Blog
Picking olives for oil – how to produce enough oil for a year when you don’t own any olive trees
Ah, the annual olive oil harvest. For the last several years, I’ve dedicated a weekend to picking olives and sending them to an olive press to extract the oil. This gives me enough olive oil to last me for a year. And I don’t own any olive tress. Every year I’ll post about it on […]
How I started a community street planting project
When I moved to the street where I now live two-and-a-half years ago, I immediately noticed the weedy strip of land at the end of it. My street is a cul-de-sac, but at some stage in the past it must have been a through-road to the street behind, because there is still a road-width strip. […]
7 common recycling mistakes that people make (+ what to do instead)
Talking enthusiastically about recycling might feel like stepping back into the nineties, when most of us thought (didn’t we?) that recycling was an effective way to combat climate change. (Or was that just me…?) A few decades on and the pressing issues of the day have most definitely scaled up. But recycling hasn’t gone away… […]
Low waste living: when to borrow and when to buy
As someone who tries to live a low waste, less stuff lifestyle, it won’t surprise you that I’m a cheerleader for borrowing. (I’m not sure that there’s a single mantra for low waste living, but if there was, ‘use what you have’, ‘make do’ and ‘borrow don’t buy’ would probably be hot contenders.) It’s no […]
Seven ways I’m retrofitting my house for energy efficiency in a changing climate
Where I live, it’s getting hotter. This summer we’ve just seen a record-breaking heatwave of six days above 40°C. There’s been a few other records broken, too. Including, the highest number of days over 40°C between December and February – and we are not yet even through January. Every year we seem to be* (*we […]
5 ways you can give back to your community (even under lockdown)
Something I’m working to do more of this year is contribute more to my local community and those with less. If 2020 taught me anything, it was that local resilient communities are so important for those that live in them, and the support networks that a good community can offer are priceless. The other lesson […]
From landfill to refill: cleaning products that clean the ocean
This post is a sponsored collaboration with Zero Co. When I started my waste journey back in 2012, I primarily wanted to reduce my plastic. A few month in I realised that reducing waste isn’t just about the plastic, and so I worked on reducing all my single-use packaging – metals, paper, cardboard, steel and […]
Not buying it: 5 tips for buying less stuff
The world doesn’t have a recycling crisis, it has an overconsumption crisis. These words (by my friend Oberon, author of the book The Family Guide to Waste-Free Living) ring true to my ears. Sure, we need returnable packaging and reusable products and fixable items, single-use items that compost, products that are designed to last, and […]
