Late summer

I love this time of year—when, if you turn your back for a moment, the garden gets away on you.

Today I got a fistful of fat beans and a zucchini that was making a break for marrowdom.

Tank bread

I've discovered the Tank loaf at Aro Bake.

Yes! Finally a boughten bread that meets my criteria:

1. Wholemeal
2. Reasonably priced (@ $3.80 a loaf, it works out only slightly more expensive than Vogels)
3. Not sold in plastic (it comes in a nice paper bag)

I've wanted to cut down on non-recyclable bread bags for ages. I do bake some of my own bread (using an awesome sourdough starter from a friend) but, realistically: baking all my own bread? Yeah, right!

So, chuffed with the Tank loaf.

Solutions are everywhere, once you start looking.

Individual change vs political change

After reading through the No Impact Experiment handbook this week I was thinking harder about how I could cut down on the rubbish I generate.

Because I was noticing every item I threw away, it actually crossed my mind that I could go really hard core and take my own dried peppermint leaves to work to make herb tea instead of using the imported, individually foil-wrapped teabags in the tea room.

It's not that crazy. The teabags are just dried mint and we have a ton of mint in the community garden. It would save some unnecessary packaging. It would make me feel good.

Then this same week our Sustainability group got revved up again at work. An awesome bunch of people. Someone raised the issue of the heavily packaged teabags (we've started getting a new brand recently—the kind we used to get (Twinings) aren't individually wrapped).

We decided to talk to the tea purchaser about it. Turns out, they were happy to switch back. Just like that, we saved the foil packs from 50 people's cups of tea.

Political change. A million times more useful than me bending over backwards to be just a tiny bit greener in my own life.