Eco Family Life in Lockdown

I’ve been struggling to write a blog post for a while as I’ve felt like being eco-friendly has taken a bit of a backseat whilst we’ve all struggled with the challenges of lockdown. Plastic seems to be entering our house again in abundance, something which I feel a bit guilty about. As we’ve been shielding (and look set to pretty much continue once the official shielding ends) we’re almost relying entirely on supermarket deliveries and the amount of plastic bags we’ve ended up with is crazy. Our last Tesco delivery had single items like a packet of biscuits put on its own in a carrier bag. So I’ve been trying to concentrate on the positives and the small things that we have been able to do:

Growing our own veg has meant we’ve not bought any plastic wrapped lettuce, and we’re getting a reasonable crop from our runner beans and mange tout.

We’ve used our car about 4 times since March! We didn’t use it a great deal before lockdown but definitely more than we have been.

We’ve discovered some great local shops that have really helped us out with deliveries and we’ll definitely continue to use them.

Our consumption levels have dropped quite dramatically. We’ve had several family birthdays over lockdown and not being able to go out to shop means I’ve tended to give fewer but, hopefully, more thoughtful presents.

We recently reorganised my daughter’s room – she’d been sharing with her brother and when he moved into his own room her room simply stayed the same. We managed to refresh the room without spending a penny. The bunk bed was dismantled and turned into a single bed, my mum had some vintage curtains which fitted the window, and I crocheted a blanket using up the odds and ends of yarn I had (my one and only completed lockdown project!)