Less Waste Archives - Page 2 of 2

War on Waste: Alfalfa House meets Caroline Brakewell

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” – Margaret Mead

Our Monthly Challenge: Be The Change

There is always more to do as the War on Waste continues.. in our homes, our neighbourhood and our community. The sharing of ideas, identifying and problem solving what’s within our reach, is a great place to start. Find a local campaign and help out. Involve our children, our neighbours, our local business owners and workplaces and begin by asking the simple question, “What can I do to contribute to the War on Waste?”

We spoke to volunteer and Alfalfa House member, Caroline Brakewell to find out how she’s contributing.

Let’s Get To Know…

Name: Caroline Brakewell
Everyone knows her as: C
Star sign: Libra. Unbalanced!
What makes you happy? My toddler. World peace.
What do you do for work? Health coach, chef, mamma and Marketing Director at Alfalfa House.
What do you do for fun? Travel. Dip in the ocean and nature. Hang with friends.

How long have you been a member? Around a year

What made you join Alfalfa House?
I was introduced by a friend who’s been a member for years. I love the philosophy of not for profit and waste reduction. Plus the great discount on food from some of Australia’s best suppliers and knowing I’m supporting them.

What’s the main products you buy at Alfalfa?
Everything. I’m addicted to the chocolate coated macadamia nuts and turmeric paste. Knowing I’m feeding my daughter pesticide-free produce is a big pull for me.

What was the catalyst to you becoming an eco warrior?
I’ve been pretty conscious since my 20s but I think stats like plastic particles taking over the number of fish in the ocean was too alarming to ignore, so I tightened up much more.

Name 3 things you recycle?
Hard plastic, cardboard & clothing

Name 2 things you reuse?
Glass and old containers for shopping at farmers’ markets and at Alfalfa House.

Name 1 item you have repurposed?
Clothes. I very rarely buy new ones and give away mine to my Goddaughter in Scotland.

Was it hard to start?
It’s been a gradual process that started many years ago when I was living in London and I’d refuse to use plastic bags. I educated myself and made more changes where I could.

Any tips on organisation skills to reuse or recycle?
Have my bags, jars and containers packed and ready every time I leave home. Use the carriage on my pram to store shopping in.

What is that one piece of waste that irks you?
Plastic wrapped fruit in supermarkets. Supermarkets full stop.

Who in your circle do you admire their war on waste? And why?
All of the speakers and presentations at our recent open day. All doing their bit whilst educating others to create a ripple effect in our communities.

What’s your favourite War on Waste campaign that you’ve heard of?
I think the Alfalfa House Zero Waste philosophy, which has been around since 1981 is in perfect alignment with the War on Waste campaign.

What is your one piece of advice for someone who is thinking about becoming an eco-warrior but doesn’t know where to start?
Start somewhere. Refuse plastic bags. Encourage your family to do the same. Look at what you can reuse. Ask if you really need that new dress when you can buy second hand.

Going zero waste

Ruby Pandolfi is an arts and law student at UNSW and has been volunteering at Alfalfa House for a year. She’s also the volunteer coordinator at AYCC – Australian Youth Climate Coalition. Here she tells us about her journey to go zero waste.

If you are interested in zero waste and want to learn how you can do it, come you our open day on May 26.

In Australia alone, one million take away cups end up in landfill every minute. Right now, there are around 46,000 pieces of plastic in every square mile of ocean, and each year enough plastic is thrown away by us humans to circle the earth four times.

I’ve always thought of myself as someone who really really cares about the environment. I cared about the big issues: solar energy and renewables over fossil fuels, global warming, sea level rise, deforestation, overfishing, species extinction… the list goes on! And don’t get me wrong, I still 100% do. But I never consciously thought about the significance of my own individual acts, and their connection to the health of our planet. I would bring my own shopping bags to Woolies, but wouldn’t hesitate to buy my brown rice pasta in plastic packaging, my apples packaged in packs of six, or all my fruit and veg in plastic bags.

Gradually, I started to realise how crazy it is that something we use for 10 minutes to eat our lunch with, like a plastic fork and knife, will last on the earth for hundreds and hundreds of years after we die. Single use and disposable plastics like bottles, cutlery, takeaway containers, bags, coffee cups, straws, milk cartons etc, have become so normal to us in our daily lives that it seemed almost impossible to me that we could ever find a way to live plastic free.

But, as I began learning more and more about how common plastic was in my own life, I started to become aware of the choices that I had the power to make, which could have a pretty significant impact on decreasing my environmental footprint. I shifted my mindset from thinking that my own individual actions couldn’t possibly make THAT big of an impact on our earth, to knowing that everything we do has some significance – and that’s how I discovered zero waste!

Living a ‘zero waste’ lifestyle basically means trying to limit the amount of waste we produce as consumers. This includes:

reducing food packaging
saying no to disposable plastics
composting old food scraps
making your own consumables, such bathroom products to limit product packaging
reusing reusing reusing

After discovering this amazing but slightly intimidating concept, I quickly found that living a zero waste lifestyle wasn’t as hard as I thought if its broken up into small, achievable steps.

I started to buy all my food like grains, nuts, seeds, pastas and beans in bulk at Alfalfa House and invested in a set of reusable produce bags. I stopped buying from Woolies and Coles and bought fruit and veg loose from markets and co-ops instead. I started composting all my food scraps. Gradually, I also began to make my own bathroom products like toothpaste (it’s surprisingly easy!). I stopped using takeaway containers and bought my own reusable cutlery with me when I went out to eat.

But I still have a long way to go, and I’m not perfect by any stretch of the imagination! I still haven’t found a way to buy frozen blueberries for making smoothies without plastic packaging, or any store that sells tofu in bulk. I’ve found that sometimes we do slip up – we find ourselves in a situation where we’ve forgotten our water bottle or our reusable cutlery, and that’s totally okay. What counts is being conscious and aware of our choices and making the right ones wherever possible.

Since going zero waste I’ve become more mindful; more mindful of what I buy, what I don’t buy, where I buy it, how I store things, etc. I really believe that if everyone was more conscious about their consumption of things like disposable plastics, it would change the way we consume. This small paradigm shift would end up having big impacts on rubbish in landfill, biodiversity killed by plastic pollution and the overall state of our environment.

And it’s definitely not easy either. It takes some thinking ahead and preparation. And a lot of people won’t understand what you’re doing or why. Someone remarked to me a couple of months ago that we should be focusing on the bigger things like lobbying for fossil fuel divestment and renewables instead of wasting our time on something that won’t make much of a difference. But we have to consider both approaches; when people dismiss little acts, I feel they are missing a big opportunity. This cemented my view that we can’t discount the small things; they all add up in the end whether we realise it or not.

Going zero waste allows me to live my values and my truth; it’s about being conscious and compassionate by taking responsibility for the health of our environment. And it’s something that everyone can do. It may seem daunting at first, but when you break it down into little steps, you realise that it really is super achievable.

zzz-Catering

The plastic free challenge

We challenge you to refuse single-use plastic for a whole month. Go on – give it a go! You won’t be alone as thousands of other people from over 70 countries are also giving a plastic free lifestyle a go. The planet will thank you…and so will we.

The Age Of Plastic

Since its invention in the early 1900s, plastic has become such an integral part of the way we live that we hardly realise it’s there – in our phones, cars, clothes, books, kitchen appliances… the list goes on. Its durability and potential to be moulded into any shape imaginable has truly made it the material of our time.

In many cases we are unable to avoid buying it even if we try. However, there is one blindingly obvious way in which we can avoid buying it, and that is to avoid unnecessary plastic packaging.

Why should we avoid using Plastic?

It is estimated that more than 297 million tonnes of plastic was consumed worldwide in 2015 – that’s more than the weight of all people on earth combined!

If we break that down we find that 500 billion single-use plastic bags are made each year (that’s roughly 150 bags for every person on the planet), and more than 100 million plastic bottles are used worldwide every single day. Considering that a plastic bottle can take anywhere between 450 and 1000 years to decompose, this presents a monumental problem.

As you read this blog there are 269,000 tonnes of plastic floating on the surface of our oceans killing our beautiful birds and marine life, and almost the same amount in undetectable microfibres suffocating our sea floors. More locally you can see the garbage floating in our rivers and harbours, and the litter on our streets. Not to mention the offgassing we breathe in or eat through our plastic covered food.

So what can we do when plastic is everywhere?

As consumers we are the most powerful force in making change a reality. There are many ways in which we can reduce our plastic consumption and help fight plastic pollution that are simple, easy and often more affordable.

Here are a few easy tips for saying no to plastic:

say no to drinking straws and disposable cutlery. It’s amazing how often we accept these thing without noticing, then just throw them in the bin!
if you see plastic on the street, pick it up and put it in the nearest bin – you will look much cooler than the person who dropped it there.
Say no to single-use plastic bags as often as you can. If each Australian family used 1 plastic bag less each week that would be 253 million bags less each year!
avoid buying pre-bottled water by changing your mental list when you leave the house to: “Keys, wallet, phone, water bottle…”

Take a selfie!

Why not have a little fun while you’re at it by joining us at Alfalfa House in taking a Plastic Free Challenge Water Bottle Selfie!

Simply take a fun photo of you with your reusable water bottle and post it to facebook or instagram with a caption saying: “I’m taking @thePlasticFreeChallenge [be sure it’s a link], how about you?”

Keep your eye out for your friends here at Alfalfa House, we will have our silly selfies proudly up there too!

More information

You can find out more about the Plastic Free Challenge at http://www.plasticfreechallenge.org/

For more information about issues surrounding plastic consumption and pollution, try these links:

1 2

Posts navigation