Make an apron from a couch (not a cow)

Tyson spends a lot of time in his shed and wanted a decent work apron.

After pricing both pre-made aprons and commercially available leather, it was looking like an expensive project. But then our neighbourhood had bulk waste and the problem was solved.

Given the number of leather couches we have seen on verges in the past six months, it seems there is at present a cultural trend to chuck them out. Perhaps the leather is irredeemably cracked or worn - but almost always only on the front. The back is often nearly two square metres of undamaged leather.

This provided all the leather Tyson needed to craft himself a beautiful apron, complete with clips salvaged from an old back pack.

Initial Time: Cutting leather from the couch down the road was a lot quicker than getting to a shop to purchase new material. Making a hand-crafted apron took many days.

Initial Cost: Two reels of heavy-duty thread and one pack of rivets (approx $15)

Ongoing time or cost commitment: Zero (and a LOT cheaper than buying new leather!)

Impact: Lets be honest - this action was motivated by convenience and finance, along with our commitment to recycle/ upcycle wherever possible. I won't bore you again with the figures about how much waste Australians make, but this took a big piece of leather out of landfill.

I have since done a little investigation into the environmental impacts of leather production and it seems this choice was also 'green' on several other counts. (As I am not ethically opposed to the killing of animals per se, this is not one of those counts for me, but it needs a mention as I know it is a deal-breaker for many others)

Firstly, tanning of leather involves toxic chemicals. I haven't found a solid source explaining what chemicals are used, but various (anti-leather) sites suggest formaldehyde, azocolorants, pentachlorophenol, lead, chromium, cyanide, arsenic, sodium sulfide, sodium hydroxide, sodium hydrosulfite and dimethyl amine (along with several other scary sounding compounds that when I looked them up turned out to not be toxic). Several of these are bioaccumulative heavy metals, building up in the bodies of tannery workers, the land on which tanneries are sited and the waterways that tanneries feed into. At the lower end of health concerns are skin and respiratory complaints (and that tanneries smell really bad); at the higher end are risks of blindness and up to 50% higher rates of cancer.

Then there re human rights concerns about the conditions that workers are under while producing leather - much of which reportedly comes from Bangladesh, where protections for workers are acknowledged to be poor. Many leather workers are children.

There are also concerns about excessive water use, especially when linked to also polluting waste water in ways that do not allow it to return safely to the ecosystem.

Cattle raising brings its own sustainability concerns (It should be noted that this relates particularly to more intensive forms of farming, which are less common in Australia's cattle industry, although animal rights groups believe the use of feedlots is on the increase here also). And although leather is a by-product of meat production, it is not a waste product. As meat consumption is in decline while leather consumption is increasing, it is likely at some point animals will be raised primarily for their skins rather than their meat.

There are also environmental concerns with faux leather, not least being its use of petrochemicals. Also, as it generally wears much quicker than leather, it becomes waste and needs replacing more regularly than leather products.

Both real and faux leather have the perpetual issues of energy use and pollution in production, transport, packaging and retail.

When I searched for 'recycled leather' I found either Pinterist craft ideas for reusing scraps, or options for commercially pulping scrap leather to roll into a new semi-leather product. All good, but meanwhile great big pieces of good leather are going into the bin with each bulk waste collection, as couch after couch is crushed and carried away. Get out there with your Stanley knives people and rescue some leather*!
(*from discarded couches that are clearly too worn out to be reused as couches)

Links:

A whole website dedicated to sustainable leather - talking chemicals, supply chains, waste, etc

Human Rights Watch report on tanneries in Bangladesh

Guardian article discussing environmental impact of leather vs faux leather

Shop Ethical Guide on issues in leather (although mostly quoting straight from PETA website)

RSPCA stance on leather

Someone else's blog considering these issues

Info for businesses wanting to recycle leather

Gumboot pots and Paper chains

Want to make your house pretty without consuming more, find creative activities for children that don't involve buying more, and/or re-use some of the stuff around your house that is no longer wanted? Here are two ideas that do all three.

Gumboots! There are so many cool kids' ones around but, no matter how funky, they still wear out or (if you're lucky) kids grow out of them. What to do with all that rubber-plastic prettiness?

A few spring flower punnets and an hour of working together and we have had these decorating our entrance for the last two months.

Although we did buy potting mix, more than half the soil was made up of our own compost. (We have three compost tumblers and our guinea pigs contribute substantially to this enterprise!)

Five of these six gumboots drained sufficiently without any help; the sixth needed a couple of holes added. Summer has nearly killed them off now and direct sun has faded the gumboots significantly, but we may get second season out of them and meanwhile, it has been a lot more fun than just binning them.

Your children might not rip through gumboots at quite the rate we do, but if you have anyone small in your house you are certain to have a pile of kids' artwork mounting up. And old posters. Calendars. Wrapping paper. (Most people I suppose have junk mail or magazines, but we don't receive them here)

Eva got inspired to make paper chains for Christmas and it was a great use for the build-up of paper.

Because they were using their own old artworks and posters they were willing to 'repurpose' things that I had not been allowed to throw away (sneaky, huh?!).

Note the hole-punching above. If you have someone who loves hole-punching, its not a bad way to add interest to strips from old calendars while keeping those hole-punching-hands from less productive outcomes.

They both loved making the chains and I am happy to have our living room decorated by their creativity and enthusiasm.

Initial Time: Both of these activities took about an hour. That was part of the point. We have no TV and its school holidays again. Creative, engaging, sustainable activities are what we need plenty of here. (I last wrote specifically about this when Eva was quite small but if you search the labels below for 'free kids activities' there are also other places it has come up as she has got bigger)

Initial Cost: Gumboot pots: about $30 for seedlings and a bag of potting mix; Paper chains: a couple of dollars for a big box of staples.

Ongoing time or cost commitment: We will eventually have to take both these things down and they will ultimately end up in the recycling (chains) or the general rubbish (boots).

Impact: It is impossible to really calculate an impact for these activities and, to be honest, it would probably be quite small anyway. But both are little bits of a bigger picture: finding ways to reuse everything until it really is beyond use, rather than chucking it out after its first purpose; avoiding buying stuff to meet a need (and considering whether it is in fact a need at all); helping children to be creative; celebrating colour and beauty and natural things; finding the quality in our own creative effort rather than needing a professional or 'perfect' outcome (often with associated waste) in order to be happy; sharing activities together and working collaboratively on a combined project.

Special birthdays

When Tyson turned forty in June we wanted to celebrate him well, without massively increasing our footprint. 

The main agenda was to gather people together and enjoy each other, with good food. But here are a few things that also had an eye to our sustainability commitments:

We asked for gifts of sustainability actions in lieu of presents, and were touched by how many friends offered Tyson some idea of what they are doing to live within our earth's means. Some made new commitments; others reiterated choices already made. I was particularly moved by one (slightly) older friend who gifted to Tyson her decision to make more use of public transport, along with an invitation to ask her how it was going and an admission that the idea of using public transport scared her a bit. The traditional photo board included space for people to add notes about their sustainable choices.

Cooking one big roast dinner for sixty people used less energy than all those households cooking their own roast dinners at home (and was more fun!). We used about 15kWh of energy for cooking; a household roast dinner takes around 2kWh. The meat was free-range pork.

We borrowed cutlery and crockery from Tyson's parents to reduce our use of disposable items. We still have a pile of disposable plates, cups and cutlery in the cupboard from before we really got moving on this sustainability journey, some of which have been reused and returned to the cupboard several times, and these bumped up the numbers, along with some compostable plates. (I have my doubts about how they compost, though - I tore them into quarters and soaked them in water for a week and they were showing no signs of breaking down or being suitable for our compost any time soon!) Despite me encouraging guests to leave the dishes for us to run through the dishwasher in big loads the next day, a happy team got going in the kitchen and cleaned them all for us. They really did seem to be having a great time in there. Perhaps for some this was their sustainability 'gift', but most I think just enjoyed talking and laughing while working together.

We minimised our use of gladwrap and alfoil. So often at parties or events these are used to cover food for quite short periods of time. Instead, we used baking trays to cover salads.

We labelled our bins and encouraged people to separate out compost, recycling and genuine rubbish.

 

Eva made her own decorations. We also re-used the cloth bunting made for us by a friend last year, and ran one string of LED fairy lights.

Cards were home-made. The two gifts we did purchase were wrapped in cloth, one from each of the children. (We are not scrooges; its important our kids experience both giving and receiving. We encouraged them to be involved in choosing gifts that suited Tyson, to help them learn to think of someone other than themselves) The cordless drill set in particular will be put to use to facilitate many future projects along our sustainability journey.

Two weeks later my dad turned eighty, on the opposite side of the country. We celebrated by all my siblings (five of us) gathering, along with spouses and children, to share a holiday in the Grampians with my parents. The emphasis, again, was good time together. Bushwalking. Eating. Talking. Cuppas. A visit to the farm where Dad grew up. Grandkids' shenanigans. Reading books. Spotting wildlife. My gift was to arrange for my sisters and I to sing a couple of songs for Dad.

However, as we don't live near each other (not even all in the same country) a very great amount of fuel was used to bring us together. Would we have had less environmental impact if we had all sent my dad expensive presents instead? Maybe. But we would not have celebrated him well, and we would not have modeled for our children that people are always, always more important than stuff. 

Happy birthday to two of the finest men in my life.  

Some of the sustainability actions Tyson was gifted:

And finally from our small man, a gift not of sustainable actions but of hope:

Reusable barrier bags

Do you know what a 'barrier bag' is?

You might not be familiar with the terminology, but chances are you are very familiar with the item: the single-use lightweight plastic bags that are available on rolls when you buy fruit and veg, or whole foods, so your apples and potatoes don't get in a muddle in the trolley.

I have for some years now tried not to use these bags, keeping items loose wherever practical. However, while it might be OK to have a few onions rolling around, soft things like stone fruit or small things like almonds really need something to contain them.

For my birthday last month, my caring and ever-thoughtful mother-in-law made me a set of cloth barrier bags. They are a simple rectangle, in various sizes, with a ribbon draw-string. The fabric is silk voile (lace curtaining) which means the checkout staff can see what is in each bag. 

So our May commitment is to remember to use them! We also intend to use paper bags to cover any excess need, to be added to compost when they become unusable. Fruit and veg shops generally provide paper bags for mushrooms, and they can easily be adapted for other uses. The wonderful Kakulus Sister in Fremantle provides them for their dry goods in general, which gave me the idea.

We also use these bags for storing some fruit and veg in the fridge, which so far seems to be working fine. There will be a few things that are very powdery for which we will have to use paper, as I think flour or the like would not quite be contained.

Initial Time: For me, zero. I'm not sure how long it took Tyson's mum to make them. She's very good at sewing, but even if you were less skilled it is a simple project. 

Initial Cost: For me, zero. To make yourself: simple ribbons generally cost $3-$5 a metre, although they also seem to turn up on all sorts of things, so if you are not picky about making them match you can probably find some around the house. Or use string. Wool. Old shoelaces. Whatever you can salvage. Fabric prices vary widely, but at say $10/metre your bags would cost about $1 each.

Ongoing time or cost commitment: Remembering to take them and use them. They are stored with our cloth shopping bags, so in theory this is easy, but we are taking a while to get into the groove. Occasionally they need to be washed after use (mostly not). When empty, they need to be returned to their storage place rather than binned. 

Impact: 

Australians use approximately four billion single-use shopping bags a year. The average useful life of those bags is twelve minutes. Around 86% end up in landfill, where even if they are supposedly compostable they do not really break down, due to the highly compacted nature of landfill. Although most people report using plastic bags two or three times before disposing of them, ultimately they still end up in the bin. The remainder end up as litter, choking up our environment and particularly damaging waterways. Marine life is severely impacted by plastic waste. Once the bags begin to deteriorate, they contribute to 'micro plastics' - microscopic plastic fibres that are being found in sea creatures in increasing quantities. Including sea creatures we eat. 

At the other end of the process, producing plastic bags is a polluting process using non-renewable resources. China banned plastic bags in 2008 and it is reported to have saved 1.6 million tonnes of oil the following year.

I estimate that our family uses around 260 barrier bags in a year. There is some environmental cost in producing the cloth bags. Choice has calculated that a green shopping bag needs to be used 23 times before its production footprint is less than the equivalent in plastic. Given that our bags are of polyester fabric, I imagine we need to use them at least 23 times and probably a few more, so we pull ahead after about one year of use. 

While researching to write this post I discovered that a government campaign in 2003-2007 to phase out plastic shopping bags, which I had thought was ongoing, ceased in 2008. Plastic bag use leapt 17% the same year. Some States have gone on alone to regulate against single-use plastic, but not Western Australia. After this election I think I will write to whoever forms government to remind them that quite a lot of people would like those bags banned. If China, Rwanda and Bangladesh can do it, surely we can manage here?

Links/ References:

Discussion paper on phasing out plastic bags in Western Australia (2014)

Choice article discussing options for sustainable shopping bags (2014)

NSW EPA discussion paper on plastic bags (2016)

Children's birthdays

The world of school has brought us into the world of children's birthday parties.

How do we encourage our daughter to celebrate her friends without having to buy more and more stuff? How do we allow her to have her own birthday celebration without expecting mounds of loot as the main event?

Two years ago I wrote about celebrating birthdays when our children turned one and four. At the time, Eva's friends were still from families that we knew, who understand a little of our values around consumption and waste. Now she has many friends whose families we know only to wave to at school pick-up, and I feared we were opening ourselves to a pink plastic mountain of gifts.

Last year our birthday invitations asked people not to bring gifts, explaining that we were trying to help our children learn to value time with friends without receiving any material items. We took blankets, boxes, ropes, pegs, cushions etc to a local park and had a cubby-making afternoon and picnic.

(Of course if talking about Eva's 5th birthday we have to make mention of Grandad's amazing excavator birthday cake. Retired engineers...)

Saying 'no gifts' made last year's guests a bit uncomfortable, although they respected the request. One mum asked me a bit nervously if it was OK if her daughter made a card to give, which told me I'd come across a bit too hard-line about the gifts thing. 

So this year we opted instead to say:

We are trying to reduce our Global footprint and to help our children to ‘consume’ less, and encourage you to consider recycled, home-made or second-hand gifts, or no gift at all.

I was quite unsure about putting this on the invitations, as I did not know most of the families receiving them. However, the response was very positive. One parent thanked me for getting her thinking, and for freeing her up from needing to go and buy something. Another, who had responded by baking biscuits with her daughter as a home-made gift, thanked me for giving her a lovely activity to share with her daughter. Two families had put their heads together and coordinated gifts, so that one gave Eva some pre-loved jewellery and the other a second-hand jewellery box to keep it in.

The unexpected side effect was that there was hardly any packaging. Second hand items have already shed their useless plastic coatings! Although we had said nothing about gift wrapping, nearly everyone either presented gifts in a reusable bag, or with home-made paper. I can only assume they caught the 'vibe' and applied it to their choices for wrapping also. We continue to wrap our own gifts at home in fabric and ribbons, which we use over and over, or use hand-decorated paper (usually recycled, with random old printouts on the inside).

The actual events were mostly free play, without organised party games (which almost always involve buying prizes to distribute). Kids took home a slice of cake but no party bags. We had encouraged Eva to invite a small enough group of school friends so that she could actually enjoy her guests, and this went very well. There was much leaping on the trampoline. We split celebrations up into a number of smaller gatherings, for friends from different parts of our lives, rather than one big gathering. My experience is that bigger gatherings tend towards emphasising consumption rather than quality time, although I'm sure there are exceptions to that. As noted when I wrote about birthdays previously, we avoided single-use items like themed napkins, single-use decorations or disposable plates.

Trail of evidence suggests someone finished off ALL the fairy bread.

When Eva has been invited to other birthday parties I have gone with the social obligation of sending a gift. I try to ensure I don't give any gifts I wouldn't want to receive, applying my own values to gift selection, such as: encouraging open-ended play; reducing consumption; avoiding plastics; reducing packaging. Several times this has been a kids recipe book. Another time we sent a pre-loved game (in good condition). Eva packaged up her dressing gown as birthday gift for her best friend, because she knew he really liked it.

Best friend arrives for Eva's birthday. Excitement levels are high.

Initial Time: Zero time in requesting low-impact gifts; a little time each birthday to think through gifts and other aspects.

Initial Cost: Zero. We save money by keeping birthday stuff small.

However, saving money is not the main intent and aiming to save money on kids birthdays can lead to less sustainable choices: For example, setting a $5 or $10 gift limit (for yourself, or for others coming to your party) is likely to increase the amount of cheap plastic you give (or receive). And it is hard to see how good quality gifts costing $5 could have been produced in ways that ensure everyone in the supply chain received appropriate pay and conditions for their part in the gift getting to us. For this reason I argued for our kindy 'gift from Santa' to the kids last year to not set a cost limit, but rather to ensure the kids were all given books. Its also a reason we didn't do 'party bags' for kids to take home - because they end up full of cheap trinkets that go almost straight into the bin (or just mounds of sugar).

Ongoing time or cost commitment: Its not so much a time or cost commitment, but by being just a little different we mark ourselves into the future with these school families, putting ourselves out there as 'that family'. I hope in a good way, but its impossible to be sure.

Impact: The greatest impact was probably the conversations we started. We also continue to hope that we are modelling for our children and their friends less consumption-oriented ways to live.

I can't find any data on how much waste is generated by birthday parties, or how many birthday presents get thrown in the bin. Australians generate around 44 million tonnes of rubbish each year (almost certainly much more, as these statistics are nine years old, and the amount had doubled in the ten years before that). Even at the 2006 figures, that is about 2 million tonnes of rubbish for each of us. Every single Australian. A little under one third of the total waste is household rubbish - such as birthday party debris and broken plastic toys.

Happy Birthday lovely girl. Our favourite six-year-old.

Links: If you found this helpful, you may also be interested in my past posts about Christmas: practical ideas; changing the questions; giving things away; Baking Day.

Some other people sharing ideas for sustainable kids birthday parties: one two three

A bit of a rant about how obscene the children's birthday party circuit can be.

If you are a Melbourne person, here's a firm that do zero-waste kids' birthday parties with Trash Puppet Making Workshops.

An idea for gifts: online donation organisation that sends half the money to a chosen charity and the other half to your child, for them to buy one meaningful gift. (Another blog I read described a Canadian tradition of having two donation jars at a party instead of gifts - a gold coin in one, going to a charity; a gold coin in the other, going to the child)

Happy Birthday

Last week our 'baby' turned one!

This post is only very loosely in keeping with the theme of the blog, and largely a gratuitous display of photos of my lovely children, especially our delightful one-year-old.

The loose link is: how to celebrate a one-year-old's birthday without stomping great planetary footprints...

A quick scan of the internet suggests 'celebrate' equals 'party' for most people. I only looked at one or two websites guiding the planning of first birthdays to realise we are way out of touch with mainstream culture here.  The average task-list to prepare for a first birthday includes: choosing a theme and colour scheme (that would be what the site selling special-print napkins, paper plates and disposable cups is aiming at, I guess); choosing a guest list; picking a venue; planning a menu; deciding on decorations; preparing games for the bigger kids; Birthday Cake (capital letters please); invitations; scheduling activities; selecting gifts; putting together party bags.

My task-list went something like: What does our boy enjoy? Who will want to celebrate him? How do they enjoy showing that they love him? What does he need (nothing!)? What would be a useful, playful, creative, open-ended addition to our toy collection that he might play with many times in many ways?

It seemed most important to ensure Eva was able to feel his birthday was appropriately marked, and for her to see in how we celebrated him the way we value each member of our family. It was also important to let her give him something that she was involved in choosing.

She chose him a bath duck.

She also decorated him a cardboard box.

She made him at least three birthday cards... there could be more yet - just because his birthday is over is no reason to stop making him cards...

And she helped me make and decorate two birthday cakes.

I think they were perfect. I know full well they would win no prizes in the highly competitive game of children's birthday cake one-up[wo]manship that is rife amongst families of small children and across the internet, but they perfectly express Eva's careful attention to making something wonderful for her brother.

We had cake at home, cake with friends who regularly come to dinner, cake at church, and cake with Tyson's family (that one made by Grandma, demonstrating both loving careful attention AND some cake-decorating prowess). 

We had play-dates with his my-side aunties. We had afternoon tea with Tyson's family. A lovely collection of modest, thoughtfully chosen, minimally packaged gifts made their way home with us.

And we spent our son's birthday doing things he enjoys:

Eating letter-pancakes made by his dad;

Mouse-rides with Eva (zoooooom!);

Playing with his sister;

Digging in the potplants and eating dirt;

Showering with mum without watching the clock;

Climbing up things...

...like the shelves under the kitchen bench... 

 

to swipe a cherry off the birthday cake;

Swinging at the playground

And of course, his favourite gift of all, which he has carted around the house until it is in shreds, was the piece of wrapping paper sent across the country by my parents. Gran had to pad it out with a book inside so it didn't get ruined in the mail, but he saw through that immediately and knew the paper was the main event.

Initial Time: Decorating cardboard box: three half-hour(ish) sessions, one for white undercoat, one for colour, one for stickers; an hour making and decorating cakes; half-hour making a batch of afternoon tea muffins

Initial Cost: About $20 - two cakes, one basket of home-made muffins, a rubber duck

Just to be clear, I am not opposed to spending money to celebrate. But I am trying not to spend money just to 'do it right'. If I had found something expensive that would have been a great addition to our household (useful, playful, creative, open-ended, multi-use) I would have quite possibly bought it. The cardboard box was not being cheap-skate - I genuinely think our one-year-old will get more playful, creative use out of that box than any shop-bought item I considered. And it was a craft-activity for his sister, and allowed her to be really engaged with giving something special to her brother.

Ongoing time or cost commitment: Same again come September...  how to celebrate a four-year-old's birthday...

Impact: I said it better at Christmas (two posts) but its about shaping the way we and our children view celebration. How do we love each other well? Does it need stuff? 

Hopefully our choices also put a few less disposable napkins/ plates/ cups/ cutlery into landfill, along with less plastic packaging and fewer broken plastic toys. Here's an old but good post from Little Eco Footprints on where our plastic toys end up.

Oh, and that bruise in all the photos? That's because he learnt to walk the week before his birthday and walking is a hazardous game...