Sustainable September 2017 - Day Seventeen

SEPTEMBER 17 (SUNDAY)

FOOD & STORAGE - BEVERAGES

Welcome back to Sustainable September 2017.

Today is the last day of this weeks theme of Foods and Storage! When i post tomorrow we are moving on to another theme... which is all about Cleaning. It sounds boring i know... but it will be all about learning how to do wastefree cleaning. Or at least reduced waste cleaning. But for the last one of this weeks theme i have managed to pile a whole heap of ideas into one.

Note: I appologise if its a bit all over the place, this is the second time i have written this post. The first time i had a glitch and lost everything. So here is to take two.

Sustainable September Day Seventeen - find alternative wastefree (or reduced waste) Beverages. 

Soft drinks - If you have a taste for the sweet nectar of soft drinks finding wasteless options is a wonderful environmentally friendly idea. And if you cant find 100% waste free options finding reduced waste options is a wonderful improvement. Apart from going completely soft drink free and surviving on water alone... the best option I've found for soft drinks is a Soda Stream (There are also generic brands of this system available however i have a soda stream so only know about this machine).

These days the most exciting soft drink I, personally, have is Soda Water with fresh lime pieces (so refreshing). But instead of buying the single use plastic bottles of soda water, we bought a Soda Stream so that we could make our own drinks. Now I can get soda water any time I want! Yay! The reusable bottles are plastic (so not perfect) and must be replaced every two years. Whilst the gas bottles are returned and exchanged so that they can be refilled for others in the future (yay! sustainable!). 

My sister (who drinks Diet Cola) and I (soda water), had a couple of drinks so I could show you all how my soda machine works. You can add concentrated syrup which is basically flavouring that comes insmall bottles that can give you about 7-9 Litres of flavoured soda. I like it because it significantly reduces the amount of single use plastics that would come into our house. 

Coffee pods - by now most of you know that I don't drink coffee. But I have heard about the amount of waste coffee pods causes and the damage it does to the environment. I even wrote about coffee pod waste for the last few years so here are the links... 2015 and 2016. These links will help you understand all the information about why coffee pods are less than okay for the environment. 

These days there are lots of coffee pod machines on the market. The coffee pods are a disaster for the environment. However, there are other options to throwing the pods in the bin. One is to recycle them (assuming you are using recyclable coffee pods like Nespresso). A second alternative is to buy reusable metal coffee pods like this one... 

This is what it looks like with its little reusable lid.


This is what it looks like without its little lid on. Its very cute.

I took these photos whilst at the Wasteless Pantry. It looks like an amazing product which only improves with any quality coffee you can fill these little pods with. I don't have a coffee maker with or without pods and I don't drink coffee... So if you have one and use one of these I would love to hear what you think! Good or bad!

Loose Leaf Tea - Better than t-bags is loose leaf teas when it comes to reducing waste. I am a tea lover! I have heaps of loose leaf teas and a tea strainer that I use daily. Even as I write this I am drinking a cup of my favourite decaf tea that I also have in the photo below. 

That is my tea strainer with a Red Green Vanilla tea from T2 (a Roobois with vanilla). It's super yummy and I'm not even sure if it even comes in t-bags. Last year I wrote all about the problems with tea bags so I'll link that HERE. Needless to say loose leaf teas are better and can be easily composted, whilst many t-bags contain plastic so are not compostable.

If you want to buy without even the packaging from places like T2, bulk stores like The Wasteless Pantry have tea that you can purchase package free. I have been eyeing off their Chocolate Roobois tea. If i didnt already have half a cupboard of teas to work my way through, I would definetly get some.

But that least me on to another idea from last year.

Kettle filling - An idea of how to save money, energy and water is to only heat your kettle with just as much you actually need. This can be as simple as filling the mugs you want to use with cold water and then pouring that water into the kettle so you fill it with only how much water you use. I did a blog post on this last year also. You can check that out HERE. 

ACTIVITY: Upcycle old drinking containers.

For ideas on what to do with old beverage containers check out this short video of 4 ideas of what to do with milk containers.

For several more ideas and hacks... check out this awesome collection of 25 ideas of what to do with a range of drinking containers (usually soda/cola/pop/soft drink bottles).

This is a reminder to use what you have in your house already for this, instead of going out and purchasing more to make these crafts/hacks. I say this because any plastic item that is in an altered state (like it has been cut up) often cannot be recycled. So if you do choose to use these ideas think about how you can use the WHOLE bottle not just a part of it, because the left over bits will end up in landfill.

I hope this finds you all well.
Daena x

Sustainable September 2015 - Day Six

Well, Well, Well, fancy meeting you here! hehehe. Thank you for coming back again! :)

 How did you go with yesterdays tea substitution? Did you get some beautiful loose leaf tea? Isn't it yummy?

How do you wake up in the mornings? Is it with Coffee? a grudge at the alarm clock? or is it some other way? Weirdly this morning I woke up (on a morning I was allowed to sleep in) and woke up at 6.30am and got up and did some yoga. Yes, that is traditionally unusual for me. Awesomely I had so much energy this morning that I couldn't stay in bed. So I got up in my PJs and did some stretching, followed by yoga. I went dancing last night, so was rather sore this morning from overdoing it. It was totally worth it last night though.

The reason why I ask about how you woke up this morning is because a large number of the population wakes up with coffee! Since I suffered from Insomnia, I had to give up coffee, coke/cola and some strong caffeinated teas (I know... so not fair!). Giving caffeine up did help with the insomnia, and yet I sometimes miss how comforting a good cup of coffee used to be.

What type of coffee do you drink? Freshly ground? Barista coffee? Coffee bags? Instant Coffee in a jar? Single Serve Packet Instant coffee? Coffee Pods?

Did you know that some types of coffee are better for the environment that others? Generally how they are packaged is a good indicator of "good" or "bad" coffee products.

For example, the most recent phenomenon of Coffee pods has caused a huge increase in rubbish. Most pods are not recyclable and just end up in landfill. The Conversation (a news site I frequent) last year reported on the increase of coffee pods and their damage to the environment. In the article titled "What our love affair with coffee pods reveals about our value",  It talks about how we are lulled into a false sense of security about the environmental cost of pods.. It also states that in 2013 "independent consumer group Choice reported that Nespresso had sold an estimated 28 billion capsules worldwide – about 28 million kilograms of aluminium, much of which may be sitting in landfill, with recycling figures not made public." (The Conversation, 2015).

 Thomas Guignard/Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA (Photo taken from the above article).

Single serve packet coffees are not much better. Plastic wrappers of single serve coffee end up in landfill like the pods do.

So it is pretty simple to see why the Sustainable September idea for being kind to the planet is...

September 6: Change coffee sachets or coffee pods to bulk coffee beans and grind them yourself or start using a coffee plunger and bulk coffee. 

It is a matter of thinking before you buy. What is the best for me? What is the best for the environment? Then you can find a middle ground. I know it is not always easy to just jump straight into grinding your own coffee beans or trading your coffee pods machine in for a plunger. So do what you can. 

Every time we make a change, it impacts the world around us. Its part of the reason i am doing this. Changing the world around me... and changing the world around us all, one little thing at a time.

KINDNESS IDEA: Make a plunger of coffee and share it with a neighbour, friend or colleague.

KINDNESS IDEA 2: Pay for a Suspended Coffee at your favourite Coffee Shop. Don't know what a suspended coffee is? "A suspended coffee is the advance purchase of a cup of coffee for someone who needs it, no matter why. But it really is about so much more than the coffee. It can provide physical comfort, conversation, a smile or even a laugh, and a sense of belonging." Check out suspendedcoffees.com for more information.

I hope this finds you all well, and happily caffeinated! :) 

Much love to you all, 

Daena x

PS. If you are a religious person, there are some Sustainable September resources that a good friend of mine created for Churches (specifically for the Uniting Church of Australia - Synod of Western
Australia) so if you want to add some environmentally focused points to your worship services, that check it out here.