Eco audit: one foot, two foot

If you put one foot in front of the other, often enough, pretty soon you’ll discover that walking is the way to get about.  No parking.  No timetables.  And, with a rucksack to hand, you can even schlep your things about too.

Not really a huge discovery.  Except that it’s got to the stage that Kids Don’t Walk.  And thinking back to my teens, it wasn’t so different, sadly.  You get to a certain age and stage, and the amount of stuff you have to carry means you can’t so often do it all yourself.

I blame the cello.  But then, there was the music case accompanying the cello.  And the sports bag.  And the school bag. Even with a few lift shares among others in the orchestra, there was still a lot of carrying things.

There was still walking, though.  There were plenty of days when I walked home, even if I got a lift to school.  My mid teens were at that point when you could still (just about) walk home on your own from places, without immediate considerations of safety.  (And I was generally walking home in daylight.)

The other main trick with walking is picking your area to live in.  Choose well, and most of your journeys can be on foot – or at least, a lot of the regular ones.  I can’t take credit for this in my teens – but my parents did indeed choose well (after a lot of house hunting).

We lived very close to a supermarket, so many food shops were done on foot.  (In the days before limiters on trolleys, I have a feeling that we might have just wheeled the trolley round to the front door, unpacked, then took it back.)

Doctor: walking distance.  Optician: ditto.  Post office: the same.  Walkable distance to station: check.  Walkable distance to pub my parents went to on Friday nights: also check. Pretty much ideal.

For all of that, it also helps to have good public transport to support when walking won’t work, is too far, there’s too much to carry or it’s late at night.  That side wasn’t so good in my teens – but then I wasn’t much bothered with going out at that stage.

Spend much time in Europe, and you’ll generally find that public transport will do you fine in many places. (And if you happen to be going to a Germanic country, better, much of the time.)

I’m grateful too that despite applying to various campus universities, I ended up in a city – one with really good public transport (yes, I really think so), and one which is also so walkable.

We have a little joke that I always live close to a bus route.  It’s been partly planned, in the days before having a car, and sometimes the access is better than first anticipated.  That’s great for getting to work, seeing friends in other parts of town and so on.

But what I love right now is rediscovering walking – because it really works for our area.  We can walk to: local shops, library, doctor, dentist, hairdresser, post office, chemist, after school classes, a couple of charity shops…School is a bit further for small legs, but we’re starting to get there, and I generally walk to afternoon pick up.

Why all the fuss? Because I don’t go to gyms.  But I like a little exercise I don’t have to pay for; fresh air and clearing my head (and even getting some time to myself); not having to worry about parking at busy times and in busy locations.

And I love…the chance for chats, when I am with a small companion.  The opportunity to stop at points, sniff flowers, admire diggers, spot cats and other local wildlife.  The chance to have some nice routes to walk (even where others are traffic-heavy, and more than a bit polluted).

Every now and then, I even meet people I know, or at least recognise.  We may not be having cheery chats at the butcher’s, as in days of old, but there is a chance to have a sense of community, to belong to a neighbourhood, to know your location really well.

My world is smaller these days than it used to be.  A lot of shorter repeat journeys.  And that suits me just fine.  I may be lucky – we may have picked our area of town even better than we first realised.

But I also want to model something as a mum: that’s it’s not all about Mum’s Taxi.  Nor even about bus passes, useful as they are. Putting one foot in front of the other reduces daily stresses, often.  It’s cheap.  It’s functional.

And it gives you much more attention to focus on your walking companion, their detailed knowledge of Moshi Monsters – and the moment you happen to find yourselves in.

Eco audit: making your own entertainment

I don’t mean you have to gather round the piano.  (But you can if you like.) I’m thinking about ways to relax, be with others, that are also not too draining on the environment.

In my teens, it was books and music – and TV at points.  The obligatory Friday night long soak in the bath.  But it was also sitting round the table together over meals – laughing, chatting, and so on.

When I went to Poland, it shifted a bit more.  We didn’t have a TV – and we wouldn’t have been able to understand that much if we did.  So we listened to music; wrote to people and enjoyed receiving letters.  We went and visited the kids in the boarding houses at the school where I was working.

We went sledging at night.  We climbed a long way up a hill to reach a famous lake that the kids couldn’t see (because they were blind) – and that was frozen.  We went to church.  We took lots of photos (all on film, at that point). We went to judo classes with the kids. I sang in the choir.

We travelled about – by train, by bus.  We went for walks – we did a midnight row on the lake during a summer camp.  Because it was Poland, there seemed plenty of people ready to bring out a guitar at the hint of a bonfire, or another opportunity to sing.

I loved it.  And funnily, university wasn’t that different.  When there’s not much money, you spend your time with people.

When I shared a flat with two friends, we clubbed together and bought a second hand piano – that was in fact entertainment for us, and for others.  Sometimes we would invite musician friends over – they would play, we would cook, and we’d all eat together.

My teenage self would be familiar with some electricity-based entertainment.  I wouldn’t have dreamed of the rise of ‘devices’: laptops, iPods, phones doing so many different things.  Nor of the plethora of chargers needing packed for holidays.

What happens when you have a little money? Sometimes it goes on power-based entertainment: films, concerts, shows.  But in amid all that, there are still the freebies: going for walks, being with friends, reading to each other.

There is something to be said for making your own entertainment.  It can be challenging to tread that path as a parent: to show the current generation growing up that entertainment without a power cable can be worth it.

But parenthood, with its associated reduced levels of cash, also means a rediscovery of free or lower impact entertainment.  Walks. Playgrounds.  Riding a bike.  Creating stories and tall tales. Talking about the world, how it works, how it doesn’t.

Running round and round with a pot of bubble mixture.  Inventing your own imaginary worlds.  Playing I spy, and a hundred other verbal games. Reading, reading, going to the library for a new stock of books, more reading aloud.  Making your own models.

Not everything that is ‘free’ is low impact.  But the things you can use multiple times, without cables – books, games, quality toys – and then pass on again to others: these are worth our time, as well as our investment.

And they give us some pointers to what life can be like when making your own entertainment – with creativity, and with enjoyment.

Eco audit: cucina povera or using things up

I like leftovers.  I particularly like leftovers when other people come over and bring food with them.  Unplanned leftovers – and the planning then of what to do with them – is a treat for the food mind as well as the body.

I’m trying to remember what leftovers were like when I was growing up.  I think there weren’t a lot of them…we liked our food! I do remember the joy of the cold leftover sausage (and indeed of leftover baked beans, though I appreciate this is a specialist interest).

I also remember the pre-empting of leftovers: the mopping of plates with bread, particularly after something like mince and potatoes, when there was still gravy for the soaking.  My parents were fans of using the heel of a loaf for this (ie the end bit), so clearly not everyone could have a heel at the same time, but there is something particularly good about using a thick piece of bread for this.

I do also remember occasions of making jam tarts, and being allowed to make things with the pastry trimmings.  Begging to eat the apple peelings from Bramleys apples (yes, I know they’re sour, but so are many great tastes), if mum was cooking apples for something else like crumble.

Food habits can be formed by daily life – how soon we need to get food on the table after we get home; whether cooking is a pleasure or when we just need to Fuel Up Fast.  But they are also informed by what we read about food, what we eat, and what we absorb from all this about how to use food in the first place.

Part of my starting the year was looking at the kitchen cupboards: what was out of date? And then (feeling a little guilty for some of the spices and so on that were well out of date), looking to see what was still in date, or just about.

What could be used up? Some of it was things I had in small quantities, and just needed one dish to go; some were ingredients that I use less, now the gluten- and dairy-free cooking has taken over more.

In the Pippi Longstocking stories, Pippi decides to be a Turn Up Stuffer: someone who just finds interesting things along the way.  I love the description of reaching into the hollow tree and bringing out all kinds of things that must have been planted there already, but seem magical to her friends Tommy and Annika.

I decided to become something like a Use Up Stuffer – but I suspect that kind of title might cause a few problems online, if I used it regularly.  So I’ll casually share it here in the text, and then you’ll know what I’m talking about if I mention it again.

In my literary food education, using things up, turning variations on a theme, has been praised.  It’s part of traditional Scots cooking, with that heavy emphasis on multiple uses for oats.

It’s part of Italian cooking, where no little bit of bread goes to waste; no leftover clump of pasta is abandoned.  And it’s part of Polish cooking, with dishes like pierogi (dumplings), where fillings can be as varied as you like, depending on what you have available.

Back to my teenage environmentalist.  I already knew about being able to buy food in and out of season.  But what I suspect I would  not have been familiar with is the social pressure to buy a big range of food – to have the full fruit bowl for example – whether or not we eat it.

There’s been a lot of effort to raise public awareness of not wasting food, including advice on how to use up leftovers.  If you get hooked in this area, there’s a great book I found, which draws on lots of different food cultures in how it uses things up.

Again, we come full circle.  Wartime Britain got very adept at making dishes out of all kinds of things – and making up for what it didn’t have.  We move through a growing time of plenty, aided by importing food by plane.

And we come through to a time where we have to be educated about not wasting food – while there are still food shortages, and malnutrition, in many places around the world.  And many in-between places where nothing is wasted, still.

I’m realising that my soap box might be coming into view, so I’ll stop.  My point in starting this series was to check myself first.  And I can report that the using up stuff project is going OK – including discovering a few new recipes along the way.  Always a pleasure.  (I discover also that I am not alone in setting myself a store cupboard challenge.)

I’ll admit, I’m some way from the ‘use everything including the entrails’ school of culinary thought.  Not that form of cucina povera (or ‘food of the poor’), though I’ll happily make a stock from chicken bones.

But things like stock, breadcrumbs, a spare carrot – those are like paints in the box.  You know you’ll have a picture out of them – and hopefully a feast for the eyes, as well as a the stomach, at the end of it.

Eco audit: to heat or not to heat

I’ll confess this now.  I’m writing in bed.  It’s possibly my favourite place to write.  And, when you get the luxury of the house to yourself, you get to do what you want a little more.

But another reason for writing in bed is because it’s cold.  It’s still February.  Snow is coming and going.  And when you are the only one in the house, it can seem easier to be in bed, where it stays warm, than writing somewhere else when it doesn’t.

Trying to write when your hands are cold is miserable.  Pretty much doesn’t work, when you mostly type to write.  So this is my solution.  (Plus, if your bed is comfy, and you have pillows to prop you up, you are already in the most comfortable place in the house.)

What does all this have to do with the environment? Plenty.  We’ve all seen heating prices go up – and up – in the last few years.  Plus we are seeing more signs of the impact when heat runs out – remember parts of Russia last year, when there were issues with gas supply?

In my teens, I had a few different models when it came to the heat/not heat dilemma.  One school friend’s family lived pretty frugally, partly so they could then travel to interesting places when the holidays came round.  (This was back when flights were expensive, and it would cost a lot to take a family of four abroad.)

One of the impacts of the frugality was that there wasn’t much heating on.  I got used to ‘puffa heaters‘ when I came round, and cups of tea, and generally we were OK.

Another model would be my great aunt, who is (finally) having heating ‘redone’ in some way. The pattern is this: you spend much of your time in one room.  You use electric blankets to get beds warm quickly – or hot water bottles.  This does make sense when you still live in a big house – and also when you have grown up with cooler indoor temperatures as a norm.

My father took a different tack.  He didn’t go for subtropical heating, but he believed in a good quality of day to day living – which also meant not being cold.  This meant that we didn’t go anywhere fancy on holiday, for much of my childhood, but year round, we could stay warm, and eat well.

When I first went to Poland, my mother packed me off with thermals – because, after all, it was colder there.  (It was – for six weeks.  Down to minus 16 C in central Warsaw one day.  I was wearing hiking boots and thick socks, but I remember my feet hurt, they were so cold.)

Except.  It wasn’t cold indoors.  Even though I went after the end of Soviet times, one of the legacies of that period is a certain overarching response when it comes to heat.  Winter – heat on.  Wear thermals? You’ll swelter.  Drying washing indoors? No problem.

Yes, you put on all your layers to go from building to building – and took them off again when you got there.  It became a bit of a ritual, but in a country with reverence for good quality wool coats, and an appreciation of coat and hat stands, this works fine.

My second time in Poland saw a similar approach regarding heat – except that I lived above a church building, as did the man in charge of the heating decisions.

So whereas in the past, heat would go on on a set day of the year, and then off on a (later) set date, he would also be at the mercy of those living on site – who would beseech him if a cold snap came on after the ‘off’ date.

Heating is what you are used to.  Potentially, what you can afford.  It’s also the decisions you choose to make about how you live, at times.  But, increasingly, as fuel prices go up, there is the spectre of fuel poverty: where costs mean a decision between being warm – or having enough money to feed yourself.

I’m grateful that I’m not in that position.  But I’ve had a few little reminders of what it does to change the amount of time the heating is on.  We had a point of changing to showers for all the family, rather than also heating water for a regular bath for the youngest, and suddenly saw quite a drop in our fuel bills.

Which has brought me to where I am now.  Writing in bed.  I am happy to make the decision to have the heating on, if it’s cold and if there’s two or more of us at home.  But it has to get pretty nippy before I put the heating on just for me.

Right now, as I write, I am hoping our own heating solution is taking shape.  (I am in fact writing this in advance, for logistical reasons – hope it’ll make sense in the reading.)  After quite a while in our home, we are getting some work done – which includes a new boiler.  Hopefully there’ll be the opportunity to level out the heat more regularly in the house.

I knew about cavity wall insulation in my teens; loft insulation too.  But I would not have expected the government grants that have come in to offer both, free.

We’ve taken both – no loss to us (and in fact a rediscovery of a hat stand from the crawl space in the attic).  But the plan just now is for more (and better) insulation into the attic, which should mean that we can get better use out of the room all year round.

Somewhere, in the recesses of our conversations as a couple, is the notion of self-build: where you can put the insulation in at the start.  Well.  Where you do a good job with solar panels, ground source heating and other clever tricks, that make a house much cheaper to heat when you need to.

That is the dream.  And I hope it will become the reality more.  But for now, this is where we live.  This is what we can do to make the heating better.  (I am reminded of the father character in Moonstruck, explaining why copper piping is the one to choose: “It costs money. It costs money because…it saves money.”.)

I still suspect I’ll keep to writing in bed, though.  There are some things that also warm the heart – whatever the weather.

Eco audit: only reduce

‘Only connect’ is the classic injunction by E. M. Forster – that we might reach out beyond ourselves, amongst other things.  In environmental terms, my attempt at encouraging myself starts with: only reduce.

Forster might well have been surprised at how well his phrase works in the multi-connected world of today.  But our world may well need its own encouragements to change.  Because one of the shifts that stands out the most for me, over the last two decades, is the rise of the consumer society.

Yes, you can argue that it had its roots much earlier – perhaps with baby boomers, determined to put the privations of wartime and rationing behind them.  But we don’t now seem to believe that ‘we’ve never had it so good‘.  We still seem to want…more.

Out of the reduce, reuse, recycle mantra, I’m beginning to see that reducing is much more of a challenge than it sounds.  Put things in the right recycling bins – tick.  Find another use for something? Fine.  Stop buying more things in the first place? Hmm.

It’s hard to do – because the notion of scarcity seems hardwired in us.  As does the ability to spot something new.  Both must have been everyday experiences for our ancestors – scarcity their normal place.  Spotting something new could keep you safe – or present you with an opportunity, perhaps.

However you square it, people don’t seem to need to have it explained – they know what to do.  Buy stuff. And hang on to it.

When you’re in your teens, you want new stuff, partly because of how (you hope) you’ll feel when you get it, partly of course to show that you’re keeping up with your friends.

This is why selling to people under 20 is so lucrative – you don’t really have to convince them to buy.  Plus they may have come into a little more money, if they do a part-time job AND their parents may not yet be asking them to contribute to the housekeeping costs.

I’m noticing a finance, and life stage, trajectory to all this.  Start in your teens, maybe with some good examples from your parents, or others who’ve influenced you.  Move on to student days of little money, and early working days, also without so much money.

It’s the ‘dual incomes no kids‘ stage that makes it easy to acquire – because there’s a bit more money to go round. And parenthood? You have less money – and yet more reason to spend it on your little treasures, rather than yourself.  And kids are just as single minded about Getting Things as adults – more so, in fact.

Buying second-hand can be great – often cheaper, reusing and all that – but it can also allow you to justify buying.  Nothing like a bargain to set the pulse racing.

In fact, looking back through the old blog posts revealed I’d written about this before, and what is actually going on in our bodies (hormone-wise) when we find a sought after item.  Talk about the thrill of the chase.  No wonder it’s hard to overcome the urge to acquire.

When I started thinking about environmental issues again, before the new year, reducing the amount that I buy was the one that emerged as an immediate improvement – and an immediate challenge.

There are others out there who have written books about trying to go through a year without spending.  I wasn’t setting out to do that, quite, but more to see how long I could go without contemplating scoring second-hand books, my main weakness.

About two and a half weeks, I discovered.  The local library had a box of books that were being taken out of circulation.  In fact, they were offering them for free! I still made a donation, but there it was: the combination of the word free and the availability of books.

I think I’ve gone about another three weeks since then.  And yes, it gets easier (even where it concerns books).

It’s probably a bit like giving up something for Lent – you don’t just notice the not following through, you also notice the time that’s available when you don’t have to think about it.  (Or because you are not out ‘hunting and gathering‘.)

If any of my posts so far is directed squarely at myself, it’s this one.  (There’s a next step, which is to sit down and read more of the stock that I’ve bought in before.  I’ll let you know how that goes.)

When I came up with the title, I realised it could be seen to do with slimming.  Sorry if that’s what you thought I was going to write about.

But you know what? People notice if you’ve lost weight.  There are lots of incentivising methods to help you do just that – and celebrate it. But who is watching when you choose not to buy? Who is offering encouragement? Cheering you on, even?

Maybe we have to start – as with slimming – to see if WE feel better first, before concerning ourselves with whether others notice.