I'm trying to save our planet

When our recycling scheme began, about 8 years ago, the Council held a roadshow and I made a point about the blister packs. I was told that the system could cope with these composite items. Not all schemes are the same though.

Soap bars, shampoo bars, avoid, if possible, single use plastic. If a car is essential then do more than one thing on every trip.

aepgirl, you missed it but I did say earlier that I won't be buying wipes again and the botty ones (Andrex) are definitely not flushed away.

I think it's up to the supermarkets to insist their suppliers provide produce in paper bags or loose.

I agree with the blister packs debacle. I recently bought a car freshener which was double-blistered! Won't be buying that again.

I'll also try vinegar as a bug killer, it sounds like a wonder product!

I haven’t bought new clothes for thirty years...always second hand. The fashion industry one of the big problems in terms of damaging the planet. Only buy second hand furniture and books as well. Make our own compost, don’t buy veg in bags, avoid eating much meat or fish...trying to become vegan. Walk rather than drive.

Just don't glue yourself to a road or chain yourself to a vehicle in the hope of stopping ordinary people going about their business. I felt so sorry for the London cabbie interviewed for TV news the other day saying he "might as well go home" as he wouldn't be able to earn anything that day. We can all do our bit as madam says but to impose yourself on others is so selfish

I'm sorry for anyone who loses income - but how will we earn when the air is unbreathable and the water undrinkable?

What will we live on in the meantime though?
My income depends on me going to work.
No work, no money.

Never thought I'd be writing about bum wipes, ha ha but we keep baby lotion (decanted into a pump dispenser) in the loo. We make our own wipes, as and when needed, with loo paper and the lotion. Definitely flushable.

Have you seen the chemicals in baby lotion?! All going into the water system.

?

Oh! ?

So should we not be using baby lotion either? Every baby rubbed with baby lotion is bathed at some point afterwards and that water goes down the drain. What about hand creams, body lotion etc? Where do we draw the line?

I have been making an effort for a few years now.
I only buy loose veg, never, ever buy wipes in any shape, i have stopped buying 'crap', and recycle clothing etc.,

I am a bit miffed at having to pay out a fair amount of money each year to have garden waste taken away though.
Yes, I can and do, have compost bins, but still have a fair amount to dispose of, so pay my local council to collect.

Just found out they not only charge me to collect, but also sell the treated matter as compost and make even more! Cheeky buggers ?

Don’t feel sorry for London cabbies. I was late for an appointment recently when cab drivers blocked a bridge and Whitehall. I think they were protesting about Uber. And not for the first time.

I don't think we would need hand and body creams if people weren't so obsessed with showering and bathing to within an inch of their lives every day.

Our body, as a rule, does an excellent job of producing what it needs to keep us healthy.

I agree MissAdventure! We wash away our natural oils and then replace them with manufactured ones. We can’t get that dirty in one day to justify all these showers.

Given up flying, it makes a massive, massive difference to your individual carbon footprint. We also use the car just once a week for our big supermarket shop and rely on public transport, bikes or walking the rest of the time. We do our share of recycling etc but its a drop in the ocean compared to the flying.

Giving up meat and dairy is the single biggest thing any individual can do, even cutting down a bit is better than nothing. A leg of lamb is equivalent to a transatlantic flight in terms of carbon emissions.

A really useful thread! I will in future get white vinegar instead of bathroom cleaner. The glass bottles for vinegar are not a recycling problem I think. If you use vinegar for cleaning do you decant into trigger bottles?

muslin cloths are very useful and better than flannels as they dry very quickly after use.

Let us be clear on this - our planet is NOT going to die, Mother Earth will just shrug us off, and recover, as has happened before countless times with countless other species. What we are really talking about is the end of human life on earth, dressed up as concern for the planet when we really mean concern for the future of humanity. Yes we should do all we can to reduce our carbon footprint - re-use, upcycle, recycle and donate as much as possible, as well as reducing our harmful behaviours such as excessive energy use, too much plastic and the ridiculous distances travelled by some of our food, not to mention people. Basically we have far too many people for the planet's resources to sustain indefinitely, not to mention our ridiculous habit of over-consumption of pretty much everything. I do what I can but am not optimistic as the massive change that is needed is highly unlikely to happen in time. Parts of our planet will, in time, become uninhabitable by humans - not so much by some other species. Nature will find a way, she always does.

I think there actually is enough to go round - if we were to share the existing resources. The obscenely rich truly don't need those bazillions. If we stopped with the meat and dairy and used more land to grow food for people that would make a staggering difference. Everyone will have to decide whether they'd like to try and prevent the impending disaster or whether they'll defend their 'right' to eat burgers and rely on carbon till the bitter end, the survival of future generations notwithstanding.

Mother Earth will have her work cut out recovering from the mess we've made. No other species has trashed her in the way we 'sophisticated, developed' ones have.

In 500,000 years of human history nobody has needed wipes

Reduce the world population. Reduce the problem. Simples

I have never seen beeswax wraps. What are they, where do you buy them?

Beeswax wraps are available online and in some shops. We bought ours from Lakeland Ltd.