Don’t Ditch The Tupperware – Reuse It!

A month or so ago there was an article in the Guardian about making eco friendly changes to your day and whilst there were lots of good ideas I was concerned that the article was encouraging readers to go out and buy lots of new, eco friendly kit. In fact, quite often articles about “going green” seem to be painting it as an aspirational lifestyle requiring the purchase of lots of new things. I think this is all wrong. Excessive consumerism is what got us into this mess in the first place. We should be looking to see what we’ve already got that we can reuse or re-purpose before going out and buying something new. So don’t ditch the Tupperware. Keep it and use it for your sandwiches, take it to the supermarket to put your ham or cheese in and once it’s no longer good enough to put food in use it for storage – buttons, nails, Lego, whatever, just don’t get rid of it until it’s absolutely no longer usable.

Here are a few of the ways we’ve tried to make our day a bit more eco-friendly:

Morning shower: try bar soaps and shampoos, they’re much cheaper than liquid versions and tend to last longer. We each have our own bar of soap to avoid the cries of “eerghh, Mummy, there’s a hair on it”. Alternatively, try finding somewhere that sells shower gel and shampoo refills so that you can reuse your bottles.

Breakfast: if you’ve got a local milkman this is one of the quickest and easiest ways to make your breakfast more eco-friendly. Our milkman also delivers fruit juices in glass bottles, although these are a bit more expensive so we only get them once in a while.

Travelling to work and school: I’ll start by admitting that we are very lucky that we live within walking distance of school. We also have pretty good public transport links to the local towns. My husband used to drive to the park and ride but now takes the bus into the city and walks the remainder of the way to work. Getting a monthly bus pass means that we save about £80 a month . Obviously it might not be an option for everyone but look into your public transport options as we were surprised by how much cheaper it worked out.

Lunch: taking a packed lunch can save lots of single use plastic and money. We wrap sandwiches in foil or paper bags or pop them straight into a sandwich box.

Tea time: meal planning has been one of the best things I’ve done and has dramatically cut our food waste, plus the weekly shop is much easier to budget for. I try to include some meals that will stretch over two nights so that I can save time and use less energy by reheating leftovers in the microwave.

Washing up: ok, so this does require buying a new washing up brush when the old one has had it, but it’s relatively inexpensive to buy the wooden handled brushes with replaceable heads. We refill our washing up liquid at the local eco friendly shop. I’ve been cutting down on kitchen roll by cutting up old towels and t-shirts (my son’s old school polo shirts are especially good) to use as cloths for wiping up any mess and spills.

Bedtime: I don’t wear a lot of make up so I didn’t get through many bags of cotton wool but I’ve had a go at making my own reusable make up pads by cutting circles out of an old towel. I used pinking shears to try and prevent fraying but I think, if you had time it would be best to blanket stitch round the edges as mine are getting very frayed. Again we all use our bars of soap and a good old flannel (which is also great for a bit of light exfoliating).

I always read before going to bed and the Husband and I are both bookworms. We used to buy far more books than we had room for, and whilst I am still tempted to buy books we’ve both rediscovered the library which is a much more economical and sustainable way of fuelling our reading addiction.

Some of our eco-friendly kit, including one of my mum’s Tupperware boxes which is probably as old as me!