How To Make Less Rubbish and Be a More a Mindful Consumer.
In my article Wise Eating I revealed the secrets of a little booklet on wartime eating in the UK - what can we learn from English wartime nutrition?
How we eat, source our food and live our everyday lives is directly related to the health of the environment. The consumer driven society and individual desire for 'more, better, best' is not a positive theme for a healthy future.
Let’s explore the benefits of simplicity and see how some of the English/New Zealand wartime home-front philosophies can benefit you, your community and the world!
As explored in Wise Eating, nutrition in New Zealand and the UK improved during World War Two due to more simplified moderate eating, and a wholesome food growing effort in the back garden. Not only that, people were healthier because they got plenty of exercise. They walked, took public transport and cycled more. Petrol use was heavily restricted.
I see the home-front war effort as one of the most eco-friendly periods in recent history. People were united by a common cause – to reduce their own consumption of resources for what they saw as the common good. 'Waste not, want not' was taken literally. During the war, my dear dad Colin was given one peice of waxed paper for his sandwiches and one brown paper bag for his lunch each week. As you can imagine a ten year old boy didn't take good care of his 'bag ration', and it was useless by the end of the week!
How can we learn from this?
I do not propose we use war to bring us together to reduce consumption of resources. However this period in history serves as an inspiring example of how it is possible to eat simply and well, use less and waste less. Rather than joining forces to win wars, let’s actively promote eating more wholefood for the peace and wellbeing of the planet and our children’s children.
Three ways to reduce wastage and over-consumerism at your house:
1) Eat wholefoods and avoid overeating. This will inevitably reduce obesity and degenerative disease.
2) Burn fewer fossil fuels. Take a bike, walk, or share a car. The Dutch approach is a winning one. When I visit my family there I am always impressed by the cycling, the cycle ways and the small car –one car families. Roger and I are really enjoying being a one car family. It is possible and it feels great. Your body, the local environment, whole earth and it’s inhabitants benefit.
3) Create less rubbish (trash). How much garbage does your family produce? Roger and I, (pre-baby), put out a standard rubbish bag approximately every 3 weeks. The rest goes into the compost and recycling bin. When we ate raw food our trash was half that amount.
4) Mend clothes when you can. I find repairing small holes and sewing on buttons very satisfying.
How to reduce your garbage:
Buy wholefoods in paper bags
Buy refills to reduce packaging
Purchase products with recyclable packaging
Use ceramic and metal containers with lids for storage of left-overs in the fridge, rather than using plastic wrap.
Buying meat and fish from specialty suppliers (e.g Butcher, markets or fish shop) means less packaging, especially polystyrene. The further advantage here is less contact time between animal fat and soft plastics – this reduces the risk of leaching ‘estrogen mimicking substances’ from the plastic into the fat.
Avoid plastic bags when buying vegetables and fruit - take your own shopping.
Reduce use of disposable nappies (I’ll keep you posted on this, but have bought a complete eco-friendly cloth nappy system).
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