Look At This Really Rubbish Photo...

As the title of this blog post suggests, it really is a rubbish photo and yet it is one of the proudest photos that I have taken, and the reason why is because it is the actuation of a resolution. It is the visible results of making a change that is important for our children's future.

Visible difference of the lifestyle choices
we are making as a family. We've got a
long way to go, but we've made a start and
the feeling of making a difference is powerful.

It was with a very heavy heart that we watched the BBC's Blue Planet with the gorgeous David Attenborough, and watched as the most incredible, noble, miraculous sea-life navigated our increasingly polluted oceans. We, all of us, have the power to do something about that in our own small way. 

There's a long way to go, there's no denying it but as a family, we hit our goal to only have ONE black bag of rubbish and to recycle all our other household gods. We SMASHED that target in our second week of trying. 

BREAKING DOWN PACKAGING.

We've always generally recycled, in as we've always had a full glass / plastic box and a full paper box, but being as this is an honest place, I was a lazy recycler - if it was easily one thing or another it would get put in the bag and if he was a sort of mash up of materials, it often, for the sake of what I thought was time saving, just got shoved in the main bin. 

NOT ANYMORE - nope, this just goes to show the impact of how taking that extra 1-30 seconds to tear apart packaging and separate the materials makes a massive accumulative difference.

This week we had three recycling boxes, a full food box from peelings, scraps and tea bags, and just one black bag of landfill. 

Our aim is to get down to just 1 black bag a fortnight - and being as there shouldn't be any smelly food items etc in the bin, that should work. 

MINDFUL SHOPPING. 

This result isn't just about better waste sorting, but of shopping more mindfully, of buying less packaging in the first place. By turning to a mostly meat-based diet and shopping at the green grocers,  using paper bags in that old skool way, the amount of potential rubbish being brought into the house has reduced significantly. 

Big and Small Revolutions. What a trip to the coffee shop taught us last night.

Last night, after drama-rama class, I took Betty to Cafe Nero as a treat for going up a level in her reading at school. It was freezing cold, her sister was at the later  drama session and we had an hour to kill.

Huddling round with our hot-chocolates we chatted about the day and suddenly, because I have all but killed our coffee-cake cafe habit (saving us nearly £200 a month), this 'naughty' rule-break felt really special.

It went to show how mindset is so adaptable and that the smallest changes can make the biggest difference. There have been many times I've sat in the coffee shop not really being present with the girls because it's all so much part of routine, but last night wasn't like that. I wasn't going to waste our precious treat checking my phone or glancing through the newspaper. No - heading out and spending £12 on a tea-time treat was suddenly seen in terms of being 25% of our weekly food bill challenge. It was special. It put it firmly in perspective.

What was also interesting was that as Betty didn't finish her chocolate cake, which was almost bigger than her head to be fair, we asked to take it away with us. The barista was very happy to pack it up and grabbed for a clear plastic box. I bravely asked if he would mind putting it in a paper bag and explained that we were trying to reduce our plastic as part of our New Year resolutions.

He broke into a wide grin and told me that I was just one of many people that day who had said something similar and that many people had started bringing their own cups.

So as Betty and I walked back to meet Rosie, hand in hand chatting away, swinging our paperbag of left-overs by our side, it made me feel that we are actually part of a vastly spreading movement between ordinary families like our own who are genuinely determined and committed to making as much change as we can - and I felt genuinely optimistic that things are changing.