Day 9 - Environmentally Friendly Toothbrush and Homemade Meals

 Day 9

I was awoken bright and early by the postman delivering my order from the Ethical Superstore where I ordered some environmentally plastic free staples. I ordered a 9 pack of toilet rolls, 2 kitchen rolls, tampons (two types) and 2 environmental toothbrushes. So upon receiving the box I noticed that it was done up with sellotape (fail one), it would be great if they could use masking tape/ paper tape instead - i'll ask the company if this is possible in future..
The toilet rolls and the kitchen rolls are fantastic, only about 10p more expensive than the sainsburys toilet rolls we buy, they are made from 100% recycled paper and the packaging is 100% compostable. Perfect! They also don't have that annoying 2 minutes of struggle of trying to get the edge of the roll off, they actually have a small easily peel-able edge to pull and the rolls are quite soft. Very impressed with this brand and I see myself keeping this after the  month is up.

Upon inspection the tampons looked good, however when I opened them up I realised that each tampon was individually wrapped in plastic. The advertising for them is misleading as it states they are plastic free, however they are wrapped in plastic - I imagine they meant inside the tampon itself, as these are 100% cotton, but this is misleading none the less. So, I am a bit disappointed to find this was the case, especially when I have now bought these over tampax tampons which come with a cardboard applicator and are wrapped in paper. Just a shame they haven't got 100% cotton tampons to boot. I have contacted Natracare about this to see if they will consider using paper in future instead - as they are selling themselves as an ethical, environmentally friendly company.

Also this "Environmental Toothbrush" I bought looked great on the surface and from what I have read on most of the sites that are selling them, they seem to be 100% biodegradable and are sold as "Bamboo Toothbrush". However when I inspected them upon delivery, i noticed the bristles looked suspiciously like plastic, so I started to look deeper into the internet for information. I found out that the company who supplies them used to advertise them as 100% biodegradable, however was contacted by a fellow plastic free patron last year, who pointed out that the bristles were plastic. His supplier from China had lied to him about the content of the brush, and so he has righted this on his own website. It seems though that maybe other sites have an old description, or do not go into enough detail, as to me it seemed as though these were 100% plastic free. These do seem to be the best alternative at the moment to the conventional plastic toothbrush. However there is a supplier in Germany that makes Beechwood toothbrushes and the bristles are made from pig hair, which sounds good, but the pig hair is a by-product from the Chinese meat trade, so i'm not exactly sure I'd be willing to call this an ethical solution. I did think hmm, maybe I could make my own toothbrush out of something, but as of yet i'm lacking a decent alternative. If I find one, i'll let you know!


Okay, to the food of today! For lunch I decided to utilise a great deal of food i've gotten in the last week. So me and my partner had broad beans and bacon on multi-grain toast with honeyed figs and balsamic glaze. It was loooovely. As I have mentioned before I absolutely love broad beans, even if they are a bit of a faff (mostly because we de-shell them as the beans themselves have a much nicer flavour than with the shells).

 For dinner I decided to use the rest of the sausages, and make sausage casserole. I used a Hairy Bikers recipe, with broad beans, tinned tomatoes and a mix of different spices and seasonings (including fresh thyme from one of my herb pots!). This was great, which fed me, my partner and just enough for two lunches whilst i'm at work in the week.

 I also made some oat cookies, which I can enjoy anytime I wish and some maple and cinnamon granola, which I will be having for breakfast. If  I like it i'll make a huge batch to last me a couple of weeks. I love it because it's so simple and quick to make.

I also took a trip back up to the Farm to grab some milk, 1 litre for me and 1 litre for one of my friends who read about the milk here and decided it sounded delicious so he placed an order with me. I have a mission to transport this milk from London - Barnsley on Friday to get it to him, so that'll be fun! Especially as raw milk has to be kept cold as it contains bacteria, so you have to be careful. So i'll be grabbing a cool box and some cool packs to transport this to him - fingers crossed it works!

Anyhow, that's me for today, so until tomorrow!

Thanks for reading.