Coffee.. chances are you are drinking a cup while reading this blog, while on a work break in attempt to wake up (it's mid week, it's hard I know!). The smell of coffee can be in itself a great incentive to get out of bed in the morning, and many of us (me included!) are 'coffee addicts'. Hey, I can't even put two words together in the right language before my first cup..
This addiction has helped the proliferation of many coffee chains and the culture of the takeaway coffee, and many of us are in the habit of grabbing a coffee on the way to work, or popping out of the office for one on our morning coffee breaks. Service station have coffee machines, making it easy to grab a coffee while we fuel up the car (we need fuel too, right?!). But something unifies the coffee chains, the service stations, the little shops allowing us this 'coffee convenience': Disposable coffee cups! They seem innocent, 'it's just cardboard right?' - i hear you ask. Mistake. Coffee cups are NOT recyclable: to ensure they are waterproof the card is fused with polyethylene, that cannot be separated for recycling, moreover the cups are often not even made from recycled material - as the way they are designed means one thin seam of card inside the cup comes into contact with the hot drink, meaning that they have to be made from virgin paper pulp. Hum, think about that. New paper and not about to be recycled. Statistics say 10000 coffee cups gets used in 2 minutes just in the UK! JUST IN THE UK! IN 2 MINUTES! Try scale this to include other coffee addict countries (USA? Other Europe countries drinking take aways?!). Saying this, I did came across a type of more sustainable cups at the Sea Shed Coffee & Surf: made entirely from plant materials and completely compostable. If you don't use a lid (plastic) you can be sustainable... So - it's possible! Perhaps a little more expensive, but who will pay for the environmental damages that we are doing?
Another, very simple solution, is to use a reusable cup. I am the proud owner of two reusable cups - one that fits in my car cup holder (for those fuel stops! and post surf/adventure warm up needs), and one bigger ones for my everyday needs. Added bonus - i can make my own 'take away' coffee at home saving some money as well!
The benefit of a reusable cup don't just stop at environmental benefit - some companies have incentives for you to bring your own cup so I am gonna give you two example of chains that have incentive scheme and what rewards you will get (valid in UK): Starbucks: a discount of £0.25 on your drink when you bring your own mug. Which is advantageous. Plus my local starbucks also charges me for a tall (their smaller size, and discounts it) for use in my humongous mug. So a considerable saving overall... Clements (in NI): double stamps on your loyalty card. You get a free coffee when you reach 10 stamps, if you get 2 stamps at a time... that's half price free coffee! Other chains such as Costa, Pret-a-manger, Cafe Nero and Paul bakery may have similar schemes, although I am not aware of them as I have not tried to use them personally so I don't want to give wrongful information. But go in and ask, Question your chain of choice on their ethics and what are they doing to ensure they are being as sustainable as possible. If demands for unrecyclable coffee cups decreases, maybe their production will stop. You have the power to make a difference, no matter how small you act. So now go buy yourself a pretty reusable mug that will be your daily companion for years to come! (I have one of the EcoCoffee cup and are amazing!)
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I recently came across an article about 'seaganism' - a vegan diet with seafood allowed. Doesn't seem much different to the 'pescatarian' diet to me, which is a vegetarian diet which also allows seafood on top of dairy and eggs, so basically only restricting meat consumption. I don't get it. I admit, or better confess, to have been a vegetarian for many years myself, with some flexibility whenever I returned home for short holidays, as my family found it too hard to comprehend, understand and even allow me, so had to close an eye. For various reasons, I have not been a vegetarian for a couple of years, and so I want to reassure all that this is not going to be a 'judgemental' post like many we see on the web nowadays. You eat meat, fish, dairy and eggs? So do I! However I am constantly trying to understand how to make this more sustainable. For example by eating less of all of the above, i.e. only one of them once a day, or have one or multiple vegan day a week. But back to the seafood - why is this old-school concept that eating from the sea is so sustainable still alive? We know well by now (or should) that the sea does not provide us with unlimited resources. Yes, is vast and extremely deep, and there is still so much that we don't know about it - yet we are depleting many fish stocks and we are fishing down the food web. And what about aquaculture? This is often considered a sustainable choices, farming fish so we don't deplete stocks.... but funny enough most don't realise that some fish feeds from aquaculture actually come from the meat industry, or we fish small fish (such as anchovies and sardines, which make for pretty great human food!) in quantities that are not as sustainable as many think! Not to talk about antibiotics, and the risk of farmed fish escaping and changing local gene pools, or even becoming invasive species.. There are all sort of ecological and environmental hazards associated with aquaculture. But - as you know, the aim of this blog is to provide some solutions, not just reiterate the problems. So here is how I try to be as sustainable as possible while eating seafood: - shop local. Find a local fishmonger, or a fishmarket. If you are lucky enough to live by the sea, go directly to the fishing boat when they come in, you will buy what is local and in season and support the local economy.
- Go small scale. The smaller the boats the lower the damage in my opinion and the greater the chance to help some fishermen and their family instead of funding some big company. - Variation is key. Try different fish, maybe some crustaceans, molluscs. Don't always eat the same things. Try something new, it's exciting to try out new recipes and new flavours, and you spread the - eat less of it - Get a whole fish, understand where your food comes from. Teach your kids. Take them to the market or to a fishing town/fishing harbour. I am a strong believer that the fish fingers culture and ready frozen fish fillets have taken us away from remembering where our food comes from, what our food is and was. - use the scraps. If you buy whole fish, head and bones can make great fish stock that you can freeze and use for other recipes later! - And moreover, buy only what you need, and realise that often less is more (this goes for everything...) Before you continue on, let me clarify that this is not gonna be a post about weight loss diets - so those looking to obtain a summer/bikini ready body may not find this useful, however whatever reason made you click on this link I encourage you to continue on and, hopefully, get some inspiration. I want to talk about our diets environmental impacts If you watched the documentary "Cowspiracy" you are probably already somewhat aware of the environmental impacts of our diet If you haven't, or are just in need of a refresher, here are some facts: - With increases in "wealth" , refined sugars, fats, oils and meats are increasingly common in most diets - This dietary shifts will lead to an estimated 80% increase in greenhouse gases by 2050, just around the corner (Tilman & Clark. 2014) - Non-vegetarian meals are estimated to have 1.5-2 times environmental impact compared to vegetarian meals (Reijenders & Soret 2003) - The environmental impact is due to land-use change. With an increase of demands for animal produces more land needs to be created, leading to deforestation efforts. - Already around 75% of global agricultural land is used for livestock rearing and the production of crops to feed said livestock (Foley et al. 2011). We could use less land to feed humans on the same vegetarian sources of proteins (e.g. legumes, soybeans..) - Deforestation and land-use changes are a major source of biodiversity loss, perhaps even more than climate change! (Tasser et al. 2017) Between the Easter break and being away from home and my usual routine, thus eating differently than normal I felt in need for a little detox time to kick start the healthy routine again!
I haven't actually done a juice cleanse before and I have always been quite skeptical of them, but after reading some more I decided that it would be a good way to go. Now.. with many companies out there offering juice cleanses - how do you choose? I wanted something as local as possible and with as little impact as possible. So I came across "Skinny Malinkys" - made fresh in Northern Ireland (where I currently am). |
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