EcoLent - upgrade your life 47 days at a time.

Two years ago, for the period of Lent, I became vegetarian, to see how I would respond to not having meat for 40 days. Once Easter came round, I had found it so easy to give up my carnivore lifestyle, that I became a full-time Vegetarian. Last year, I decided that Lent was maybe a good opportunity to give up another part of my life that was bad for the environment and so I gave up plastic packaging. This went pretty well, as many of you know, but was a really tough challenge, and I must confess (shrove tuesday is a day of confession) that plastics swam very quickly back into my life, especially once I started working in London. This year I have decided that I am going to permanently adopt this period of the christian calendar, as a part of my environmental calendar (christians of the world - I hope you don't mind). Every year, for Lent, I will change a part of my life that has detrimental impacts on the world, by upgrading it in a way that will preserve and protect the world. If I can successfully change for the 47 days until Easter (sundays are not a day off in my EcoLent challenge), then I can permanently upgrade that part of my life.

Why lent?
I'm not a practising christian, I don't worship God or praise Jesus, I don't go to church or pray, but I am from a culture founded in christianity.  Shrove Tuesday, Lent and Easter are all celebrations that have become a core part of the British calendar and I believe that the founding principles behind them are ones that are important regardless of a person's beliefs. Shrove Tuesday is about confessing (to yourself or others) about something you do or have done, then having one last glutinous indulgence before Lent.  Lent is a period of 40 days (you get sundays off) before Easter, when you practice self control, in the face of temptation, by giving up something desirable. Traditionally this involves giving up milk, fats and eggs.  In more modern times, this had involved giving up sweets, chocolates and cakes. Easter represents the resurrection of Christ and is about celebrating new life and spring, after a period of abstinence.  This its where traditionally ornamental eggs, carved eggs or painted eggs are given as a gift, to celebrate new life.  In modern times, this has developed into a chocolate egg frenzy.

So whats Ecolent?
In Ecolent, on Pancake Day, you identify something you do on a daily or weekly basis which has some negative impact on the environment or the people of the world, such as buying fish from an unsustainable source or purchasing clothes from a shop whose ethics you know are questionable. Then you make a commitment to change that part of your life in a way that will preserve the environment or human societies.  So you could buy your fish but with an MSC stamp on it, thereby supporting sustainable fishing practices and increasing the consumer demand for it. You could go charity shop hunting for your clothes, thereby putting money into charities and reducing the degredation of natural resources and the consumption of energy through increasing recycling activity, or you hit the vintage clothes stores which also increases recycling activity, AND supports your local economy. You commit to this life upgrade for the 47 days until Easter.  Its a short-term contract with yourself, giving yourself the opportunity to trial a better alternative.  If you manage to successfully upgrade within 47 days, why downgrade after?

Peer Pressure!
You may be worried about what your friends will say, but in my experience, my friends and family have admired and been impressed with the resolve and determination the EcoLent challenge requires.  It's also a really great way of raising awareness, because, when asked, you can explain to people why you've embarked on the challenge, focusing on your own experiences, instead out preaching to them.  People are really interested.

Picking your challenge.
The key is to make the challenge achievable and specific, giving yourself some clear boundaries on what is and isnt permissable during the 47 days.  I made the mistake with plastic packaging of saying ALL plastic packaging, which is a really hard thing to do, as plastic really permeates every part of our lives. Next time I do plastic packing, it will be more specific, for example, I will only buy naked vegetables (not wrapped in plastic) or I will trial having milk delivered in glass bottles.

My Challenge:
This year however for EcoLent 2012, I will be focusing on chocolate and will only eat organic and ethical chocolate.

This counts for:
Cakes, Desserts, Yoghurts, Biscuits, Chocolate Bars, Ice-Cream and Sweets.
It includes even the tiniest bit of chocolate in any of the above items.
It includes Dark, Milk and White chocolate.

Permissable brands - Green & Blacks, Traidcraft, Divine, Montezuma's, Booja-booja, Organica, Cocoa loco.

Non-permissable brands - Cadburys, Nestle, Mars, Thorntons, Frys, Kraft, Foxs, Maryland, Gu.

The list of permissable brands are those that I am confident have ethics at the heart of their production.  The list of non-permissables are those I suspect or understand have poor ethics in their production.

During the next 47 days I will be taking the opportunity of the challenge to research all aspects of the chocolate industry and I will post my findings here on this blog.

Joining in:
Ideas for newbs
• Join me with chocolate.
• Eat sustainable fish.
• Charity shop (and vintage shop) shopping.
• Trial the milkman ; ).
• Naked veg only.
• Movie lover? - rent from your library.
• Go veggie -its easier than you think.
• On your bike (take the peddle of faith and leave the car at home).
• Magazine mad? - go digital.

If you'd like more of the EcoLent action and would like to take on a challenge or have questions or comments on any of the above, comment on this blog or tweet at me @jadelaurencawth #ecolent.

Until then, wish me luck,

Jade-Lauren

Cherry Hinton Chalk Pits

Went out filming Cherry Hinton chalk pits this weekend.  What a place it is.  I didn't realise that its a SSSI (site of special scientific interest).  Chalk habitats are quite rare in the UK these days, and this site is a reasonably undisturbed place, providing opportunity for moon carrot, common bird's foot trefoil, the six spot burnett moth, the speckled wood butterfly and glow worms, with a wonderful habitat in which to live.  Although its the wrong time of year for these (I can't wait to see the glow worms this summer), there was an abundance of what I believe to be st. johns wort, self heal and weld.

I'm looking forward to finishing off the film this weekend.  Will be wear ing an extra pair of socks, though, brrrr.

Lost something? - Try the leaf litter.

For my lunch break today, I decided to do a spot of gardening.  Its a surprisingly brilliant way of distracting the brain from work and the front garden was in desperate need of a tidy up.

Anyway there I was grubbing away in the leaves and what should I discover but my long lost, sorely missed, hemp body shop lip balm.  I really don't know how long its been there, but at least a month.  As I continued with my leaf clearing, what should I find but the little golden lindt chocolate bear, that was a devastating loss to a working from home day, back in November!! Do you think he is still edible?

Anyway, the moral of this story is: If you lose something, check the leaf litter.

Recycled Paper Journals

For 2012 I have decided to keep a diary.  I havnt kept one in years and whenever I did I wasnt very good at keeping up with it.  But I feel like I am coming to a part of my life now where I have to make really exciting decisions.  The path is no longer laid out for me like when I was in education, but is at such a place where anything could happen.  I feel that now I am really my own independant little woman and the ruler of my own destiny, without feelings of responsibility or expectation stifling me.  Also I have finally made the decision to follow my heart careerwise and pursue a career in sustainability communication.  I feel that this is going to be a really exciting journey, that needs recording and will benefit from the gravity and reflection provided by a diary.  So because sustainability is my passion and my life, I obviously needed to get a sustainabily produced journal.  

Well what a bloody flop that retail exploration was.  I was looking for something with recycled paper and, if possible, a recycled cover.  I started in Paperchase, thinking they would have something beautiful and Eco, or if not Remarkable notebooks.  Nope.  Something exceptionally beautiful with a hand embroidered bird, but absolutely nothing sustainable.
Then WHSmiths, Nope.
Then Waterstones, Nope.
Then Rymans, Nope.

In Cambridge we have a shop called 'One World Is Enough,' which sells clothes and some other bits and bobs that are fairtrade and imported from South East Asia and the Indian Subcontinent.  I thought 'atleast that will be a socially ethical choice.'  But unfortanately the product just wasnt up to requirement.  They were beautiful Sari covered notebooks, but they were either too small or had a fraction of the number of pages I needed to make it worth buying.

So I popped across to OXFAM.  Yey!! they have recycled paper....oh.. they are diaries, all dated and divided up, so there isnt enough room to write.

One last port of call......JOHN LEWIS.... not exactely my preferred option, due to the size of the company, the exquisite way it fuels capitalism and the price it charges for its product.  Having said that the other companies I was looking at were just as bad.  But I thought I would 'just check.'  And there was nothing, not a smidge of an eco journal, not even any Remarkable notebooks!!!

But then I found two sea green and white polka dot notepads that had been demoted to the bottom  shelf at the end of an aisle, because they were reduced to £2 each and were made of FSC paper. 

And I'm afraid thats the best I could do, and I do feel that I sold out on price. I do like the polka dot though.

So if any of you know where you can find recycled paper journals, I would be glad to know.  I think next time I'll buy Remarkable pads online, well in advance, and decorate them up myself.

Cooking my first ever christmas dinner

On the 27th December my dad came to visit us for christmas.  We decided that I would cook christmas dinner, my very first.  In preparation I decided to go to Mill Road to collect all my ingredients.  Unfortunately these days I end up buying food in supermarkets like Budgens and Sainsburys, due to availability of time, so to peruse the local shops of Mill Road was to be a real treat.

I had planned to go to Northrop's butchers for the chicken, because they can tell you exactly how it was reared and where it came from. But the queue trailed out the door and down the side of the building (it was Friday 23rd). Then I remembered Al-Amin had a butchers and thought at least I would be supporting a local business and the chicken will have had a prayer said for it (Al-Amin is run by a muslim family so the butchers is Halal).  Then I popped to my old work place Arjuna for the veggies; potatoes, brussel sprouts, onion, parsnips and orange (I'll come back to this later) AND what a delight RAINBOW CARROTS, I picked an orange, a white and a PURPLE one. GREAT! All organic.

I popped into Urban Larder, for some home made mince pies, that I had tried at my friends house, who works there.  And then I trundled down to Co-op for the bits I hadn't found in the previous two shops.  Organic chicken stock cubes, Paxo sage and onion stuffing and Aunt Bessie's yorkshire puds, before going home to freeze the chicken.

On the 27th I roasted the chicken whole in the oven. Added roast potatoes into the tin an hour later, with some parsnips.  Then when I took the chicken out to rest I put the brussels on, got the stuffing cooking and them chopped up the carrots, added them to a pan with a big knob of organic butter and then squeezed the whole orange over the top.  I then covered the carrots with water, just so the water covers the carrots, then boiled them for 5 minutes with a lid on and 10 minutes with a lid off, before draining and mixing in freshly chopped tarragon. Mmmmm. It was delicious. And finally my Dad worked his magic on the gravy, making it lovely and thick with cornflour.

What I was most happy about however was the portions I served. Even with all the different veggies, not a thing was left in the pans, note on the plates.  So my Zero Waste christmas pledge to serve perfect portions, was accomplished.

Next year, I would like to make my own yorkshires and have organic, free-range meat.

Live and love the seconds that you breathe.

We are obsessed with striving for happiness.  What makes us happy? What fulfills us? Power? Money? Success? Love?

We spend so much time trying to be better, trying to be happier, constantly reinventing ourselves to be more harmonious and successful and constantly talking about what we should be, what we should be doing, how we should behave. Trying to make ourselves happier, instead of just being.

We are, after all, human beings, shouldn't we just be.

Instead of trying to be the best you can, just be.
Instead of planning and telling people what you are going to do, just do.

Just ride the wave of life and watch it wave by.  We are a mere blip on the scale of existence.  Savour every moment of now.  Look back at all the wonders that have been, look forward to all the wonders that could be,

but live and love the seconds that you breathe.

All Quiet on the Sustainability Front

Hello Old Friend, it has been so long.

I do apologise for my silence over the last months, I have been busy at my job at the Garden Museum where I am a trainee in the sustainability of heritage.  I am already over half way through the traineeship and starting to consider my next career move, but am also starting to refocus on my own sustainable lifestyle (or current lack of it).  It is common knowledge that full time work, particularly with a commute, makes it dreadfully difficult to be sustainable.  In fact it is highly ironic that the trainee in the sustainability of heritage at the Garden Museum lives 60 miles away!!  And with my current long distance work arrangements our household efforts to reduce our energy consumption and our efforts to not have plastic packaging have quite understandably drifted off. 

There is a part of me determined to find some kind of formula, solution, framework or maybe just answers to how to be a sustainable city commuter and I know there are many things that I can change if I just try.  Then there is an even bigger part of me that is becoming resigned to the fact that actually our 40+ hour weeks, where we commute into and out of the city and stays in hotels here and there, just isnt sustainable, thats just the truth of it.  Another truth is that the majority of the commuting population, if not all, do not want to spend 3-4 hours of their day travelling and would like to have more time at home, to nest build, spend with the family, indulge in their hobbies and so on. But unfortunately we feel trapped into an economic system that requires us to conform to this work schedule in order to pay the bills and maintain some sort of lifestyle.  But why am I banging on telling you all this, you already know, we ALL know this to be the case.  The real problem is that we are just not ready to change, some of us dont believe that its financially possible, some of us are too scared and comfortable, some of us feel pressurised by the eyes of society, judging whether we are working hard enough (or in the case of today, working ourselves to the grave). 

For me, I decided to take on the Cambridge to London commute to grapple an amazing career opportunity, to get onto the Sustainability ladder.  'Just a year in London to do this traineeship,' I said, 'I know the commute will be hard, but its totally worth it and its just a year.'  But now as I start looking for my next rung on the ladder, I start to realise that most of the next rungs are in London, that I am going to be hard pushed to continue to do what I want to do in Cambridge.  My life, my passion, is sustainability.  I believe that sustainable development is the most important and fundamental thing in the world today.  Yet to pursue a career in sustainability, seems to mean to give up a sustainable lifestyle.  What a weird world we live in.

I like to endeavour to have a solution at the end of each of my blog posts, something people can take away with them, as I have spent too much time in conferences and discussion groups discussing the same problems with the same arguments and never concluding with an answer.  But this issue isnt as clear cut as me suggesting an answer, because it is so situational, it depends on each family, each household doing a careful cost benefit analysis of their needs, their wants, their money and their time.

For me, the number one thing is getting a job in sustainability, I need to feel that I am working towards something that will make positive sustainable change in the world.  To live sustainabley comes very closely behind, how can you be a sustainability professional if you dont practice what you preach?

So I think my solution is go and grab another sustainability job; if its in London carefully work out how you can make that commuting lifestyle more sustainable.  When you get a job in Cambridge you can enjoy that extra time in making your home and your lifestyle the most sustainable it can be.  Thats the best that I can do for now.