mrsbrown: (Default)
I just watched a marathon 3 episodes of "Gourmet Farmer"  Now to get out there and do the trendy foody thing - inner city style.

I'll go to the local market and I hope to buy tomatoes and strawberries. We've discovered that dried strawberries taste amazing when cooked in porridge.  Except that means the box of strawberries I processed in January (that filled half a preserving jar) are rapidly dwindling.  Based on our recent consumption, I'll need to process at least 4 boxes of strawberries.  Even better, Rose is still suspicious of dried srrawberries and refuses to eat them - more for us!

One of the major contributors to the waste that goes out of our house is tins of tomatoes.  If I make salsa it will taste better AND reduce our waste output.

Its interesting to notice that our waste has reduced to the point that we can identify the big items.  Making an effort about each of them in turn is sort of fun.

Other minor tasks for my weekend include;

Sanding the plaster in sjkasabi's laundry and doing the next coat.
Doing some more woodwork for the kitchen building
Working out if a single skin brick wall is sufficient for the fireplace and wall structure of the kitchen. (that's why I've been putting off the bricklaying)
Working out if we need to build the pastry oven at the same time as the wall of the kitchen.
Maybe going to the Werribee Zoo to see splodgenoodles and listen to mr-bassman play.
mrsbrown: (sca baby)
As you know, I'm off to New Zealand soon.

If you've been around for a while, you'll also know I'm a bit of a freak about cloth nappies and the waste associated with what I call landfill nappies.

Maybe I'm overcomplicating things, but I'd half decided to use disposable nappies for our trip and I thought I'd do some research on minimising the environmental effects of our nappy use.

I looked at an article from Choice about them, and then thought I'd see what sort of nappies are available in New Zealand, to see if I could get the ones that are more biodegradeable than others.

The first page of google links when I searched for nappies in New Zealand, were all about the evils of disposable landfill nappies and how the local council had worked out they would save on disposal costs if they subsidised families to use "modern cloth nappies". Am I going to be embarrassed to be using disposables while I'm there? The quick answer is yes, not because of how other may behave, but because I'm a rabid anti disposable landfill freak.

It's been made even harder for me by the news this week, which needs to be shouted from the rooftops, that Naples is being buried in it's own filth.. I first read that article on Wednesday or Thursday, and it was finally run yesterday and it's in the Travel section!

According to the article, "Bad administration, shady political deals and the interference of the Mafia are at the heart of the crisis."

What about the citizens taking responsibility for their own crap and at least composting * or fermenting the food scraps, so the rubbish wouldn't be putrid? And don't get me started on reducing packaging or reusing stuff.

Anyway, back to nappies. According to this article

To our knowledge there are no current laundering services specifically for nappies. It is essential that these services are set up so busy parents have a realistic option of using cloth nappies. We have written to government and local government for their support to help individuals set up laundering services or for them to provide it themselves. Not only is this a civil service that should be provided for parents and a huge environmental issue that needs to be dealt with at a higher level but local government is spending money dumping disposables. The Christchurch City Council estimates that they spend at least $220,000 per year on nappies to landfill. This money could be used to subsidise laundering services that swap soiled naps for clean ones, as many local bodies in Britain are now doing.


Hooray!!! I found it!!! What do the Greens know about nappies anyway? A nappy service in Christchurch!!! Hurrah!! Now I just have to ring them.


*btw, these compost bins look good enough to just put a pedestal on top of and use as a toilet. Buying 2 (for rotation and fallow) will set you back only a third of the cost of a commercial composting toilet set up. And if you set up an indoor earth closet with a bucket, you could empty the bucket into the compost bin. Tempting!
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