Letting the side slip with reducing plastic and food airmiles

I've been in the UK for a week, repossessing our family home. Tenants have just left everything they didn't want and it's now my responsibility to remove everything, sadly it will all go to landfill. I wasn't in the mood, nor did I have time to sort through the full bins they left outside and all the waste from the house was swiftly removed by the removal firm who have piled it up by the side of the house until I rent a skip.

Back in Dubai, extremely tired after a night flight and the stress of the week and having to take the cat for her travel injections, I did a quick shop.

Whilst I had my reusable bags in my car, I didn't have my food nets or an old plastic bag to pack my meat in separately from the rest of the chilled foods.

No apologies for buying a plastic container with pre sliced carrots in at double the price. I suffer with chronic pain and having spent the week removing 101+ screws and nails from the walls of the house, I am suffering and can't hold a pen at the moment, let alone peel and chop carrots.

Having brought back with me in my case some Gluten Free cakes (I'm wheat free) that I can't buy over here, it made me look at the air miles my food has travelled.

I don't normally shop in Waitrose in the UK or Dubai as I find it too expensive, but we have little choice here other than Carrefour and I couldn't take the cat with me to a mall, so Waitrose it was while she was at the vets nearby.

Some foods have travelled quite some distance, others were at least packaged in the UAE, but I have no idea where they are from originally and some foods are actually grown and made locally. I should really make more of an effort to purchase locally grown/made foods and with my husband working in the food industry over here, he should be able to tell me more.

Risotto rice from???? Packaged in the UK

New Zealand

Produced in the UK for the UAE market

Pate from the Czech republic

Beetroot from ???? Packaged in the UK

Ecuador

Smoked salmon from ???? Packaged in the UAE

Yogurt made in the UAE

Vine tomatoes grown in the UAE, sadly in plastic packaging

Do you know where your food comes from and how many air miles it takes to reach your plate?

Unfortunately living in a desert not much is grown here and whilst products can be made and packaged here, produce still has to be flown in.

Did you know Marks and Spencer actually import British milk to the UAE?

Coffee shop Christmas disposable cups - why i don't use them

Yes I love Christmas and all things Christmas related and I love coffee shops. But what I don't love is the disposable cups designed for takeaway drinks.

I use my own coffee cup for take aways, regardless of the coffee shop I use.

Most chains have a Christmas reusable cup out now, but I don't need to buy a new one, the one I have is perfectly adequate.

I have an issue with coffee shops in Dubai regardless of the chain. Every time I request a coffee to drink in, they automatically reach for a disposable cup.

This was obviously drunk here by a previous customer.

I've learnt to place my order as follows (size) (type of drink) and automatically add 'in a ceramic mug and don't warm it'

In the UK I always get asked 'to drink in or take away' but Dubai doesn't work like that. I think it saves on the staff having to wash up as it's easier to scoop disposable cups up and put them in the bin.

I stop regularly at the local petrol station for a latte, using my own cup. I often pick up a banana at the same time.

Whilst I ordered my coffee, asked for a banana, went to the counter and paid, then back to collect my coffee, this had happened.

Not only was my banana in a plastic bag, it was then placed in a plastic bag.

Sometimes I just give up.........

Going Green in Dubai and recycling

Dubai is getting a little greener when it comes to recycling, but the onus is 100% on the individual and without much encouragement I'm afraid all waste is dumped as general waste.

I do my best to reduce the amount of packaging I use when shopping and we have a handy little shop within a 2 min walk from our house that is manageable even in the height of summer when it's 45c to walk to.

It's a battle though to walk out the shop like this, vegetables in hand. They try to put them in individual bags when weighing and then into one bag at the till. I really have to fight them every time on this.

This also cuts down on me needing to use my car and for when more shopping is needed I can ride my bike to the local supermarket 10 mins away, although I doubt I'll be doing that in the middle of summer.

I bought food nets from Lakeland, use a canvas bag for my shopping and buy larger vegetables frozen, as they retain the nutrients and cuts down on waste, expense and packaging than if I were to buy a whole cauliflower, broccoli and beans. 

I still have to battle the staff not to scan and bag. If they calmed down on assuming we are all in a rush and didn't ask us for our store card as we're loading the conveyor belt and gave customers a bit more time to get their reusable bags out, I'm sure more would be done to cut down on waste. 

There are recycling bins at the larger supermarket, but often full to over flowing and the malls all have small recycling centres for consumable waste when you're out and about.

Carrefour now offer lanes for service if you're reusing bags, but I suspect as most people in Dubai don't really care too much they'll probably just purchase a new recycling bag each visit as they can skip the longer queues. 

Spinneys (mainly Waitrose products) offer a plastic bag recycling service where customers can drop excess bags or collect a used one. I use this when I've purchased meat, unless I have a spare canvas bag I can use.

There is still a lot the supermarkets and shops could do to reduce waste. The till receipts are not made from recyclable paper and are often only printed on one side. With receipts having to be printed in both English and Arabic, a simple coffee in a ceramic mug from Costa is twice the length of my phone.

I keep my 3 reusable cups by the front door to grab when we go out to reduce the amount of waste we use with disposable mugs.

But why do the coffee shops give you a disposable mug automatically, even though you've said you want to drink in?

The new houses on our street have these new bins outside, I've not seen these before and will be making inquiries, our landlords (a building company) don't offer this service and I suspect it's an additional paid for service.

South Africa - Waste - reusing and recycling.

I'm currently in South Africa. I've really noticed the extremes of waste and recycling in Pretoria. From Starbucks to the townships and how those throw away items by some are a source of income to others. There's a lot more that can be done though. Houses have recycling bags for collection, but I've witnessed on many occasions both general waste and recycling being tipped into the same bin.

Preventable waste

Coffee cup in Starbucks, pre warmed with hot water, something they do also in Dubai and irritates the life out of me, the cost of heating the water and then just tipping it down the sink. They also automatically serve in a paper cup unless you ask for a ceramic one, even when you say 'to drink in'

Fast food take away. Box for the burger and put in a paper bag along with sauces and a tonne of paper napkins. Why put it in a bag when you're eating in? I've noticed more places using paper straws, but they just don't work with coke, it fizzes everywhere. Again all fast food places, all around the world.

Recycling and reusing

I love how these jeans have been up-cycled into flower pot holders. The weather in South Africa is perfect for this and I guess it would work the same in Dubai, not so sure how long this would last in the UK though.

Reused

This old car tyre and kids bike make a great feature in the garden.

Repurposed

Old wooden pallets made into book cases, coffee tables and planters. The workshop is on site on the side of the road, 

Then this. General household waste dumped on the side of the road, on the edge of every township. You see people picking through the waste for plastic bottles and cans that can be sold for recycling.

People walk for miles daily to collect the waste paper and bottles from the sides of the roads and go through people's bins at the end of their drive to sell to the recycling depots in order to make a living.

Recycling in Dubai

I'm not really sure what the deal is here in Dubai with recycling in Dubai. We have two wheelie bins outside the front gate a black one for general waste and a green one for recycling. 

The refuse collection comes every night around 9pm to empty the bin and re line it with a black bag. However they only empty the bin if it's full.

The neighbours regularly add rubbish to our bins if theirs are full and it seems to be an acceptable thing to do.

It's also perfectly normal to leave any unwanted larger items outside side your gate, such as furniture and other larger items.

These are often taken by the maids and gardeners and when we left a door outside the hinges and handles were removed for scrap by one collector and then the door taken later that day by someone else.

The gardener puts the grass and plant cuttings in either bin and our attempts at recycling tins, cans, paper and cardboard seem to be a pointless exercise as when the wheelie bins are collected they get thrown into the same lorry. People do however go through the recycling bins and recover cans and plastic bottles, I assume to sell on somewhere.

We have a collection of newspapers and leaflets thrown over the gate daily. the local free newspaper 7 days is very informative and I recycle them by making pots for sewing seeds in. We no longer get the newspapers and have since moved house, but the number of leaflets hasn't decreased.

 We also use 2 large bottles of water every week for drinking and cooking in, the tap water is brown and warm. I am still trying to find an alternative use for them, let me know if you have any ideas.
They're no good for growing plants in as the soil in plastic containers reaches 50c and the plants don't survive. (we've tried it)

 We could cut down a bit more with our recycling and although this looks like a lot of cold drinks in the fridge, that photo was taken after a food shop and will last 4-6 weeks when we don't have visitors and we do drink squash not just drinks from cans.

We take our own bags to the supermarkets but unless you pay attention they still pack into the free plastic bags anyway, leaving me to empty them and leave them behind.

There are clothing banks, often outside the mosques and some shopping malls and centres have recycling bins for batteries, energy light bulbs and mobile phones.

I'm also struggling to find places where I can drop unwanted goods off at and food that is nearing it's end date. It's not something we had an issue with in South Africa, everything was recycled and it was easy to do so. I guess this is just something I need to do a bit more research into.

Since moving to our new house the other side of Dubai, we've only been issued with 1 green bin which is for general waste, but I have now found somewhere to recycle cans, papers and plastic at our local Carrefour where I shop every week and we I have cut down on the amount of sugary drinks I have and the tap water here is drinkable if not still a bit warm, so only using one of the large bottles every 2 weeks or so.

It's been 7 years since we left the UK now and I still get cross at the lack of recycling and the amount of waste over here in Dubai. When I'm back in the UK, I have purple and pink bags for plastic and paper and a food bin that I use religiously. There's no way Im recycling food waste out here though, could you imagine the stench in the summer when temps reach 50c?

My Sunday Photo - Week 128 K is for Khalas

Khalas in Arabic means enough, no more, STOP.

I find myself saying it more and more these days.

To the gardener who sweeps the path with the hose, water is expensive.

To the repair man who keeps finding excuses as to why he couldn't come and fix the air con.

To the cat who is moulting everywhere.

To my husband who keeps saying how hot it will be soon.

To the bag packer in the supermarket who puts my eggs and bread in a bag with the raw meat and a bottle of bleach.

Everyone seems to think I'm in a hurry here in Dubai, that'll I complain if they don't pack my bags at the speed of light and throw everything back in my trolley and try to get me back to my car faster than Usain Bolt.

Just stop, I've had enough, there's no queue at the till, I've already asked to pack my own bags, I've already said I don't want the free plastic bags each filled with only one or two items.

I had a mini melt down in Carrefour yesterday. I bought a lemon, before I knew it, it was put in a bag and the label attached, after I'd asked him to stick the label on the lemon. It was a forgotten item after we'd returned to the car with the rest of the shopping. At the till it was put in another bag while I got my purse out to pay.

Khalas, no more, stop with all the waste. I DON'T WANT ALL THESE BAGS and I took the lemon out of the 2nd bag and as I put my purse away, the bag packer just looked at me and put it back in the bag.

Who actually uses gadgets they buy?

I'm assuming, that like me, you buy a gadget as it seems a very good idea at the time, or you buy it as a gift for hubby because you have no idea what else to get him.

The biscuit maker was for me. It's never been out the box.

Hubby likes sushi, so I bought him his own kit, it has also never been out the box.

The pasta maker, also seemed like a good idea at the time, again it has never been out the box.

There's a bread maker also and the only gadget we do use is the slow cooker, although living in Dubai that's been relegated to under the kitchen sink for the time being.

Don't get me started on all the peelers/slicers etc bought over the years after watching a wonderful display of how good they are at local markets and all the crafting items that crinkle paper, cut zig zag lines and hole punch star shapes, or even silicon baking moulds that never, ever just 'pop the cake out'

So out they all go, will donate to charity and we've sworn blind we'll never buy another gadget again.

What gadgets have you bought and why did you think they would be used?

What you consider waste is a meal for someone else

Last month my son and his girlfriend visited South Africa. We stopped for fuel whilst driving through the Kruger National Park. My son's girlfriend asked me to throw her half eaten cake in the bin. I told her to give it to the pump attendant. He ate it.

She said if she did that to a homeless person in the UK she'd have probably had it lobbed at the back of her head as she walked off.

Until you live in a country like South Africa, you have no idea what poor actually means. Poor doesn't always mean homeless, dirty or uneducated, poor means that everyday your priority is to earn money to feed your family. I wanted to write 'put food on the table' but a table for a lot of people would be an unnecessary item unless it was donated.

Often when I stop at the lights, someone will ask me for food or drink, rarely money. I will always give them them my half drunk bottle of water or coke, they always take it and drink it as if they've not drunk for several days.

Any waste food we have, we give to someone. If it's left overs from last nights meal, it will be given to the gardener for his lunch, if it's fruit or veg, or even that last slice of bread it is put out for the bin men on a tuesday morning, on top of the bin.

Not long after we moved to South Africa, I threw out a slice of stale bread, with some limp lettuce leaves in the bottom of the bread bag. I also scooped out the cat litter tray and put the contents in there before placing it in the wheelie bin.

The bin man, opened the bag, took the stale bread, shook it off and ate it. I was almost sick. In fact I feel sick now relating the story.

A friend told me how her maid used to ask for the outer leaves off the cabbage to take home. My friend, also an expat, enquired as to whether she had a pet rabbit. This was met with silence and then my friend realised that her maid was taking what she called the waste, home to feed her family.

Mumsnet brought to my attention Unilever who are also running the #clearaplate campaign to provide an additional half a million meals to families in need through its partnership with Oxfam, and is calling on people to do their bit to address food waste in order to fight hunger in the UK.

I'm not sure my approach to food waste would work in the UK, I'm not sure the offer of a half eaten cake would go down too well.

I read this post last week about 'lets stop giving our crap to the poor' Most of the readers agreed, however I say after spending 4 years working with the 'poor' Let the poor decide for themselves what is crap, when you have nothing, or your lost everything in a shack fire or in floods, including family members, nothing that one gives is 'crap' it is usually one thing more than they had before you gave it to them.