plastic if it wasn't necessary in the first place! And it's hard to do the right things because the wrong things are everywhere.

I think all we can do is our best. But if we only have a finite amount of time/energy it's probably better to spend some of that putting pressure on producers and retailers, rather than on making as many changes as we can ourselves.

Lonny that's right.

Producers not consumers.

(I can't keep up with "improvements " to teabags!)

OP instead of swapping to a milk man, environmentally the best thing you could do is stop drinking cow's milk and maybe do something like make your own oat milk instead which is apparently mega easy.

If we all hunted our own meat that would mean that there would be enough wild meat to provide us with one squirrel leg each per week

babbscrabbs

Woods stoves are polluting, but not as bad as oil fired heating which would be the alternative.

It would be impossible to do what we do in a urban environment, I am not sure what the alternatives are to our petrol use.

Plastic is important but I think a few top scientists have come out now and said that it's no where near as important as climate change, and more important to galvanise action (including public option) in that direction. The WWF report this week with the headline that 60% of biodiversity has been lost was absolutely horrifying. I think with all of this, we've just got to legislate. Coming back to plastics, there are so many types, and local recycling varies so much. The government should legislate so there are just a few types, then fund it's recycling. In this country, not shipping it to China. But with a 4yr election cycle, governments will always focus on short term aims they can achieve, in order to boost their chances of re-election. The current government will never legislate anything meaningful, not if it is perceived as negatively impacting business, it's all about 'market forces'. Unfortunately I don't think Brexit is going to do food/product miles any favours. I try to do my bit, enthuse other people, educate my children, but it's hard to see how we are not just buggered. Sorry, been feeling pretty depressed about all this lately, hence having a moan 😣

In the poster's circumstance it probably makes environmental sense to hunt rather than wave to the animal it as it passes the window.

I've started leaving the plastic trays some veg comes in at the supermarket. I wanted rainbow carrots but they come in a pointless plastic tray, I buy them, dump them into my bag and leave the tray and cling film behind, same for any other veg which is a better price than the loose stuff, not that there's much loose veg anyway. I grow as much as I can but still shop too. No babies but I did use terry nappies when my kids were babies, if we didn't have disposables, or they were mega expensive, then we wouldn't have a problem with reuseables as they are what we would be used to. Changing our long ingrained habits in order to help our planet survive is not as easy as we might think because we are up against retailers and manufacturers who put profits first and so package our stuff in loads of crap we end up being responsible for. It is those companies who manufacture and distribute plastic packaging who should bear the responsibility for what happens to it once we have removed it from the item we actually wanted to buy and so I believe it should be returned to them and not go into our recycling or landfill bins.

Re wood burners, have been feeling a bit conflicted... Even with clean dry seasoned logs, wood burning releases a lot of particulates and causes localised pollution. Our electricity and gas is from a local renewable company (money from gas put back into renewable generation). So while the wood feels more 'green' somehow, I am not sure if this is just psychological... What do others think?

@Jackfruitburger I've never had to wipe poo out of the seal of the washing machine, nor been worried I smell of ammonia - genuinely, also for what it's worth, don't own a tumble dryer.
I don't think the washing machine should be having poo left inside it, did you do a cold pre rinse?