My journey to a debt free life

Onebrokelady

HairyHandofDartmoor wrote: »

Sorry you didn't get your walk in OBL.

Your musings on packaging is making me think that I should try and use less. It would also save money not to buy cling film, so I must speak to DH about finding alternatives to it. What about alternatives to bin liners though as they tend to be plastic?

Hmmmm,I had forgotten about bin liners, however I am aiming to reduce my waste so that I don't actually throw much away at all,the more I look into it the harder it seems,there are so many people that have done it though so it is possible,some ideas I've had this week include

Baking my own bread cakes and biscuits so I'm not buying packaged goods
Composting everything that can be composted
Using grease proof paper instead of cling film to wrap sandwiches, cheese etc
Using reusable bees wax cloth wraps to wrap food in
Only buying fruit and veg that's not wrapped in plastic,or growing my own

Onebrokelady

😂spurred on by Hairy mentioning bins bags I went on a hunt for plastic free bins bags and fell down a rabbit hole into a land of plastic free goodies:rotfl:

I ended up at the Ethical Superstore who do sell recyclable bins bags made of corn starch,the down side is they are £2.50 for 25 bags,if I was to reduce my waste significantly enough to not be emptying my bin much I would buy them but I'm not sure I can afford that at the moment

However while there is discovered the Eco egg for doing your laundry and this product looks like it could be a winner, the one I'm looking at is £12.99 for 210 washes then the refill is £6.99,my current wash liquid would cost me £18 for the equivilant amount of washes, the advantages are it is eco friendly and cuts out all those nasty chemicals,there would be no need to buy plastic bottles of wash liquid so less rubbish,the only downside is the actual egg itself is plastic but as you can refill it that's not much of a problem unless it breaks

I tried to order one from the Ethical Superstore but it wouldn't let me input my address so I couldn't do it,I then discovered they sell it in Lakeland's for the same price,so guess where I'm going tomorrow :rotfl:also if I can buy it in Lakeland I won't have to pay delivery costs

Onebrokelady

I've now been investigating composting as an alternative to throwing food waste in the bin and come across something I had looked at before but forgotten all about .......Bokashi compost bins,these things are amazing at composting food waste and don't take up as much room as a normal compost bin,you can actually keep these indoors as they are about the size of a pedal bin,the waste is fermented and then added to soil to enrich it
I nearly bought one when we had the allotment but I went for wormery instead,I've still got my wormery but would need to buy new worms because the others escaped when the lid was left off once

At the moment I'm treating the pallet that I'm going to be plantinginnas a compost bin,so the any peelings or anything else that can be composted is being chopped up and dropped in there to mix in with the leaves and compost that's already in there,this will rot down eventually and make more compost
I'm going to have to take note of what we are throwing out and the different ways we could be disposing of it,if I can find alternatives to plastic packaging on things like wash powder and cleaning products,the next big thing is food waste and that's mostly compostable,the it's bathroom products such as shower gel and shampoo,shower gel is easy because I can just use soap but shampoo requires a bit of thought,there are shampoo bars but I haven't heard good things about them,I wash my hair everyday and whatever I use has to be really good performance wise
I've certainly got a lot to think about

arsenalbarnie

I use shampoo bars all the time now. They are so much better nowadays. I buy mine from the Funky Soap Factory, Pure Nuff Stuff (from Penzance), and Wild Sage Co. Do you remember Treadingonplaymobils diary? I found out about them from her. Do you have any eco friendly shops near you? Maybe they sell them. I wouldn't buy the L*sh ones as they have SLS in them. I rinse with apple cider vinegar and that conditions my hair after.

It takes a couple of weeks for your hair to adjust, but now I only wash mine every 3rd day. If you read the F soap factory website they explain about how they work there I think. Have started cleansing my face with oil too ( from Wild Sage co). It's amazing, will not go back to cleansing cream. The shampoo bars are basically made of oil too.

We have a plastic free shop now, where I live and am going every week. I get all my dry goods, coffee beans, washing powder refills etc all sorts, I love it. Am spending less and less in Mr T's. Next time I am in Devon at my caravan am going to have a look at the shop in Totnes. It's quite well known now I think.

I had a wormery but it took ages to get any compost and they all died eventually for some reason. I had it for years but never really got the hang of it properly. Will take a look at the Bokashi bins. Sorry hope I haven't rambled on too much.

Onebrokelady

arsenalbarnie wrote: »

I use shampoo bars all the time now. They are so much better nowadays. I buy mine from the Funky Soap Factory, Pure Nuff Stuff (from Penzance), and Wild Sage Co. Do you remember Treadingonplaymobils diary? I found out about them from her. Do you have any eco friendly shops near you? Maybe they sell them. I wouldn't buy the L*sh ones as they have SLS in them. I rinse with apple cider vinegar and that conditions my hair after.

It takes a couple of weeks for your hair to adjust, but now I only wash mine every 3rd day. If you read the F soap factory website they explain about how they work there I think. Have started cleansing my face with oil too ( from Wild Sage co). It's amazing, will not go back to cleansing cream. The shampoo bars are basically made of oil too.

We have a plastic free shop now, where I live and am going every week. I get all my dry goods, coffee beans, washing powder refills etc all sorts, I love it. Am spending less and less in Mr T's. Next time I am in Devon at my caravan am going to have a look at the shop in Totnes. It's quite well known now I think.

I had a wormery but it took ages to get any compost and they all died eventually for some reason. I had it for years but never really got the hang of it properly. Will take a look at the Bokashi bins. Sorry hope I haven't rambled on too much.

Not rambling at all AB,I love talking about ways to go plastic free and all info is helpful
We have a new Zero waste shop just opened here in the city,it's called Zero and stocks all sorts of products,I haven't been in yet but will be investigating it as soon as I can

Despite living in Devon for all of my adult life I have never been to Totnes:eek:it's on my list of places to visit at some point,I'm might try to get there over the summer to check it out

Thanks for the soap bar recommendations I will go and have a look:beer:

Onebrokelady

After a night of only 4 hours sleep I've woken up to a miserable day here,we are meant to be going into town today but DD is still in bed so we aren't going anywhere soon😬

I'm not sure what my plans are for the rest of the day yet,it's looks like it's going to rain so it will probably be inside jobs,I might even sand some of the paintwork in the bathroom:eek:

foxgloves

Hi OBL,
We are also working on reducing our plastic consumption. Some of it's so simple......things like handing our own bags to the fruit & veg stall on the market for them to pack straight into. At the most, we get a few brown paper bags from them, which are reusable if clean & compostable if not. We have stopped buying liquid hand soap. We always used to have bar soap back in the day, didn't we? Just imagine the vast amount of plastic bottles everyone switching to liquid soap in bottles has created! We also try to choose bar soap in paper or card wrappings.
Milk has been a bit of an issue - I know that those bg 4-litre containers can be used for all sorts of projects, especially in the garden. I've seen an idea online where you cut them in a certain way & hang them on a fence of wall to use for growing herbs or salads, but I have plenty of growing space as we've a large garden, & there's a limit to how many plastic containers I can re-use. I do save decent yoghurt pots, meat/veg trays, take-away coffee cups (we get v few of the latter now we've got our bamboo refillable beakers) for seed-sowing, potting up, runner bean modules, etc. And those big milk containers also take up a lot of space in the bin. Then on Tuesday, out of the blue, a chap knocked on our door wanting to know if I'd be interested in becoming a customer of his milk-round. "Only if you can provide glass bottles", I said. He could, both for milk & for fresh orange juice, so I have signed up for a trial period. It looks as though our account can be completely managed online. So that will be more plastic out of the house.
Re composting worms........I did buy some years ago when I first set up my wormery, but have never done so since. They can suddenly die out....usually this is because they have stopped breeding because the conditions are not right....i.e not enough food, or the weather has been freezing for a while (the only time mine were almost completely wiped out was that v cold winter back in 2010) but I move mine to our unheated greenhouse from November to end of Feb. They can also drown if there's lots of rain & the tap isn't opened at the base to drain off the free liquid plant food. I do always top our composting worm colony up every Spring, but I find that our normal composting bins (the green dalek ones) are full of them, if I dig down just a little way, so I gather some up in a spread tub & add them to the wormey Probably helps the gene pool too!
Oh....spread tubs, there's another one. I use those for plant labels. They cut up really easily. My favourite recycled plant labels are the razor clam shells which you can often find on the beach, They are easy to write on, the perfect shape for sticking in a plant pot & they are completely biodegradable & probably add a few nutrients too! I always gather a bunch when I see lots of them on a beach.
I've read about Bokashi bins as they were on sale from the same mail order company from which I got my Can o'Worms worm composter unit. Interesting process. We used to have a 'Green Cone' which was a District Council scheme. If you had a local postcode, you could go & collect a free Green Cone kit. It was a big open plastic basket like a laundry basket, which you dug into the garden soil, then the cone bit fitted on top. It would take all food waste that couldn't be composted the normal way......poultry & meat bones, cooked waste, everything except large amounts of fats. You just sprinkled on some enzyme powder, also supplied, then every 3 or 4 years, the basket was pulled out, the residue dug into the soil, & the cone re-sited. We ran ours for about 4 years & certainly all the plants around it thrived from the nutrients provided, but we stopped when the council ceased to support the scheme & we now just have our 5 normal composting bins plus the wormery. We did recycle the green cone's plastic components though......the large basket is lined every year with recycled compost sacks & used to grow a courgette or squash & the cone part is used as an additional small compost bin.
We can't change everyone's habits, but think of the difference if every household pledged to take just 4 or 5 regular streams of plastic waste (hand soap bottles, milk cartons, etc) out of their household's purchases - it'd make a difference....it'd be a start, anyway.
F x

Onebrokelady

foxgloves wrote: »

Hi OBL,
We are also working on reducing our plastic consumption. Some of it's so simple......things like handing our own bags to the fruit & veg stall on the market for them to pack straight into. At the most, we get a few brown paper bags from them, which are reusable if clean & compostable if not. We have stopped buying liquid hand soap. We always used to have bar soap back in the day, didn't we? Just imagine the vast amount of plastic bottles everyone switching to liquid soap in bottles has created! We also try to choose bar soap in paper or card wrappings.
Milk has been a bit of an issue - I know that those bg 4-litre containers can be used for all sorts of projects, especially in the garden. I've seen an idea online where you cut them in a certain way & hang them on a fence of wall to use for growing herbs or salads, but I have plenty of growing space as we've a large garden, & there's a limit to how many plastic containers I can re-use. I do save decent yoghurt pots, meat/veg trays, take-away coffee cups (we get v few of the latter now we've got our bamboo refillable beakers) for seed-sowing, potting up, runner bean modules, etc. And those big milk containers also take up a lot of space in the bin. Then on Tuesday, out of the blue, a chap knocked on our door wanting to know if I'd be interested in becoming a customer of his milk-round. "Only if you can provide glass bottles", I said. He could, both for milk & for fresh orange juice, so I have signed up for a trial period. It looks as though our account can be completely managed online. So that will be more plastic out of the house.
Re composting worms........I did buy some years ago when I first set up my wormery, but have never done so since. They can suddenly die out....usually this is because they have stopped breeding because the conditions are not right....i.e not enough food, or the weather has been freezing for a while (the only time mine were almost completely wiped out was that v cold winter back in 2010) but I move mine to our unheated greenhouse from November to end of Feb. They can also drown if there's lots of rain & the tap isn't opened at the base to drain off the free liquid plant food. I do always top our composting worm colony up every Spring, but I find that our normal composting bins (the green dalek ones) are full of them, if I dig down just a little way, so I gather some up in a spread tub & add them to the wormey Probably helps the gene pool too!
Oh....spread tubs, there's another one. I use those for plant labels. They cut up really easily. My favourite recycled plant labels are the razor clam shells which you can often find on the beach, They are easy to write on, the perfect shape for sticking in a plant pot & they are completely biodegradable & probably add a few nutrients too! I always gather a bunch when I see lots of them on a beach.
I've read about Bokashi bins as they were on sale from the same mail order company from which I got my Can o'Worms worm composter unit. Interesting process. We used to have a 'Green Cone' which was a District Council scheme. If you had a local postcode, you could go & collect a free Green Cone kit. It was a big open plastic basket like a laundry basket, which you dug into the garden soil, then the cone bit fitted on top. It would take all food waste that couldn't be composted the normal way......poultry & meat bones, cooked waste, everything except large amounts of fats. You just sprinkled on some enzyme powder, also supplied, then every 3 or 4 years, the basket was pulled out, the residue dug into the soil, & the cone re-sited. We ran ours for about 4 years & certainly all the plants around it thrived from the nutrients provided, but we stopped when the council ceased to support the scheme & we now just have our 5 normal composting bins plus the wormery. We did recycle the green cone's plastic components though......the large basket is lined every year with recycled compost sacks & used to grow a courgette or squash & the cone part is used as an additional small compost bin.
We can't change everyone's habits, but think of the difference if every household pledged to take just 4 or 5 regular streams of plastic waste (hand soap bottles, milk cartons, etc) out of their household's purchases - it'd make a difference....it'd be a start, anyway.
F x

Hi Foxgloves,I must say Im quite enjoying the challenge of finding plastic free products,I'm going to be buying unwrapped fruit and veg from now on,I think the rule will be if it's wrapped in plastic I can't have it,I've just bought a punnet of peaches but I'm not buying any more,I'm going to be taking my own veg bags for anything I buy,or do what I we did today and just chuck it in the reusable shopping bag after it's been weighed

I am guilty at the moment of buying liquid soap for hand washing but once my current ones have run out I'm switching to a bar of soap instead

HairyHandofDartmoor

I've been buying bars of soap for years now because they are much cheaper than liquid soap, but I can see now that I've been helping the environment too .

Most of my purchasing is based on price, so I wouldn't have a mikman for that reason as the milk costs significantly more. But I always rinse and put my milk cartons in my recycling bin.

I will think harder about using less plastic. Things like bread wrappers can't be recycled so I'm not sure how to get around that.

I could use tin foil instead of cling film I suppose as my council will recycle tin foil, but you have to scrunch it into a ball I've been told otherwise it messes up the conveyor belt at the recycling centre.

Onebrokelady

We went into town in the end and made the effort to visit the zero waste food shop,it's good for flour,dried fruit and herbs and spices,they also sell bars of soap and washing liquid that you measure into your own bottle,the pricing wasn't very clear so I need to go back and work out how much it would cost to fill my washing up liquid bottle there

Then it was on to the farmers market,ours has a good veg stall that sells things like Kale by the handful,I don't buy it in the supermarket because it comes in a big bag and I never use it all,if I buy from the market I can buy just enough for what I need

We checked out Mr S which is where we do our main shop and now I've properly looked I was surprised by the veg that was unwrapped ,we found
Savoy cabbage
Spring cabbage
Cauliflower
Broccoli
Courgettes
Carrots......cheaper loose
Onions....cheaper loose, the pack of three was £1.35 but the loose one we bought was 17p :eek: so 51p for three,they are slightly smaller but even if you have to buy a couple extra it's still cheaper
Peppers
Tomatoes
Spring onions
Potatoes
Mushrooms.....cheaper loose
Fennel
Butternut squash
Oranges..... cheaper loose
Bananas
Kiwi fruit ....lots more expensive loose
The only things I thought were odd and frustrating was the swede was shrink wrapped.....why when it comes in its own skin
The parsnips were in plastic bags......why if the carrots can be sold loose why not the parsnips
The only apples they had unwrapped were Pink Ladies and I don't like them,to be honest the only apples I like are cooking apples and they weren't wrapped and Russets which only have a very short season and tend to only sold at the veg stall unwrapped
We did go to Mr T as well and they had Granny Smith apples loose

I'm going to try to base my meals round veg that comes unwrapped from now on and just take my own bags in or chuck it straight in my reusable shopping bag which is washable

We then toddled up to Lakeland where I bought my eco egg,I bought the fragranced one called Fresh linen to see what that's like,you can get a fragrance free one for really sensitive skin but I do like bit of a nice smell on my washing,I can't wait to use it but I've got a bottle of wash liquid to use up first,so you just open the egg and fill it with the pellets that come with it then you put it in the drum on top of your washing,it does say not to overfill the machine because the washing needs to be able to tumble round,but you shouldn't overfill your machine anyway if you want your clothes to be washed properly,it's says one egg for 6-8 kilos of washing,my machine is an 8 kilo machine so that's a normal load for me

So today's shopping trip has shown me that it's not as hard to buy plastic free fruit and veg as I thought and that it will actually save me money in the long run,the eco egg will also save me money as it's works out a lot cheaper than buying washing liquid

The plan now is to use up all the things I have that are packed in plastic and then try to replace them with non plastic equivalents as I go,I don't think it will be feasible for me to replace everything with non plastic because frankly some of it is just too expensive but I will try my best and as Mr T is fond of saying Every Little Helps :rotfl:
Spends today were
Lakeland= £12.99
Compost= £3.00
Food shop= £7.90
Total = £23.89