Eco - Swim Sky Breathe

July 29, 2022

Chettle Orchard Campsite

Some campsites are just a place to lay your head at night before going out to explore the wider world.

Chettle Orchard Campsite is not one of those campsites. You won’t want to leave this gem of a place nestled in the Dorset countryside, despite the plethora of wonderful local attractions that surround it. It’s a destination in itself, a place to relax, recharge your batteries, and immerse yourself in its old-school vibe and stunning surroundings. This is camping how your mum and dad did it, and it’s perfect.

Chettle Orchard Campsite opened last year, and offers camping pitches as well as pre-pitched bell tents that can be rented furnished or unfurnished. We were three adults and two children in a furnished tent, which came with soft pillows and duvets and crisp sheets, crockery and cutlery, as well as fresh local fruit and pear juice and Prosecco on ice to welcome us.

Each tent provides plenty of space so that you’re not listening to the family next door having breakfast, as well as a picnic table and benches and a dug out fire pit – firewood is available on site and in the local shop.

There are compost loos and showers, as well as washing up facilities, and a lovely communal area with rustic haystacks and throw cushions where you can settle down with one of the many books dotted around. I enjoyed losing myself in a 1980s Good Housekeeping recipe book, a trip down memory lane!

Local yoga teacher Jordana offers morning yoga, which takes place in the communal gazebo in the centre of the site. We couldn’t think of a better way to start off the day than saluting the sun looking out across the stunning Dorset landscape, with Jordana’s soothing encouragement in a gentle session for all levels and abilities.

Chettle local Liam offers foraging walks, which last two hours and leave from the campsite. The walk comes at a fraction of the price of other similar sessions – only £10 per person, with concessions – and worth every penny.

The walk began with some home made pineapple weed juice, made using a pineapple weed syrup that Liam had created – it tasted so good! This was followed by some of his delicious home made seed flapjacks before setting off on our walk. We learned so much in two hours – from how to find a soothing ready made plant gel to put on stings and burns, where to pick flowers that steeped in tea will give you lucid dreams, which herbs will stem bleeding and how to spot and prepare nutritious seeds that can be added to dishes for flavour and bite. It was a fantastic experience and we enjoyed every minute – suitable for children and adults alike.

Liam points out some Queen Anne’s lace on our foraging walk.

Another highlight of Chettle is its lovely, quirky village shop, which sells everything from firewood to locally made candles, fresh fruit and veg and vegan marshmallows for toasting over the fire. There are big plans to move the shop to the Food Hub that the village is planning to open in a few years time… more on that later. For now, it’s a charming place to do a little shopping.

You won’t want to miss a stroll around the village after a visit to the shop. Walk through the dreamy thatched cottages to the amazing kid’s playpark (even adult sized kids won’t be able to resist a bounce on the trampolines and jumping aboard the life sized ship) and then up through the old dairy farm that has been completely reclaimed by nature, abundant with wildflowers and some particularly juicy blackberries.

You could spend your time at Chettle Orchard never leaving the village, but if you do choose to venture further, there’s plenty to do.

The campsite adjoins The Jubilee Way, which links four counties and runs through Dorset’s AONB, Cranborne Chase, and the Chalke Valley – all stunningly beautiful. If you don’t want to take your car, you can walk for miles with the village as your starting point and be back in time for sausages and marshmallows over the campfire. Further afield, there’s Tisbury for river and lake walks, about 25 minutes from Chettle.

If you fancy some swimming, head to Fiddleford Manor as we did. It’s about 20 minutes drive from the campsite, with a lovely river that drops down into tiered weirs and a pond to swim in. There’s also a great spot just outside of Downton with a bridge you can dive off into crystal clear waters – take a right as you exit out of the village heading into the New Forest. Godshill is also a beautiful spot on the same river that’s hidden under the treeline. It takes some finding and can get busy in the summer but is worth it!

If the sea is calling, the world famous Durdle Door and Lulworth Cove are a 40 minute drive. away. Both get very busy but are amazing places to swim, though Durdle is for competent swimmers only – there’s quite a pull as you swim back through the door to the shore. Both are unforgettable swims though and worth the journey!

That is Colin, honestly! At Durdle Door.

Chettle is owned by local landowner Alice Favre, who has big plans for the village. A committed environmentalist, together with the local community she is spearheading a fifty year plan designed to mitigate the worst effects of climate change in the village and ensure that Chettle is somewhere that future generations can live, work and thrive.

As well contribute to tackling climate change, her vision is for a community that has future-proofed itself by leading a diverse response to climate change through investing in a sustainable future. It’s a compelling case. Regenerative farming, agriforesty, rewilding, and moving away from destructive industrial practises that have damaged food production to ones that look to a natural balance are all ideas that are increasingly finding purchase among forward-looking farmers, landowners, organisations and so on. Key to this is the community having a greater connection to the land, and key to that is improving access.

Central to Chettle’s plan is their Food Hub initiative, which will make use of an old dairy farm in the village centre. The space will be transformed into a hub with a cafe and new shop, offering local, ethically sourced produce. Locals and visitors will be able to purchase products grown or produced within a few miles of the shop, reinforcing that hugely important connection between consumer and the land.

As well as restoring the old dairy, Alice and her fellow directors have also led on the restoration of local housing, increasing capacity and helping to grow the community, though demand it seems far outstrips supply – plenty of people want to live here, and for us at least, the campsite with its easy-going and super comfortable bell tents was a perfect solution.

Chettle can be reached by bus from Southampton Central rail station. It’s about two hours drive from London if you’re taking the car.

Prices start at £28 per night for a grass pitch and £100 per night for a fully furnished bell tent. You can book here.

Useful Links

Find Jordana, our yoga teacher, at @forage_and_flow on Instagram

Find Liam’s foraging walks on Instagram at @walkingpaceonly

Chettle Orchard Campsite

Chettle Village Store

April 9, 2022April 9, 2022

Saving money and the planet

With the horrendous price rises that hit us on April 1, the cost of living crisis has meant that, understandably, concern for the planet has to take more of a back seat when we’re all trying to figure out where to find the money to pay the bills. Often, it can seem that household and lifestyle sustainability solutions, though laudable, end up costing us more money as there’s a huge upfront cost (ie washable nappies) or an increase in monthly spend (loo roll in fancy packaging that costs twice what you’d normally spend on loo roll).

We’ve put together some planet-saving ways to save money so that you don’t have to make the choice between saving pennies and saving the planet.

Draught proof your house. This is such an old, and obvious, one but it really works. Our hall and bedroom were freezing and almost unbearable in the winter without a blast of heating, until we added draught excluders to our external doors. If you don’t have the money to buy a draught excluder then roll up an old blanket and wedge it against doors and windows that are draughty.

Cover up letterboxes and keyholes in doors as they can be serious offenders when it comes to letting draughts through – a small outlay on a keyhole cover, for example, can make a real difference to temperatures in halls for example, and save you having to put the heating on.

And even if it’s cold outside, open curtains during the day. Any small amount of sunlight will get in and help heat the room.

Use food waste apps. Olio and ToGoodToGo are two of our favourites. About a third of all of the food in the world is thought to go to waste, a major driver of climate change as the unused food often ends up in landfill where it rots and produces methane. ToGoodToGo advertises very low cost ‘magic bags’ of shopping, baking, sandwiches and fruit and veg based on what local partners have to offer. We got a huge bag of baking from Starbucks for £3.50 this week via ToGoodToGo with pastries and sandwiches, most of which we froze. Olio advertises free food either from people in the local community or local food shops such as Pret.

A pile of discarded courgettes (image: Olio)

Skip the weekly shop once a week. We do this on the last week of every month and instead make a point of eating everything in the freezer and cupboards we can, only buying things day to day that we absolutely need. This saves us money and cuts down on waste. You’ll be amazed at how much you have that can be used when you make the decision to shop only for what you need – we always spend far less on shopping in our week when we don’t do a big shop.

Lift share instead of driving. There are millions of cars doing the daily commute every day in the UK, and many of them only have one passenger – the driver. Check out Liftshare, where you can arrange to commute with another person, or share a long journey with someone else, either by giving them a lift in your car or vice versa. Always be mindful of safety and check out a user’s reviews before sharing a car with them, though. And if it’s possible, consider cycling instead of driving – often this can be quicker than driving as you nip through traffic, and it’s good for your health, too.

Have at least one meat-free day a week. Plant based eating is good for the planet and good for your purse. A healthy vegan meal such as our lentil dhal is easy to make and really inexpensive if you already have the store cupboard ingredients, or this plant based vegetable soup.

Freeze EVERYTHING you can. I look back at myself in years gone by and cannot believe how much food I used to throw away, leaving unfinished food out or in the fridge then tossing it when I could have frozen it. Our freezer is full of boxes of varying sizes of leftovers from shepherd’s pie to curry – though Colin isn’t the best of labelling things so sometimes what’s inside the Tupperware is a little surprise! Get it out of the freezer in the morning so it’s ready to put in the oven for your evening meal.

For more ideas, read our ten easy eco changes to make your life greener.

I also recommend the Martin Lewis Money Saving Expert forums for some brilliant money saving ideas, many of which don’t put sustainability on the back burner.

March 8, 2022

Book Review – The Wild Remedy

The cover of The Wild Remedy by Emma Mitchell promises that this is a ‘beautiful, beautiful book’. And it is. I found this gem of a book in a charity shop. Reading it was a joy. A very personal nature diary, it chronicles the twelve months of the British year in nature, as experienced by Emma, an illustrator from Cambridgeshire.

It’s well evidenced that time in nature is good for your mental health. Whether that’s simply a walk in your local park, mindful forest bathing, or regular cold water swims, spending time outside is good for your soul. During the long monotonous days of lockdown, getting outside helped people to cope with the anxiety and stress brought on by the pandemic, with time spent in nature a real lifeline for many of us.

The book is written in diary form, and starts in October, when the leaves are beginning to fall and the migrant thrushes arrive. Emma’s wonderful observations of the minutiae of the nature that surrounds us – whether it’s a tiny goldcrest flitting in the woods, a nightingale singing overhead, or some snake’s head fritillaries blooming in spring – reminded me of how wonderful it is to be surrounded by nature and simply notice what’s around me. My knowledge of flora and fauna isn’t as extensive as Emma’s, but I’ve resolved to improve it after reading this book and observing her joy at simply spotting a particular species of bird or a flower in bloom. She describes a murmuration of starlings;

“Tens of thousands of birds are behaving like a living liquid. My mind reels at the complexity of the mathematics and silent communication required for this astonishing behaviour… Writhing limbs of birds, coordinated by their brains’ responses to one another’s flightpaths, protrude then recede from its edge as it seems to crawl like an aerial amoeba.”

Emma’s honesty about her mental health, which suffers greatly during the winter months, means that The Wild Remedy is raw in places and difficult to read. Her mood plummets as the nights grow longer and the temperature falls, reaching its lowest point in March, often a point in the year when it can feel like the darkness and cold have gone on forever and will never end. It’s taking simple pleasure in nature that help to lift her mood, from a bird feeder that brings blue tits and sparrows to her garden and the sight of young meadowsweet leaves in the woods.

Emma’s descriptions of the wildlife she sees around her are brought to life by her drawings that appear throughout the book; pencil sketches and watercolours that reproduce in careful detail the nature that she encounters on her walks.

You can buy The Wild Remedy here, new or second hand.

January 11, 2022January 11, 2022

6 Vegan Myths Busted

It’s Veganuary, and like most years, thousands of people have pledged to go vegan for a month. As always, there’s lots of coverage in the media about veganism, with recipes and guides to vegan living. It’s wonderful to see.

This year though, we’ve noticed an extra helping of negativity creeping into the conversation. An article about how veganism is ‘snake oil’ in the national press here, a blog piece challenging the idea that veganism can save the planet there, all with the same tired old arguments about almond milk and soy and the assumptions that vegans eat only quinoa, avocado and mock meats with their higher carbon footprints.

Here are some of the vegan myths that continue to circulate … and why they’re not true.

Vegan Myth 1 – it’s not sustainable

Avocadoes, almond milk and quinoa are not sustainable and vegans eat avocadoes, almond milk and quinoa therefore veganism is not sustainable. I have heard this argument so many times, usually from people who have scoured the internet to find the handful of studies that support their view that veganism is an unsustainable way to live, even though there’s a growing body of evidence that a plant based diet is the kindest diet for the planet – this study from Oxford University for example concluded that the lower the fraction of animal-sourced products in our diets, the greater the health and climate benefits will be.

It’s true that almond milk, avocadoes and quinoa aren’t particularly sustainable. Almond milk still has a considerably lower footprint than dairy milk, however. And an avocado only needs a fraction of the water required to produce the same amount of beef, as does quinoa.

I also honestly don’t know anyone who eats the shed loads of these foods that would be required to create a higher carbon footprint than an omnivorous diet. We hardly ever drink almond milk, eat quinoa equally rarely, and avocadoes when they come in our veg box. And omnivores eat these things too!

As for soy, which is often cited as another reason veganism is bad for the planet as its production requires the destruction of extensive natural habitats – most soy is grown to feed animals being raised for slaughter.

Vegan Myth 2 – it’s unhealthy

Vegans exist on a diet of fake sausages, bacon and Beyond Burgers which are unhealthy and bad for the planet. No one should be eating meat, or mock meats, every day. Meat free burgers have similar amounts of saturated fat and sodium to beef burgers, though without the cruelty that goes into them. Mock meats are great as a treat, and good if you’re transitioning to a vegan diet and want to stick with familiar tastes, but whole foods are better for your health, and better for the planet.

The Oxford study mentioned above also looks at the major health benefits of a vegan diet, and the positive consequences of eating fewer animal products.

Vegan Myth 3 – you can’t get well-balanced vegan diets

A vegan diet isn’t balanced or healthy. Any diet can be unhealthy if it isn’t well balanced and a vegan diet is no different. I could live on chips and dairy-free chocolate and truthfully say I was following a vegan diet, but it would be far from healthy or well balanced. However, the British Dietetic Association says that a well balanced vegan diet is healthy and appropriate for all life stages, and NHS advice is that it’s possible to get all of the nutrients you need with a well planned healthy vegan diet. As long as you make sure you’re getting all the vitamins you need – vitamin B12 is especially important – a plant based diet is a healthy and sustainable one to adopt.

Vegan Myth 4 – being vegan costs too much.

It’s expensive being vegan. As above! Any diet can be expensive if you make it so. Yes, it’s true that food producers often whack on a ‘vegan surcharge’ to new vegan versions of their food – Cadbury’s are recent offenders with their vegan chocolate bar costing around twice what a standard bar of Dairy Milk would. And yes, you can be a vegan and live on expensive mock meats, out of season vegetables and Booja Booja truffles (which are amazing, just kind of pricy!) But a home cooked vegan meal made from scratch, is usually not going to cost as much as something that contains chicken, meat or fish. An Oxford University study from last year showed that a vegan or vegetarian diet is the cheapest option in high income countries. Try our cheap as chips lentil dhal or pasta arrabbiata, or have a look at the Deliciously Ella blog for budget vegan recipes. We subscribe to Oddbox, who deliver wonky fruit and veg to us every week for less than £20 – each box comes with a meal plan and recipes, so you can make lots of delicious meals from scratch.

Vegan Myth 5 – it’s too hard to be vegan.

Being vegan is too difficult and complicated. When I went vegan over a decade ago, yes, that might have been true. There was very little information around about vegan food, and very little decent vegan food outside of health food shops compared to what can be found now in your average supermarket. Now, it’s much easier. If you’re just getting started, I recommend checking out Bosh for their simple, delicious vegan recipes – starters, mains and snacks.

One of our favourite vegan dinners is just spaghetti with chilli, lemon juice and a courgette, grated and fried. That’s it. It doesn’t need to be complicated at all, unless you’re looking to bake bread from scratch and make your own mock meats for every meal (yes, we know someone who did this for Veganuary and unsurprisingly didn’t make it to the end of the month!)

Vegan Myth 6 – vegans are annoying and smug.

Vegans are sanctimonious and always want to tell you that they are vegan within five minutes of meeting you. There are smug, sanctimonious people in every community, from your local Facebook selling group to the international knitting community (no disrespect to knitters!) and veganism is no different. And if someone tells you they are vegan early on in a conversation, consider that it might be relevant – I’ll only bring it up if I’m offered food that may contain dairy or eggs, or if it’s genuinely relevant to the conversation.

To find out more about going vegan this January, visit the Veganuary website.

Read more about vegan myths in this new book by Ed Winters.

And try some of our vegan recipes, from starters to main courses and baking!

November 16, 2021November 16, 2021

SwimSkyBreathe’s 2021 Christmas Gift Guide

Our 2020 Christmas gift guide was one of our most popular posts last year – here’s our guide for 2021. We both love Christmas (especially Caroline who always promises not to watch any Christmas movies or put up any decorations until December 1 … and always fails!) yet despair at the waste and the over-consumption this time of year brings. Here is our 2021 Christmas gift guide to inspire you, whatever your budget!

Take the Plunge!

For the swimmer in your life, or actually for anyone who loves the water whether they’re in it or not, The Art of Wild Swimming books, by our friends Anna Deacon and Vicky Allan will tempt anyone to go running for their nearest loch, lake, river or beach. These handy guides are full of beautiful photos and expert advice on local swimming spots, written by the local people who know them best – including Colin, who contributed to the sea swimming chapter and the section on his childhood haunt, the River Teith! The Art of Wild Swimming Scotland and The Art of Wild Swimming England and Wales is out now, published by Black & White.

Search Engine Optimised!

A foraging course with a local expert is an unusual and thoughtful gift for nature lovers and cooks who want to know a bit more about eating from the land, but who aren’t sure where to start and what to forage for. Wild Food UK run courses nationwide – check out their website for times and locations.

Sea buckthorn – a favourite with foragers, pictured here growing by Gullane beach in East Lothian

Christmas in focus

Hit your local charity shop to find photo frames – mine usually has a selection for 50p – £2 each, then download LaLaLab and choose your favourite photos from your phone to print – the turnaround is usually around 7 days. Fill up some frames with some wonderful memories from 2021 for a loved one. Or find a big frame, take out the picture, and make your own photo display with mini pegs and string.

Great British Bake off!

Some home baking will always put a smile on the recipient’s face, especially at Christmas time. Try our chocolate chip cookies or vegan baklava, or this incredible looking vegan Christmas cake. Wrap it up in some of this beautiful reusable vegan wrapping or use some of these sustainable wrapping tips.

Vegan wax wraps for baking gifts – Beeswax Wrap Co

Be calm

Calm is one of our favourite apps – full of brilliant exercises and meditations as well as gentle physical exercises to help bring peace to your inner self. Gift a subscription for 2022 to someone you think would love it too.

The Beauty of Christmas

Home-made beauty gifts are a treat to receive, especially ones that smell as good as this vegan coconut and vanilla face and body scrub, made with coconut oil and brown sugar.

Off the Beaten Path

Travel is still something that feels pretty restricted, so how about an online AirBnb experience for someone who’s missing the chance to explore new cultures? You can choose anything from yoga delivered by an Indian yogi to meditation with a Buddhist monk, to a vegan cookery lesson from a New York chef. Or for the cook in your life, gift an online cooking lesson with a difference from Migrateful – the lessons are all given by UK migrants who are facing barriers to integration and finding a job due to legal and language challenges. There are lessons for a wide range of cuisines and dietary requirements – I’m looking forward to trying the veggie Syrian class.

Book a cookery lesson from a migrant chef at Migrateful and learn a completely new cuisine.

Seek and ye shall find

The best gifts are often the ones that don’t cost money but that the giver has spent time and love preparing. What about designing a nature walk for your loved one and giving them a voucher on the day? Research and plan your route first, choosing somewhere you know relatively well where you think you’ll find plenty of interesting wildlife. Download the Seek app so you can identify what to see along the way – then turn nature guide for the day and take your gift recipient on a walk to discover the flowers, plants, birds, trees and animals on their doorstep.

A well-planned nature walk costs nothing and could be the perfect gift this Christmas.

Happy Christmas shopping!

December 8, 2020March 2, 2021

SwimSkyBreathe’s 2020 Christmas Gift Guide

When do you start your Christmas shopping? I start mine in October, and Colin starts the shopping he has to do usually about two weeks before Christmas!

I always love reading gift guides for inspiration – so here’s our 2020 Christmas gift guide.

I received this beautiful book about trees for my birthday, written by our friends Anna Deacon and Vicky Allan. All about humans who love trees, it’s a joy to read – full of love letters to trees from people from across the world. Their other book dedicated to the joy of wild swimming, Taking The Plunge, is very special too – I defy anyone not to want to throw themselves in the sea after finishing it!

These mindfulness cards are full of creative mindfulness exercises to do every day that can be completed in 10 minutes. Having taken a course in mindfulness this year, I know how big a difference to your day that 10 minutes of mindfulness practice can make, and these cards are perfect for giving you inspiration and ideas.

If you’re based in or around Edinburgh, for the swimmer in your life, or the person who’s been talking about trying outdoor swimming for ages but has never taken the plunge – how about some lesson vouchers? You can buy some here from Colin aka Scottish Swimmer.

A gift voucher for Mindful Chef, the recipe box service. We are big fans of Mindful Chef’s recipe boxes. We’ve been using them for a couple of years now, with monthly boxes containing everything you need to make three delicious vegan meals for two, and haven’t had a single meal yet that we haven’t liked. There’s no food waste, as portions are measured out beforehand, and it’s great to discover new recipes you might not usually try. They’re working hard to minimise waste in their packaging, too.

Mindful Chef sticky tamarind and ginger tofu with mangetout

These yoga dice are a fun present for any yogis in your life. They’re aimed at yogis of all levels with a variety of poses and are great for someone new to yoga who wants inspiration to develop their own practice, or more experienced yogis who want to mix it up a little.

A Cool Camping voucher. 2020 was the year that many people discovered the joys of UK holidays through camping. I booked most of our camping holidays this year through Cool Camping, including this one – their site has thousands of suggestions, from the very basic and wild to glamping and yurts. A voucher is a great way of giving someone a holiday to look forward to through the grey days of January and February, with the hope that holidays will be more possible in 2021.

Some swimming art. We love this print from Sea and Stream, which would look beautiful on the wall of the swimmer or sea lover in your life.

A monthly Vegan Kind subscription. With boxes from £8 per month filled with vegan products from around the world, this is a great gift for anyone – whether they’re vegan or not – from this Glasgow based vegan start up who have grown to become a serious player in the online vegan marketplace. The boxes, which are either lifestyle boxes or beauty boxes, are always brilliant value for money and often contain new to the market items or things that aren’t widely available in the UK. And each month, they make a donation to an animal charity from the proceeds of each box.

Gift a tree. With a wide range of trees, and something to suit most budgets, Treedom gives you the opportunity to buy a tree. A farmer will then plant the tree in their own country and can use it as a food resource or to support their family, and the tree will help the environment, too.

The best things in life are free. For those of us who are feeling the financial effects of lockdown and who aren’t in a position to buy a gift for someone this year, a gift that costs nothing could mean the world to its recipient. Here are some ideas –

A babysitting voucher for when things open up again

Gift a baking subscription from you, by promising to deliver bread, cookies or cake to the recipient once a month.

Recipe: fennel and olive homemade bread rolls

A personalised playlist. Make a Spotify playlist for someone, with songs that mean something to you both.

A memory book. Take an old notebook that hasn’t been used, and fill it with writing that will make the recipient smile with everything from jokes you know they’ll laugh at, favourite song lyrics, recipes you know they love, to memories of a holiday shared together.

A mystery nature walk. Read up on a nature walk near to your gift recipient. Find out about the points of interest on the walk – wildlife, trees and flowers, as well as points of historical interest – then act as their guide on the day – they only need to turn up at the right time and place!

October 27, 2020December 2, 2020

Vegan coconut and vanilla face and body scrub

This totally vegan coconut and vanilla face and body scrub has to be one of the nicest things I’ve ever put on my face. My skin felt so soft and smooth afterwards and it smells AMAZING – that’s because it actually is good enough to eat!

The good news is that it’s the easiest thing ever to make. You only need three ingredients, plus a container – I used an old body scrub container but you can use a small plastic tupperware if you don’t have any old packaging.

Ingredients

1 cup coconut oil, melted

2 cups coconut sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

Method

Melt the coconut oil in the microwave or over a low heat on the hob and combine with the sugar and vanilla.

Mix it up with a little warm water, apply to face and body, massage in and rinse off!

August 31, 2020December 1, 2020

Ten easy eco changes to make your life greener

At the beginning of the year, when single use plastic was firmly on the agenda, we decided to look at the day to day changes we could make in our household that would be a bit kinder to the planet. Here are some of the changes we made, as well as some things we were already doing – some require a little initial expenditure, but long term most of them will save you money as a bonus!

1. Laundry. Instead of buying laundry detergent in plastic bottles, invest in an Eco Egg. We’ve had ours for years and you just need to replace the inner beads every so often. You can add essential oil to the wash if you want it to smell – I use lemon and it makes the laundry smell lovely.

2. Buy a reusable bottle – again, you’re looking at an investment of £20-25 for a decent bottle, but if you were buying a bottle of water every day you’ll have covered your costs in a month. My favourites are Chilly’s – they are durable, come in a beautiful range of sizes, patterns and colours, and you can even personalise them. It keeps your water nice and cold too.

Have you ever seen a plastic bottle that’s this beautiful?

3. Buy food wraps as an alternative to cling film – or make your own using soy wax! These are great for wrapping up sandwiches in, leftover food, and a lid for cans or tins going in the fridge.

4. Make your own household products. You will save SO MUCH money and plastic doing this. You can invest in some fancy glass bottles or just reuse plastic ones. There are lots of different recipes for various household products, from household cleaner to fabric softener – all much gentler in your home, on your purse and on the planet.

5. Reusable period products – I wish I’d discovered these sooner. Again, a little expenditure at the outset will save you lots of money in the long term. Tampons and pads are really terrible for the environment and take a long time to biodegrade. There are so many choices of period products now, from these fab period pants by Ruby Love, which I can personally recommend, to washable pads, moon cups and sponges – check out Folksy or Etsy for these – the pads come in every design under the sun. Periods aren’t always super fun but can be made a little more so if you have pads that have pictures of carrots on them.

6. Washable nappies – same as tampons and pads, nappies are a nightmare for the environment. I was a little nervous the first time I used these on our daughter as I was convinced they’d leak or leave her with awful nappy rash. Neither was true – she ended up wearing them right through to potty training age two and a half, then passing them on to her baby brother – so we got five years out of them which definitely justified the initial cost. There are loads of brands to choose from – my favourite is Tots Bots – funky patterns and so soft and easy to use. Just add a nappy bucket and you’re ready to go.

7. Cloths instead of kitchen roll – this one is easy. Cut up an old towel into cloths. Chuck them in with your usual wash. Never buy kitchen roll again – I haven’t, for years.

8. Buy clothes from charity shops or swap them. New clothes bought in the UK produce more carbon emissions per minute than driving a car around the world six times according to a report from Oxfam. I’d say at least half my clothes are from charity shops – my best ever find was a beautiful Whistles dress in my size that I wear all the time. Or join a Facebook group like the Great British Clothes Swap so when you need something new and are having a clear out, you’re not spending money on brand new stuff.

9. Make do and mend! We’re so used to chucking clothes out when they’re ripped or stained when often they’re totally salvageable. If you can’t get stains out of clothes, I’m a big fan of iron on or sew on patches to cover the stain – I love these cute bee patches from Etsy. If you’re not the best with your needle, take a sewing class in taking up hems or mending ripped seams so you don’t have to throw out your favourite things.

10. Cut down on meat and dairy. I don’t think this needs any explanation – we all know how bad these things are for the environment. There are so many delicious ways to eat that don’t involve animal products with dishes that are bursting with flavour – including some of the recipes on this blog!