All you lentil-weavers...

[sushistar]

what's the most 'alternative' thing you do?

help myself to the contents of skips and things from the dump.

Sell on my cloth nappies (already used by four other babies).

I've got loads of second hand stuff in my house too.

lol at coolyerboots.

You is obviously just an aspirational lentil weaver!

The idea of freeganing appeals but I have yet to make the dive on a regular basis!

moony I use DS's old cloth nappie as hand towels now! (they aren't stained though, I promise!

eat leftovers .

yes but who's left-overs expat?

ours. we have next to no food waste other than what goes into the composter.

no bins round here to raid.

me either. I always eat DS's left-overs too, when there are any! I've developed quite a taste for half-eaten cold fish fingers all soggy in ketchup!

Bucket bathwater / washingup-water to flush the toilet.

Don't run a freezer.

Walk to school in the pouring rain, even though we have a big metal waterproof car.

Unscrew for recycling tiny metal screws from broken plastic toys (almost always gifts from outside our nuclear family, honest!).

Reuse wrapping paper.

Used to rely on guinea pigs to mow the lawn.

Try to mostly feed pets on leftovers.

Won't let any of us buy new clothes unless existing wardrobe item has (truly, utterly) worn out.

Use cut up rags instead of disposable tissue (I do toss the rags when they're grotty.. .my definition of grotty is probably beyond most people's, mind).

Buy organic cotton sheets, and *cotton/hemp clothes.

Probably a LOT of other weird things I don't even think about or would never admit to in public.

lol at guinea pigs mowing lawn.

I am curious when stats. quoted that say people throw food away. Why? I nver throw food away,ever, ever.
If there are scraps left over,the birds will have them.

Moondog

I admit I probably throw away more food than I should but a small amount would get thrown away by me anywayeven if I was better at using the leftovers simply because I live in a flat with no private garden.

The few times I've tried leaving food out for the birds etc I've had letters from the management company saying they had complaints and that all waste including food should be bagged and left in the bins.

We do have rats in the gardens though (I've seen a few) as we live very close to the railway station and I can see that leaving the food out would attract those more.

I don't throw food away either - there aren't may things that can't be turned into soup successfully when they get past their best.

Lentilweaverishness isn't massively obvious in our house - no dishwasher or tumble dryer, mooncup, compost bin, recycle over and above what the council will take in the recycling bin, erm...

The other problem with living in these flats is that NO recycling facilites are provided except the public ones you get in supermarkets etc so we have to save all our recycling and usually drive it to the nearest recycling centre.

The lack of space in our flat makes this a pain as we usually save a month or so's worth of bottles,tins, paper etc before taking it to the recycle poin. At the end of the month our small kitchen begins to look very cluttered and messy with bags of recycling everywhere.

Sometimes I get so fed up with it I put some of it in the boot of the car (a nissan micra so not much space) and never get round to actually dumping it for ages.

We still do the recycling but as you can imagine it is more difficult for flat dwellers in this situation than for those in houses where they have different types of recycling bins which are collected seperately.

The flat bins at our place are just normal bins where everything goes in together and it is very difficult to resist the temptation to just throw everything in them so that my kitchen looks tidier. Just to re-iterate I do resist but it isn't always easy

Ah but you see Tiger feet I really don't like most soups.

I do make it sometimes with fresh food and sometimes with leftover vegetables past their best in the hope that we won't waste food but generally I end up throwing the soup itself away as neither I nor ds like soup, though dh does eat it sometimes.

So we just end up using energy to cook the food and then throw the soup away anyway .
Nowadays I tend to throw the veg away rather than go through this ritual

I do however try to use the food before it gets to this point and also use meal planning etc so most of our food gets eaten and I don't atually throw that much away nowadays.

Yes Lazy,must be hard in a flat.

i used to live in a flat, it's 10x harder to be green imo. we had the same prob with recycling.

I have to say that most peiople think me being willing to use 2nd hand cloth nappies is way out there.

Our wormery gets comments. And we have out heating at 18 degrees and my sis complains it's 'too coooold!'

I recycled my terry nappies into towelling hoodies for the dc.

But I'm not a lentil weaver, so I dyed them

well according to 80 per cent of mums in the playground, walking a mile to school with the kids is off the scale of alternative

I'm pretty good at being thrifty, with all that entails but none of it is very hardcore. I don't like waste and I'm skint, so it's more about that than being particularly lentil-weavery

My mum though.....Did anyone else's mum ever melt down odd bits of leftover soap into a 'new' bar??

Giving up shopping for a year, except for food and a few cleaning products.

Cycling to school (in summer only mind)regarded as v alternative by many who live far closer than us and drive in their 4 x 4s.

Family cloth is probably my most alternative thing...although Home ed usually gets just as many comments

yy, the snot thing
I was used to it but some of my friends used to look askance at it when they visited..

oh, I just remembered, I make nettle soup and elderflower/elderberry cordial
(obv blackberries go without saying)