The Green Diaries

It's been an interesting week trying to buy household products and food only made from recyclable packaging. A mixed bag. Literally. For example, I just made a rocket (arugula) salad with fresh mozzarella. The rocket I bought from Waitrose last week was in a recyclable bag made from recycled plastic. However, the rocket I bought from Sainbury's today was in a bag that did not have the recyclable sign, nor was it made from recycled plastic. The Sainsbury's mozzarella was equally guilty. However, Sainsbury's does use some bags that are recyclable, mainly for their organic products. Less confusing were the products in cardboards boxes/cartons and aluminum packaging. All clearly recyclable. And almost all of the plastic packaging we bought was recyclable apart from a few random items we bought at Marks and Spencers and the lunch spot Eat. Things like salad containers that looked like they were candidates for the recycling pile turned out not to have any recycling symbols...

Just found this hep-cool green blog. Lots of good green references and shopping tips. Greenloop Lots of recycling this weekend. Ralph made me clean out my stash of plastic bags which I have such guilt about releasing back into the world. They seem so inocuos in our broom closet. But Westminster Council has installed a new bag recylcing container so now we can guilt-free get rid of them knowing they are going into recycling loop. When we got there with our bag full of bags we found a like-minded yuppy doing the same things. Bonding in at the recyling depot in W2. We've been really really good about not using shopping bags - we either stuff already used bags in ours pockets before we go to the store or use our durable canvas style bags. But still a few sneak through every now when we find oursleves bagless and in need of stuff. It amazing the interest from grocery employees who really dig the fact that we bring our own bags. One French woman who works at the little corner store near ...

This winter, my husband and I decided we were going to go green. We were already slightly eco-friendly but there was a lot of room for improvement. And when my mother-in-law gave us a book on ethical living we realised how ignorant we were on just about everything to do with sustainability. Which was a bit of a shock as I always considered myself a mother-earth-loving, modern gal with my cool, retro reusable shopping bags, my willingness to walk miles for a recyling bin, my loathing of everything SUV (they are just so ridiculous, clunky and ugly) and my preference for walking and cycling over anything with a combustible engine.  But The Good Life by Leo Hickman was a real eye-opener. Everything we did seemed to need a review. Cleaning, travel, shopping, restaurant selections, getting from A to B...everything. No more leaving the water running when brushing the teeth, no more taking cabs, recycling everything possible, no more asparagus shipped from Chile, no more meat with every...