On October 1st 2007 ( which is next Monday) I a mere welsh housewife, amongst other things, intends to live for 3 months ( 12 weeks to be precise) without entering a supermarket and without putting out a rubbish bin or any recycling. My carbon footprint will be minimal. How can you do this people cry. I can and I will. I have sourced my food. My son just left for University ( thankfully he states) and so I am able to do this.
The reason I want to do this is to show that the supermarkets are actually responsible for land fill. When strawberry growers state they have lost part of the strawberry harvest through floods and the consumer in the UK now demands strawberries every week of the year I take umbrage. I DO NOT demand or expect strawberries every week of the year. The supermarket tries to sell me them every week of the year though.
How does the common man/woman get blamed for the huge amount of waste put into land fill and recycling ?
I will show hopefully that if the supermarket had not arrived neither would the land fill and recycling be the huge bind it is today. The powers that be want us to pay for getting rid of packaging we have not asked for. It has been foisted on us and now we have to pay. Town centres have been pedestrianised, which means that if you buy in the local markets you have to carry the food miles to get to the bus or your car. In town parking is expensive so we are forced into supermarket car parks and hence into supermarkets to demand strawberries every week of the year. Our Town Councils should be providing in town parking to give local shops the same chances as the supermarkets. The monopoly of the supermarkets is destroying our way of life and we are being forced through their doors. My choice is being taken away. I want the choice of which door to walk in not a tardis that once I enter their doors and they close them behind me I leave penniless and they are happy. Our towns die and we have no choice other than to enter the supermarkets. I do not want this to happen. I want to see the towns flourish and be what they always were, trading centres, centres of excellence, social meeting places.
From October 1st 2007 ( next Monday ) I shall cook all my own food from staples i.e. flour, fat, sugar, eggs, fruit, vegetables, meat and herbs, This means I shall compost all my waste fruit and vegetable peelings and my egg shells and tea. Everything else comes in paper which I can burn in my little incinerator. I have milk from the milkman who duly comes to collect the glass bottles. I cannot have cream for the four months unless someone can find me cream in a glass container. I have failed to find it. I will not have washing up liquid or conditioner, or come to think of it deodorant. I have lived without these as a child so It is not as scarey for me as it would be for some. I have sourced Fairy Soap - good old Fairy which still comes in cardboard boxes with no plastic wrapping. The Lush shop will give me solid shampoo and conditioner, wrapped in paper. I shall use fairy soap for all cleaning, together with fresh lemon juice. I shall NOT smell. I shall bake all my own bread and make my own pasta. Jamie Oliver I am going to do what you are trying to get all mothers to do and do my own washing up :)
It is impossible for young mothers to look after their children, go to work and cook properly. I have made all my own food from scratch once before but then I did not wage war on plastic and land fill at the same time. I found I was spending up to 40 hours a week cooking and preparing food for 2 people. A full time job.
I hope you will follow my progress. I am apprehensive and I have one carrier bag left in this house which I will allow myself for anything I cannot dispose of naturally. If this one carrier bag is too full at the end of the 12 weeks I will have failed. If it is not I will have survived and won. I must make lemonade and ginger beer. The one carrier bag belongs to Slimming World whose class I go to on a Tuesday night. Not for me going into Tescos to get low calorie quorn sausages though, I have to get the meat from my butcher in Neath market in my own containers, and make my own sausages. Will I lose weight, Slimming World will tell you after the 12 weeks.
NO plastic will enter this door for 12 whole weeks and no waste disposal bin will be put out for collection. NO recycling bags will be put out. I will stay clean. I will survive. I will not waste as the supermarkets do every night huge bins of food being destroyed when people go hungry. Every thing I eat will be carried from my local town Neath and from the market. That last bastion of what we once new when we lived without oil. As a child here I would watch the farmers walk their cows and sheep to the local slaughterhouse, they would put potatoes and swedes on the kitchen doorstep for favours received at harvest time collecting in the hay when every man was needed. Our pigs and chickens were well looked after and tasted superb. We killed our own meat. No one would do it for us. Our market town thrived.
Follow my progress as I survive for 12 weeks, as I hope I thrive for 12 weeks. as I gain a carbon footprint that should be the aim of people throughout Wales and beyond. We cannot afford to waste, yet the supermarkets do. I am not a part of it. I am Auntie Plastic.
