1. I don't use soap. Or shampoo bars...

2. We have a car. Actually two...

According to the proper greenies, we should all be car-free - using public transport and cycling or walking everywhere. Which is great, and probably pretty straightforwards if you live in a city with good public transport and/or you don't have kids. 
We don't live in a city, and we have kids. 
So have a car. Actually two (one is electric).
My husband drives to work, and I drive the kids to school. I tried suggesting several times that they might like to cycle and was met with tantrums and to be honest, it's hard enough getting out of the house in the morning and to school on time without having to fight about a three mile bike ride.
One 'ish' solution I'm experimenting with at the moment is to have the bike trailer on the back of the car with my bike on it, drive to school and drop the kids off, park up and cycle home and then back again, and then drive the kids back home. And they have also compromised on cycling in once a week (as long as it's not raining..).

3. We have a child. Actually two...

In every list of "The Most Effective Things You Can Do To Help The Planet" at number 1 is "have one less child". 
And I have no idea how that actually works. Does it mean if you want two you just have one, or if you want three you just have two. But what if you've already done your breeding like us? I mean, at times they annoy the hell out of me, but I wouldn't want to send one of them back to the store.
According to Mike Berners-Lees' book How Bad are Bananas?, having a child is listed as one of the most environmentally un-friendly things we can do. BUT he goes on to make the point that it's not necessarily the number of children you have, what's more impactful is how you bring them up. So the footprint of one child of a Premier League footballer is going to be significantly higher than the footprint of the 7 children of an Indian cotton farmer.
So I'm doing my very best, imperfections and all, to not only raise them in a Sustainable(ish) manner but to hopefully instil in them a set of values that means that when they fly the nest they continue to live in a way that's compatible with their future on this planet.  

4. We buy crisps...

Again, if I was a better eco-warrior I'm sure I should be able to persuade my family that they really can do without crips, and instead I would be rustling up homemade nutritious plastic-free snacks for their lunchboxes. But frustratingly my family have spurned my suggestions of a benign eco dictatorship, and continue to want crisps. 
My 'ish' solution is to buy the large share bags and portion them up into lunchboxes (NomNom Kids do a great range of reusable pouches if you're looking for some).

7. I've not perfected plastic-free tea...

...And I drink a LOT of tea.
Everyone's 'easy solution' the plastic in teabags bombshell is "buy loose leaf tea". Which sounds fab. But more often than not loose leaf tea comes wrapped in plastic. I've looked online, but because I'm a tea wanker, and my preference is for Earl Grey, apparently the oils in Early Grey don't react with the compostable packaging and cause it to self-compost...
We do have a brilliant zero-waste store in the next door town to us that stocks a fab Earl Grey but we don't go over there that often and it's hard to stock up on sufficient quantities to keep my tea habit satiated. So in between times it's tea-bags for us (and even worse, at the moment it's Twinings, as my husband did the shopping and didn't realise they still have plastic in their tea bags...)

9. We have a dog...

And she has her very own carbon pawprint. So it probably wasn't the greenest of decisions. However she adds to our life immeasurably, has ensured that we get outside every single day during lockdown, and is a great boost to our mental health. Oh, and she eats pet food made from insects.

This list could go on... But as one person pointed out on the post in the FB group:

"It highlights how there's no one size fits all. We're all different and do different things and that's ok."

What do you make of my list?
What are your 'eco-imperfections?
Let me know in the comments!

1. Reduce food waste

1.  Do a meal plan - it doesn't have to be anything fancy, but plan ahead for what you're going to eat and when. It sounds dull and boring (because in all honesty it is) but it will cut down your food waste AND save you some cash
2. Implement an 'eat me first' box or shelf in your fridge. Then tell everyone in your house they have to eat what's there before they open yet another pot of yoghurt.
3.  Love your leftovers. Get inventive with your leftovers - turn leftover rice into stir-fried rice, chop leftover pasta into a frittata, blitz up the cauliflower cheese the kids point blank refused to eat into soup (they will eat it. Or at least mine did...)
   
   
   

2. Choose organic

I kind of knew that organic was 'a bit better' for the planet but until I did a mini-series for the podcast with Organic UK, I didn't realise really quite how much better.
Fewer pesticides means that the health of the soil is maintained far more easily, meaning that less fertiliser is needed, greater biodiversity, as well as more carbon sequestered into the soil. 
I had no idea about the concept of 'regenerative agriculture' until I recorded the Organic Food and Climate Change episode, but what I learned really blew my mind. 

If all of Europe's farmland followed organic principles, emissions from agriculture would drop by 40-50%

Organic soils are 25% more effective in storing carbon on the long-term

Here's some ways to incorporate organic into your diet:

1. Get a veg box - look for a local supplier, or check out schemes like Riverford and Abel&Cole
2. Can you go 50:50 organic:normal with your milk. Or do like one person did on one of my courses and get a pint less a week, but get organic (so she now gets 5 pints of organic, instead of 6 pints of regular)
3. Pick ONE thing to swap for an organic version in your next shop - whether that's fruit and veg, or baked beans, or chocolate, keep your eye out for the logos and make a swap!

If you want more tips for eating sustainably, check out Episode 74 of the podcast:

What does 'sustainable eating' look like to you?
Let me know in the comments!

1. What is organic?

2. Is organic a legal definition?

Yes! The good news is it's EU law (since 1991) that for a product to be labelled 'organic' it must be certified and meet a minimum set of standards. If you're a super keen-bean you can check out what those EU standards are here.

3. What logos and badges should we be looking out for?

Food labelling can be confusing, and there are a plethora of different badges and logos around. If you're knee deep in the supermarket shop with a screaming toddler in the trolley, the good news is that there are a couple of key logos to keep your eye for:

6. Why is organic often more expensive?

There may well be people reading this, thinking "that all sounds great, and I would love to choose more organic, but I'm on a budget and organic is often more expensive".
This is such a complex area, and we touched on this a bit in the Organic 101 podcast, talking about the fact that in the same way that the price for 'fast fashion' comes is the cost to the people working in the industry and the planet, the price for highly intensive, processed food is to the planet, and that we aren't seeing the 'true cost' of food production reflected in the prices we pay.

There's so more info here from Clare McDermott at Soil Association Certification:

• Smaller volumes / diseconomies of scale
  The organic market is (still) only 1.6% of total food and drink – that’s quite small despite it growing rapidly.  And that means it doesn’t reach the large economies of scale that you can achieve with non-organic.  That might be at growing level (where actually yields and return are higher often for organic) through having smaller manufacturing runs in factories to having to keep production lines separate. The cost comes down when you get bigger volumes and dairy, for example, which has a higher penetration and market share (more people buy organic dairy) is nearer in price to non-organic.
• Higher labour costs
  Economies of scale come into this again - it's harder to pick a small field of carrots than a large one.  There are some areas where its more labour intensive and less mechanised and there is also more hands on management.
• Pricing decisions by retailers
  This one is key as non-organic food will often be on promotion.  These promotions don't reflect the true cost of production and makes the organic differential look really large.  Organic food will also be on promotion, but less so as it is seen as a value add line for them.  This is especially true of products like milk, which many supermarkets us a loss leader to get people through the doors. 
  Ultimately we need to decide on how we feel about a cheap food culture which is coming to the forefront of the debate currently, alongside do we want to pay more for food that has a benefit to the environment.

7. Why is organic fruit and veg in the supermarket usually packaged in single use plastic?

It's SO frustrating isn't it? We're trying so hard to do the right thing - we're looking for organic produce, and we're looking for loose fruit and veg because we're trying to reduce our plastic footprint, and it feels like we have to make a choice. We can have one or the other, but not both. Why?!!
I asked this question in the Organic 101 podcast, and Guy Singh-Watson from Riverford explained that it's often for the convenience of the retailers. When you have conventional apples next to organic ones, and the organic ones cost more (see points above for why!) there needs to be some way of distinguishing between them. The packaging also provides a way for the retailer to give you the information you need about the organic product, eg certification etc. Do have a closer look at the packaging though, as many retailers are making changes to introduce things like home compostable and recyclable versions.
Yes, it's hugely frustrating. One option to think about is to look into local veg box delivery schemes. These will often be organic and come with substantially less packaging - I really notice the difference in our bin if I forget to order our fruit and veg box! 

8. How can we as consumers help to push for more organic products and practices? 

AKA How can I be organic(ish)...?

What have I missed?
What other questions have you got about organic?
Did you learn anything new?
Let me know in the comments!

THREE SIMPLE THINGS TO DO:

1. Check out how well your current bank is performing on Switch-it.
   Simply find your bank on the drop down and see how well they score.
   You can see the results and they click to switch and it gives you more ethical alternatives to choose from.
2. Send an e-mail to your pension provider asking them to get to Net Zero by 2050. There's an easy to use template and you can choose your pension provider from the drop-box on the Make My Money Matter site here.
3.  Sign the petition on Make My Money Matter calling on all UK pension providers to 'put people and planet on a par with profit'.

For more info on all things 'good money' check out:

• My podcast with Triodos Bank
• This talk from the Sustainable(ish) Festival with Becky O'Connor from Good with Money

• The Good with Money website

Had you thought before about the power of your money?
Do you know who your pension is with? And what they're investing in?
Are you now inspired to do a spot of investigating and maybe switching?

Let me know!

But there will be people who can afford to shop elsewhere, who can afford to make more ethical choices, but who choose not to. If that's you, then this post IS for you.
And please know that it comes from a place of compassion, concern for people and planet, and from a desire to spread the word about some of negative impacts fast fashion has on the environment and the people who make our clothes.

It's no judgement on you if you didn't know all the stats and figures I'm going to share. If you hadn't reached the point yet where you've joined the dots between your choices and people and planet.
We can't change what we don't know.

I didn't know until we spent out year buying nothing new. If you'd asked me before that point how my clothes were made, I would have said in a factory. I assumed it was all automated and done by machine.
If you'd asked me what my clothes were made from I would have said cotton, and assumed that was ok because it's a plant, and therefore natural.

But during that year (and since), I've learned that:

• The majority of our clothes are made by people, usually women (80% of garment workers are women) who are sat in often poorly lit factories in unsafe conditions, sewing the same seam on the same garments, day in, day out, hour after hour. For up to 18hours a day. For far less than the living wage they need to be able to feed their family.
• Some garment workers are children. Supply chains for the fast fashion brands are so complex and are sub-contracted so many times, that most of them wouldn't know if there was child labour being used to make their garments.
• Many of our modern clothes (especially fast fashion) are made from synthetic (oil based) fabrics. The oil needs to stay in the ground.
• It takes over 2000L of water to make one t-shirt -that's the same amount of water we drink in 3 years
• All of the above impacts on garment workers and the planet are compounded by the speed with which we in the developed world consume fashion.
• Clothing production doubled between 2002 and 2015
• Globally we consume 80 billion pieces of clothing every year
• We have enough clothing on the planet right now to clothe the next 6 generations of the human race (this is via Patrick Grant from Great British Sewing Bee)

So every time we actively choose fast fashion (if we can afford not to) that's what we're casting our vote for:
child labour, sweatshops, truckloads of garments headed to landfill every single minute.

I don't think any of us wants that.
But the problem is that's not what we're thinking about when we spot a cheap t-shirt, or we're feeling a hacked off with lockdown and want things to feel more normal again and hit the shops.

The system is broken. And that's not our fault.
But one thing we can do (if we can afford to) is decide to step out of that very unjust, unfair, damaging system by making some different choices.
Some more thoughtful choices.
And I'll be sharing with you in coming posts how you can do that.

Is your convenience and desire for a new cheap t-shirt, more important than the safety of garment workers (possibly children) and the future we're creating for our kids?
That sounds very deep, a bit worthy, and not very (ish) but it is the reality we find ourselves in. It's a hugely uncomfortable truth.
And if we CAN afford to make different choices, we owe it people and planet to do so.

What are your thoughts on fast fashion?