Plastic Free Spirit

Create a more authentic + low waste life

Blog

The veg patch diaries, part one: how to make a compost bin (with photos)

By Leave a Comment

Series of polaroid-style photos: coffee mugs, Anya the dog, and cherry tomatoes, with the legend: 'The veg patch diaries'

Good compost is magical stuff.

– Alys Fowler

When you start to grow your own vegetables, a compost bin becomes essential. But how do you begin? Should you buy something expensive, or make one from the stuff you’ve got lying around? Here’s my quick guide.

1. Pick your spot.

If you can, make sure your compost bin will get lots of sun and rain. You’ll need easy access to it so that you can turn it from time to time. And it should be near your veg patch so that you can use your lovely compost when you need it.

It’s also important to put your bin directly on the soil so that it can drain and worms can help it along. If you can’t do this, for example if you have a courtyard or patio, put a layer of soil from your garden in the bottom before you add anything else.

Untouched veg plot surrounded by trees
The veg patch: before photo!

2. Don’t bother with fancy materials. This is a bin for your rotten vegetables.

We decided to make our compost bin out of old pallets. They’re easy to source from companies that no longer need them. They’re a free, natural, waste material and we thought we should upcycle them. Yay!

Don’t use chemically-treated pallets. We looked for the HT stamp, which shows that our pallets are heat-treated and safe to use. Here’s a guide to using pallets.

Close-up of pallet showing the HT stamp

3. Get help if you can.

Everything’s better with friends. Here’s one of our helpers, hard at work.

4. Saw one of your pallets in half, and double-up on hinges so that you can make two doors.

You’ll want to be able to access your lovely compost from the bottom, while the top of your heap is still mulching down.

5. Start making your compost!

Here’s what you can add:

  • Food scraps, including:
    • Vegetable peelings
    • Fruit
    • Coffee grounds and tea leaves
    • Crushed egg shells
  • Autumn leaves
  • Plant prunings
  • Grass clippings (but not too much!)
  • Plain cardboard and paper (torn up or shredded)
  • Ash from your fire
  • Sawdust and fine, untreated wood scraps
  • Well-rotted wood

What not to add:

  • Invasive weeds (bramble, ivy, bindweed, dandelion)
  • Bulbs e.g. bluebells, daffodils
  • Meat, bones and dairy foods
  • Diseased plant matter
  • Treated wood
  • Lots of woody plants (sage, rosemary, rose etc.)

Have you tried growing your own vegetables, upcycling pallets or making compost? Let me know!

What the Lost Vikings of Greenland can teach us about climate catastrophe – and how to survive dumb human nature in these critical times

By Leave a Comment

The Greenland Vikings thrived for around 350 years. But when emissary Ivar Bårdsson checked in on them in 1340 he found a ghost town: not a single member of the settlement remained and the cattle were roaming free.

Why were the Vikings in Greenland?

The Vikings were famous explorers, and, just over a thousand years ago, they settled in Greenland. Back then, the conditions were much the same as they were used to back home. The Vikings made a good show of life in Greenland for several centuries. They farmed, fished, and built churches. But then something went drastically wrong.

What happened to the Lost Vikings?

The Greenland Vikings’ fate has long been a mystery, but modern archaeology has shed light on what may have happened. Turns out, a cross between climate change and poor choices brought about catastrophe for the Vikings in Greenland – sound familiar?

I think this is such a fascinating story, and so relevant. The Greenland Vikings – like us – were facing big changes and they needed to adapt. Perhaps it was their failure to change that ultimately killed them.

Archaeologists picking through the ruins unearthed a tale of starvation and death in the abandoned settlement.

The bones of a newborn calf and a hunting dog, discovered in a kitchen and covered in knife marks, show that the people were so starved and desperate that they butchered the very animals that would have been vital to the future of a thriving community.

Fossilised flies are another clue. In the early days, the cold-loving, carrion-eating flies lived in the larder. Later, these flies moved into the living spaces and bedrooms – proving to today’s clever scientists that the famished Vikings died in their beds.

Adapt or die: what doomed the Vikings in Greenland

A combination of factors caused these once thriving people to die out and vanish:

  1. The weather was good at first, but it got gradually colder. Greenland was hit by a small ice age (we know this from the Vikings’ tooth enamel). Despite this, the Vikings refused to adopt the unfashionable animal skins that their neighbouring Inuits wore. Yep, that’s right. Bad fashion had a hand in killing the stubborn Greenland Vikings.
  2. Hay crops began to fail (fossilised beetles tell us as much), leaving the cattle to starve. The Vikings had also over-grazed the land, letting their cattle diminish the ground cover and native plants. Harsh winds blew away the delicate layer of soil and the land was no longer fertile. Soil erosion affects many countries today.
  3. Despite these setbacks, they kept trying to raise cattle and sheep as they had always done. With nearly 700 years of hindsight, it’s easy to see that they should have let go of their traditions and adapted to the new conditions loooooong before the shhh hit the fan. But they were stuck in their ways.
  4. Perhaps most stupidly of all, the hungry Vikings refused to learn from their hunting, fishing neighbours, the Inuits. Inuits had been in Greenland for less time, but they used their superb survival skills to ride out the global cooling. Archaeologists believe that the Church banned the Vikings from hobnobbing with the heathen Inuits.

The Vikings went hungry, while the Inuit had more food than they could eat.

– The Lost Vikings

What can we learn from the Greenland Vikings?

These people had an environmentally expensive way of life. While fish, seal, walrus, polar bear and whale (the staple diet of the Inuit) were abundant, the Vikings were watching their cattle stocks dwindle on barren grassland, and doing nothing about it.

They quickly chopped down what little woodland they had (mostly to build grand churches), which meant they had to import wood – at great cost – from back home. They also sent expensive tithes back to the church, and buried one of their bishops with a mountain of gold that might have been better spent on oh… say… food.

According to recent archaeological evidence, they did eat wild foods. But it seems that they adapted too late. While the Vikings were getting sick and dying young, the Inuit were thriving. From what we can tell, the Vikings’ fundamental beliefs stopped them from integrating with their well-fed neighbours and getting the low-down on survival in Greenland – Inuit style.

Now, I’m not saying we should all don caribou suits and become hunter gatherers (though I know lots of you will totally be into that).

But we do know we need to change. The word from the experts is that we need to eat a lot less meat, cut down our commutes, shop organic, and stop with the plastic already. A few of our firmly-held beliefs and traditions are downright threatening to our way of life.

Modern farming methods deplete soil nutrients (and the nutrients in our food) and contribute to the loss of native plants and insects. Large cattle stocks also produce methane, a greenhouse gas. Deforestation leads to soil erosion. Like the Vikings, we need to change how we eat, to produce sustainable food that nourishes us without depleting the environment around us and creating tons of waste.

It’s time to change. Adapt or die; don’t be a Greenland Viking.

Sources

My plastic-free journey – the story so far

By Leave a Comment

Back in the summer when I stumbled on my first zero waste shop, we were living a pretty normal life – consuming plastic toothbrushes and disposable razors, buying packaged food from the supermarket. I also had a long commute that was racking up my carbon footprint to seven people’s worth of car journeys a year – even though I have a small, low-emission car.

At first, I thought it would be easy to go plastic-free – and I also thought I could bring down my carbon footprint with a host of other lifestyle changes while I was at it. I’d shop locally, eat a plant-based diet, drive less, replace wasteful household items with plastic-free alternatives, and basically *go eco* overnight 🙂

We already use natural products – toothpaste, shampoo, soap, washing up liquid… so at least we had some kind of head-start. Even so, completely changing our lifestyle overnight wasn’t as easy as I had thought.

At first it was downright depressing just how difficult everything was. I couldn’t find a shampoo, toothpaste or deodorant that worked, so I was going to work with bad hair, coffee breath and rashes under my (still smelly) armpits. This did not make me happy.

I also found that I’m not really tolerant of high-carb diets – I was bloated, sluggish and perpetually hungry.

I realised that this kind of change has to be (no pun intended) sustainable. You can’t do it overnight without decimating your bank balance and your sanity.

The trouble was, I was trying to do everything at once, instead of getting one thing nailed at a time. I was trying product after expensive product, and I resented paying more for things that worked less well.

I felt like I was paying a green tax.

Now, a few months on, things are a lot easier. We’ve managed to source almost everything we need without plastic, and we’re working on the rest. Knowing where to go helps, even if it’s not always easy to get to 8 or 9 different places for groceries every week.

We’re still not completely plastic-free, but we’ve taken some important steps.

Here’s what we’ve achieved so far:

1. We’re buying a lot less plastic, and producing a lot less waste

We’ve halved the contents of our recycling bin every week, and we now produce a lot less waste for landfill each week – enough to fill about half a carrier bag. There’s still a long way to go, but hey, it’s a start.

Among the first things we bought were reusable coffee mugs, and we use them everyday. We also stopped buying bottled water and carrier bags. It’s just a case of getting organised before we leave the house.

2. We’ve built good relationships with local stores

Our butcher knows the drill when we come in – the meat goes into an old Jacob’s crackers tub – the biggest plastic tub we have. We just wash this and reuse it next time. We’ve also bought bacon in a paper bag when we’ve forgotten our tubs. D’you know what? It was absolutely fine.

We wrap meat in greaseproof paper and secure it with string if we want to store it in the freezer, or we wash and reuse a salad bag.

3. Shops are becoming more aware of our journey

Lovely shopkeepers and staff have been thinking of alternatives for us – and all the other customers who also want to shop plastic-free (we’re not the only ones!).

At the organic farm shop, they tell us if they’re midway through bagging up salad or green leaves (these are among the hardest things to find loose, as the leaves tend to wilt) so that we can stock up. They’ve sent me into the polytunnel to pick my own basil, and put organic meat aside for us in our own tubs until we came to collect.

4. We’ve changed a lot of our habits

We’re using wood for heating more often than gas. Last winter our gas bill was about £150 a month (gas bottles – not mains). This year, we’re being more mindful, avoiding central heating, wearing more jumpers, and making good use of the log-burner. A huge pile of wood cost us £70.

We’re hardly shopping at the supermarket. Virtually all our food comes from local shops – farm shops, butchers, health food stores, a zero waste market stall and zero waste shops, with some online shopping. Worthwhyle is our favourite online store.

We now use solid shampoo, wooden toothbrushes, and low-waste toothpaste. We’re making more of an effort than ever before to avoid buying plastic. I have a safety razor, which I love, and I’ve found a product that means I never have to buy those awful synthetic washing up sponges (or their ineffectual recycled counterparts) again.

If we do buy plastic, we try to reuse it. I’ve been washing salad bags and pegging them up to dry (I also peg out the muslin I use to strain almond milk, and Jim hangs herbs up to dry so that he can make his own herbal remedies). This way, we gain reusable bags for sandwiches, leftovers or freezer storage.

I dabble with henna, and I’ve switched from single-use cellophane cones to reusable syringes. I also wash and reuse the latex gloves I need to keep the henna from getting all over my hands when I’m creating my designs.

5. Finally – and most importantly – we’re moving!

Although we’ll be sad to leave our little cottage, we’ve found another place that cuts my commute in half, and I’ve already found a lift-share buddy. I can’t tell you what it’s going to mean to me to get rid of my 3-hour daily commute. It’s been a ridiculous drain on my time and resources, and a source of climate guilt (is that a thing?). Now, I’ll have more time to meal-plan, shop-wisely, and focus on this blog.

What’s next?

Moving house will be an opportunity to detox from plastic even more. One of the next steps I want to take is to wash and dry any unavoidable plastics (such as food packets and film) and stuff them into plastic bottles to form eco bricks.

I also want to keep finding great alternatives. As each thing runs out, we replace it with a plastic-free version. You can read about everything I recommend in the reviews section of the blog.

We need to find a good source of fish, berries (I miss you, fruity smoothies!) and snacks like crisps. Our friends have asked us to help set up a communal veg patch on their land – one that can feed both families, so we’ll be growing our own veg soon.

We’re eating less meat and fish, but this is something I hope to work more on in the future. To start, I’m getting my digestion in order so that I can tolerate more pulses, lentils and grains.

Finally, I’m trying to lead a more authentic, low waste life. It’s probably never going to be perfect. But spending more time in nature helps. Being with friends and family reminds me what’s important.

I try to be patient when things aren’t working – and persist.

My advice? Honour the seasons. Don’t beat yourself up when it goes wrong. Forgive. Eat well. Spend more time talking and less time scrolling. And find joy in simple things, like eco washing up sponges (honestly, I’ve been looking for years) and dry shampoo that works. 

How’s your plastic free journey going? What alternatives have you found? Let me know in the comments below, email me, or find me on social media. I’d love to hear from you.