The True Cost of Bottled Water

Convenient, environmentally-damaging, expensive?

In 2009, the Australian town of Bundanoon voted to ban the sale of bottled water in an effort to reduce the use of resources and amount of plastic ending up in landfill.

On the 1^st January, 2013, a new law came into place in Concord, Massachusetts which banned the sale of bottles of water smaller than 1 litre. 

Some of the locals have declared the ban pointless because they can buy water in the neighbouring town.

I disagree.

The media impact of the Bundanoon ban in 2009 meant that GLOBAL bottled water sales dropped 10% that year. It brought the wastefulness of bottled water to the attention of people around the world.

The Environmental Issue

The environmental impact of bottled water is astonishing. The majority of water bottles can be recycled, however more than 75% of them end up in landfill. The UK is set to run out of space in landfills by 2018, but clearly recycling is still not used frequently enough to allow 13 billion plastic bottles of water to enter the waste chain each year.

One small (1 litre) plastic bottle is made of 162g of oil (from petroleum products) and SEVEN litres of water! This means the carbon footprint of one litre bottle of water is 100g of carbon dioxide (CO²), which is unacceptably high compared to 0.3g of CO² produced by the production of a litre of tap water.

The Financial Issue

Bottled water costs up to 500 times as much as water from a tap. The World Health Organisation has stated that it is not aware of any potential health benefits of drinking bottled water, so why do people buy it?

Thirsty? Bring a refillable water bottle when you go out. 

 

Marketing? Stop being such a consumer sucka (as Mr. Money Mustache would say!)

Don't let companies take you for a ride. In 2012, supermarkets admitted to selling “filtered” bottled tap water at a massive profit, something Coca-Cola received a massive amount of flak for back in 2004.

The Bottom Line

There's nothing wrong with UK tap water! Think yourself lucky to live in a country where hygienic, healthy water can be obtained freely in your own home for less than a third of a penny per litre!

And yes, I do live in an area with hard water!

So what do you think? Would the planet benefit from a ban on small bottles of water (allowing larger ones for storing water for emergencies)? It might not be possible in countries with poor sanitation, but surely if safe tap water exists it is ridiculous to pay for a plastic bottle of the stuff!

Check this out if you fancy a laugh:

Guilt Over Getting Rid of Gifts

What do you do with gifts you receive that just aren't your style? From ugly jumpers to boring DVDs, if you're anything like me you leave them gathering dust in the back corner of a drawer.

I have been trying to cut down the amount of stuff I own. I will be moving out semi-permanently in the autumn (I'll probably impose myself at home for Christmas dinner and birthdays every now and again!). I will probably be moving into some tiny student pad somewhere, possibly a room in a shared house, possibly a small flat. Either way, space will be an issue!

I want the next phase of my life to be clutter-free, so for the past few months I have been systematically donating a lot of stuff I never wear/use. If I bought it myself, I am ruthless! Haven't worn it in a year? GONE! Never going to read it again? BYE! Why did I EVER buy that?! DONATED!

When it comes to something I have been given, it's a whole new story. I am overly sentimental because so-and-so got me it, or I wore it when I did that, or it was such a thoughtful gift even if I've never used it! This is something I picked up from my Mother (sorry Mum, but you know it's true!). I/we worry that when we get rid of it, we will be hurting someone's feelings, or getting rid of the memory of someone or something that happened.

How can things have so much emotional hold over me? I know a lot of people have this issue. To combat it, I have been trying to use my normal approach of assessing the object's worth to be, rather than the worth of the person who gave it to me!

I like to follow William Morris' famous advice:

“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful”

I am sure that the person who gave it to me doesn't want me to feel burdened by guilt! If you flip it on it's head, you probably wouldn't mind someone getting rid of something you gave them that they didn't actually want.

I dunno. What do you guys think? Do you feel like a horrible person for even contemplating donating a gift, or are you a dedicated declutterer?

Keep Britain Tidy!

Yesterday I decided to go for a walk. Inspired by Ilona's rubbish walks, I took a couple of bin bags and a pair of rubber gloves with me, in order to pick up any rubbish I found. (Mum came with me as the official “holder of clean stuff and photographer”).

I didn't get far before I found my first piece of plastic. In fact, I didn't walk very far all day. I walked a grand total of 0.4 miles before I had to turn back.

Why did I turn back so soon? I simply couldn't carry any more rubbish!

My lane is a single track, poorly maintained road running through dairy fields and cropland. It is not highly populated or busy with traffic, yet I collected 2 bin liners full of rubbish.

On the face of it, the lane didn't look too bad. I'd seen an old fertiliser bag on the side of the road and a plastic bag attached to a bramble, but nothing much else. The problem was that it was all half-hidden in the foliage of the hedges.

Amongst other things, I found: 

• A half-full soy milk carton – OH, THE SMELL! 
• 5 coffee cups 
• 2 Red Bull cans 
• A beer bottle
• A ring-holder for cans – prime choking material for wildlife 
• Agricultural rubbish – black liners from hay bales and fertiliser bags.
• Lots and lots of clear plastic – mainly cellophane. 
• Several cola bottles, including one half-full 2 litre bottle! 
• Two plastic bags full of soy milk cartons.. (this was definitely the strangest find, but they were in a ditch so it was a deliberate dumping)

Why do people feel the need to fling things out of the window as they drive through the beautiful Cornish countryside? It's polluting and damages the health of wildlife. The next free day I have I'm going back out to clear the next section of lane of rubbish. I WILL get round my 4 mile circuit!

Have you ever collected rubbish? Would you give it a go?

CHALLENGE: Best of British – What I Learned

Thank you for all your comments over the past few days! 

This challenge was an absolute eye-opener. I couldn't believe how heavily I rely on imported foods for every day living! Although I wasn't quite as naïve as some of my friends, who wondered why I couldn't have tea since it is an “English heritage”!

What I Will Take Away

Whilst this diet will be too restrictive to keep up, until I build up my own resources anyway, I would like to take away a few goals for the year. Firstly, I will grow much more of my own food in the future. When I get my own place I would love to keep chickens for eggs, but that is a long way off yet. In the meantime I'll get my hands dirty in the garden!

If I had known during 2011 that I would decide to undertake this challenge in January 2012, it would have been prudent to grow beans and can them in preparation for winter protein. This year I will definitely preserve home-grown food, as I would love to become more self-sufficient.

I will make an effort to eat “mainly” British. If most of the ingredients are British (for example Hovis uses 100% British wheat), that will be a good compromise for me. I will eat seasonal vegetables grown in the UK, which will save me money as well as reducing my carbon footprint!

Eating entirely British is very difficult and I don't really recommend trying it. My challenge to you is to pay attention to where you food comes from in the next couple of weeks. What surprised you? Maybe try to incorporate more 100% British meals (or wherever you live). It'll save you money (when eating seasonally) and be kinder to the planet!

CHALLENGE: Best of British – The Frugality of Eating Local

Firstly, a big thank you to Pamela over at Frugal Homemaking, who wrote about my challenge in her blog. She mentioned that even meat has seasons, which is something I hadn't considered before. Meat eaters could have a problem trying to find British lamb before spring is sprung, whilst many species of fish can only be caught at specific times of year. Just more difficulties to add to the list!


The Frugality of Eating Local
Onto my thoughts for today. You may think I've been paying over the odds for foods just to ensure they are British. Whilst that may be the case for some foods (HONEY = £3.99 for a jar from Devon, 99p for Tesco Value honey jar of the same size!!), I've found that in general it is actually enabling me to save money!

Meal planning

This challenge is very restrictive, especially as a vegetarian, so it is important I have in my head an idea of what I will eat for the day. A typical day's worth of food has been:

  - Porridge for breakfast (Scottish oats and Cornish milk) – 23p (~5p for the porridge, 18p for the milk)

  - Spinach, leek and cheese omelette with a salad for lunch (fried in British butter to avoid the unclear origins of vegetable oil) – 99p (~20p for the spinach, 9p for the leek, 25p for the cheese, 35p for the eggs, 10p for the lettuce)

  - Apple for a snack (from Kent) - ~9p

  - A big bowl of vegetable stew for dinner (carrots, potatoes, parsnips, swede – no salt as Cornish sea salt is bloody expensive, although Pamela mentioned a book about eating locally where the authors made their own salt from seawater) - ~40p (~5p for carrot, 10p for potato, 10p for parsnip, 15p for swede)

  - Yogurt and honey for a snack – 65p (~40p for yogurt, 25p for spoonful of honey)

To be honest, most days have had very similar menus! It is hard to be creative on the narrow scope of this challenge, especially when I was fitting food in around two jobs! An entire day's food for £2.36 can't be bad though!

Seasonal eating

Whilst eating locally, you have to eat seasonally. Whatever's in season is cheapest. We all know this, yet I for one have rarely paid it any attention. A simple rule is that if you can find it in your local farmer's market, you'll know that it is seasonal, fresh and cheap. If you eat winter vegetables now, and stock up on British strawberries in the summer, you'll save yourself a bundle over the year. (If you have your own vegetable patch you're already miles ahead – FREE seasonal food!!)

No junk food!

Pretty much NO junk food snacks are 100% British, so I've not been wasting any money on that! Walkers crisps are made with British potatoes, but the oil and flavourings are likely to be imported. Chocolate is made from cocoa beans, which grow in Africa. Lots of cakes are made using palm oil from Africa or Asia, something which I will not be returning to after this week is over because of its devastating effect on the environment. 

For those who want to make an entirely British sugary snack, why not make biscuits from 250g butter, 140g Silverspoon sugar (the only company I've found to use British sugar beet rather than imported sugar cane to make sugar), 1 egg yolk and 300g plain flour. Bake at 180°C or gas mark 4 for 12-15 minutes.

Savings of the Past

We could learn a lot by revisiting old recipes from World War II, when imported fruit and veg was almost non-existent and people had to make do with what they had. It can be very cheap to survive on a diet of local meats and seasonal vegetables. If you had to survive entirely on your own country's food, what would you need to change to do it? Start a vegetable plot? Preserve food? Raise animals? What do you already do to eat local?

CHALLENGE: Best of British – The Difficulties of Eating Local

The past few days I have been eating only British food. This means no tea, rice, pasta, beans, couscous, sweet potatoes or chocolate. The salt in processed food is almost certainly not British, so these are a no-no! It is not enough to be simply made in the UK, the foodstuff must also have entirely British ingredients.

Over the past couple of days I have met several difficulties. The challenge is much harder than I initially thought it would be. I encourage anyone to try it however, to learn more about the food that goes onto their plates!

The Veggie Dilemma

The challenge of eating entirely local would be much simpler if I ate meat. I've been a vegetarian for almost a year now, getting most of my protein from beans and dairy products. Different beans come from different places, but most beans are grown in the Americas, Asia, Africa or the Mediterranean, so unless I found British varieties (unlikely in winter) they were off the menu!

Instead I have resorted to a lot of cheese and milk, with an omelette pretty much daily! A vegan would have major difficulties in getting enough British protein, especially at this time of year.

Location, Location, Location

Some supermarkets are very good and let you know where all of your fruit and veg come from. It can, however, be very hard to determine where the ingredients in various products come from. If you are eating British, make sure you look out for added sugar, salt, oils, etc., which are probably manufactured on the cheap in other countries!

Surprisingly Hard to Find!

Retailers go for cheapness of product rather than worrying about sourcing locally. Things that are commonly grown in the UK are bizarrely difficult to find! My local grocer only had mushrooms from Holland, whilst the supermarkets had British ones! Apples are seasonally available in the UK, yet even at this time of year most of them are grown in New Zealand!

It is WINTER!

It's cold, it's wet, and it's no good for growing fruit! There is very little British fruit available at this time of year. I found some DELICIOUS apples (Cameo variety, if you're interested), but of course there are no berries available until the summer. My beloved bananas don't grow here at all (well, they do in the Eden Project but they're not for sale).

Fortunately there are several vegetables ripe for munching at this time of year. As this calendar shows, it is peak carrot season! I've also been eating leeks, parsnips and cabbage, and cauliflower is around pretty much all year.

Lack of Caffeine

Caffeine is found in tea, coffee, chocolate and cola. None of these things grow in the UK, which made for a steep drop in my caffeine intake! It's not the withdrawal symptoms I had when I stopped drinking gallons of tea after my finals (headaches all day - I drank A LOT of tea!), but I've been feeling a lot more sleepy!

I feel like the grasshopper who sang all summer and is paying the price now that winter's here! I will definitely be getting my vegetable patch to work for me this year! Come back tomorrow for another post about this dratted challenge! :)

CHALLENGE: Best of British – Eat Local

It began with a debate

My family were eating dinner. My sister and father had fish, whilst my mother and I had vegetable fingers. I pointed out that their cod stocks are being heavily overfished and commercial fishing had a devastating impact on the environment.

My Dad said that was all very well, but what about the damage caused by the Mediterranean chickpeas and American haricot beans we were eating? The food miles would be in the thousands for each item on our plates!

Food miles

How much of what is on your plate is actually local? We eat food from all over the globe without a second thought; bananas from India, sugar from Brazil, peanuts from China. It travels thousands of miles, often by air, to reach shops while it is still fresh.

The government estimates that food transport to and around the UK accounts for around 15 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions every year. That's more than the entire carbon output of several small countries!

The Challenge

I decided that for a week I will eat only British produce. This means no cane sugar, no tea or coffee (even Tregothnan tea, grown in Cornwall, is blended with imported Indian leaves), no peanut butter and a whole lot of label checking. Only things that are grown in the UK or made of 100% British ingredients are allowed.

I started on Thursday and found the challenge to be a lot harder than it sounds! I'll write more about the difficulties of it tomorrow!

Ten Ways to Save the Planet for Free

Buy this energy saving gadget, eat extortionate organically grown vegetables. 

 

We are constantly being sold expensive products in order to try and reduce the enormous burden we place on the planet. Whilst I would definitely recommend some of these (low-wattage light bulbs, for example), there are many ways we can reduce waste and minimise consumption for free, which may well have more of an impact anyway! It is one of my New Year's Resolutions to implement all of the following methods wherever possible, and I hope you'll join me.

1. Recycle – Yes, yes, you can recycle your paper, cans, clothes and plastic at home, but recycling goes deeper than that. Can you repurpose things that you no longer want into something else? Frugal Down Under is amazing at turning old things into beautiful new gifts and items for the home. You can find a home for a lot of unwanted possessions on Freecycle. Use a comparison website to see who will give you the most money for recycling your old mobile phone, either for yourself or for charity.
2. Re-use plastic bags! – Shops in Wales charge a fee for plastic bags even at supermarkets now and it's only a matter of time before the rest of the UK follows suit. Re-use plastic bags you already have (for free), or invest in a few Bags For Life which can be replaced when they wear out. I travelled to Germany about six years ago and I was so impressed to see that people take along their own containers to buy fruit and veg, rather than using the little plastic bags we have. I can't believe this hasn't caught on here yet, so let's start doing it today!
3. Grow your own – Fresh, organic vegetables can be easily grown. The initial outlay for seeds and tools will be easily compensated by the amount you save later in the year by eating your own crops. Plan what you are going to grow – there are multitudes of websites to help with this (use one based in your own country). Dig out a vegetable patch, or turn over the soil of last year's patch if you already have one. You can begin planting in March. Use your waste vegetable matter (raw) to begin composting for a great fertiliser in a year's time. (See my beginner's guide to composting).
4. Turn it off! – Leaving a laptop on standby overnight uses 15-40 watts an hour, depending on whether the battery is charging. This alone will cost you a pound or two a week, which soon adds up when you think of all the other red lights blinking in the dark in your home.
5. Print sparingly – Print only when you have to, and always use both sides of the paper. You can even set documents to print two sheets per side, which is usually easily legible.
6. Don't buy bottled water – The Mother Nature Network states that bottled water results in 1.5 million tonnes of plastic each year and less than 20% of bottles are actually recycled. With prices of up to £1 per litre, bottled water can be nearly as expensive as petrol!
7. Short showers – Showers are viewed as less wasteful but try putting the plug in one day to see how much water you actually use. Aim to halve it.
8. Look after your possessions – Perform the required maintenance tasks, keep items clean and learn how to fix it when it is broken. Cars can actually use significantly less fuel if the oil is changed regularly and they are looked after properly. (See my post on hypermiling, the art of making fuel go further).
9. Get on your bike and ride – How long does it take you to drive to work? If you live within five miles of your workplace it will take less than 20 minutes to pedal yourself there. That is INCLUDING that great big hill on the way there, and think how much fun it'll be whizzing down it on the way home!
10. On-line banking – Stop the unread bank statements from cluttering up your home. You can keep a real-time eye on what's going in and out of your account using online banking. Make sure you have up-to-date anti-virus and firewall software installed. For more security advice, read this website.

Ten small ways to save money, reduce waste and save energy. Ten easy ways to make a difference. Join me in my mission to reduce my impact on the planet in 2012!

Unfestive

I just got back from town. I drove there happily singing Christmas songs to myself, but came back moodily staring over the steering wheel.

I was hoping to pick up a few bits I need to make my Christmas presents. The plan was to slowly mill around, absorbing the beginnings of the festive cheer whilst picking up some bargains. Town was packed, and it's a Tuesday afternoon! I had to park sooo far away from the shops to get a free parking space (hey, I could use that £4!) and wandered down into the city centre.

Slowly picking my way through the crowds, I went to the market. I'm making my young cousin a stuffed toy and needed fabric. I couldn't find any patterned polycotton for less than £9 a metre!! What?! I only need about that but it'd be cheaper to BUY a toy at that price!

So then I thought I'd go to the charity shops and find some skirt that I could cut up and use. In Plymouth the Red Cross shop was having a £1.99 or under sale a couple of weeks ago, but I didn't know if we had one of those in Truro so I went to Oxfam. The cheapest thing I could find in there was £4.99, and it looked as though it had cost about that to buy new!! Most of the stock was priced around £10 or £15! Since when do charity shops have prices as high as the highstreet??

I was getting disenchanted by the whole affair as walking through town makes you feel like you should be spending hundreds of pounds on each family member or else you're a terrible person. I actually heard someone say, “I got ... for ..., but I still have to spend another £30 at least”. Not “I would like to get them something they'd like”, but “I have to spend this much on person X”. I'm sure I've thought similar things in the past too, but if you stop and think about it, that's an awful way to look at Christmas. Even if you are not religious but celebrate it for the traditions like me, the spirit of Christmas is still the same, and it ain't about the £££!

The Good, the Bad and the New Job

Everything's up in the air at the moment. I'm supposed to be starting a research job but it's a new company and they're still in the process of sorting out funding so I have no confirmed start date. It could be next month or in several months! In the meantime I've been working in a hotel (chambermaiding) but the hours are starting to decline now that the summer's officially over.

So I decided to get an evening job! I am now working three or four evenings a week in the local Chinese (two villages over, but still closer than the hotel!). I had a trial shift last night and it was a nice place to work. It's bloody difficult from one respect though – you have to learn the numbers for each different item (there are ~85) AND how much it costs! Eeek! I kept having to turn the menu round so I could look it all up! Apparently you pick it up really quickly though.

My black trousers for work were getting a bit raggedy, so I thought I'd keep those for the hotel and get some new ones for waitressing. I took myself off to town with £15 in my pocket. I tried on a few different pairs but the ones I settled on (and fit best) were only £6!

Walking towards the checkout with my trousers I felt the strangest sensation though. It was a large shop with a lot of different clothes, all fairly cheap compared to the high street shops. As I was walking through, the voice in my head started up again.

You could treat yourself with the money you've saved.

I was tempted but resisted. It almost felt like I SHOULD spend it though, since I'd allocated it towards buying clothes. But then later I was given a £10 tip from work. This was too much for my fragile will to take. I blew it on an evening out with The Boyfriend. I felt so guilty even whilst I was spending it. Argh, I'm so frustrated now!

Earlier in the year I told myself that all money I earned from tips I would be allowed to spend outside of the budget, but I think I've been spending it without really thinking about what I'm doing. It's this sort of wasteful spending that was one of the problems that got me into this mess!

So, new rule: All tips must be saved in a jar as a temporary emergency fund. Whilst I'm paying off debt I can't really start saving properly, but this can be a basic back-up in case the car breaks down, the hours get reduced even further at work, or I lose my job completely.

Umbrellas Make You Poor and Lonely

I hate umbrellas.

Umbrellas are wielded by selfish people desperate to carve themselves three feet of space on a busy pavement with no regard for the eyesight of others. Do NOT get me started on people using those five foot golf umbrellas in towns...

Even excluding their antisocial properties, I put it to you that umbrellas are the opposite of frugal. If you live in the UK you're used to being pelted with rain. But think; when was the last time it was raining but NOT windy? Watching people wrestling with inside-out umbrellas is one of the best parts of a rainy day! However, turn an umbrella inside out a few times and it's ruined.

Alternatives? Invest in a quality raincoat (and even waterproof trousers if you want to keep extra dry). It will you save money in the long run and you can't look any worse than the brolly-tamers.

You're also far less likely to blind me.

Beating the Voice in my Head

I sometimes find myself slipping back into the mindset of “well, what difference will £10 make?”. If someone suggests going for a meal, a little voice clears its metaphysical throat in the back of my mind and whispers “it's not like you do it every day”.

This week's persuasive extravaganza is the annual local fair, with it's £2-a-go rides. When my sister and I were young we'd have to beg our parents to take us (two kids multiplied by several rides really adds up!). Whilst it's always been a part of my childhood, I no longer want to waste a day's wages being flung about by some nausea-inducing behemoth.

The thing I like best is the atmosphere and smells of the fair, so I've decided to take £1 with me (for some fresh doughnuts for myself and The Boyfriend)! When I get there I always want to join friends on rides and persuade myself that it's a rare treat. My friend asked us to meet him there but I don't want him to wonder what was the point if we refuse to go on the rides. I guess I just need to talk to him about it because I must do this to prove to myself that I can enjoy events without blowing my budget!

The main tip about impulsivity in general is to stop using your debit card. If your budget is £30 for the week, only withdraw £30. Leave your debit card at home and don't even think about using a credit card instead!