March 29

Published by Panetary Health Initiative on 30/03/202230/03/2022

Less is more!

At some point, between my childhood and now, we went from towels the size of my grandmother’s to ones the size of the towels we now have. My towel is three times the size and thickness of my grandmother’s towel.

I blame the movies, and Marilyn Monroe! Suddenly we developed a desire to be wrapped in large towels!

The impact on the environment has been catastrophic – from all the cotton that needs to be grown to produce towels this size, to the amount of water and heating that goes into washing and drying them, and the cupboard space we need to store them.

In this current wet season, larger towels just add to the burden of everything that needs to be dried in 98% humidity.

The amount of towelling in my one blue towel, is enough to create all of these:

So, tonight, my action was to cut up an over-sized bath towel and use it to create a an old-style bath towel, a washer, a hand towel, a bath mat and a tea towel.

I found some old blue ribbon in my grandmother’s sewing box and used it to trim my new washer to stop it fraying. I’m trying to make each item as ‘luxury’ as possible so less really will feel like more.

PLANT-BASED EATING – Crispy chilli and tarragon veggie fritters

One of the highlights of Summer for me is corn with lashings of garlic tarragon butter, and zucchini slow-fried with lots of oil and garlic.

As our summer crops come to an end, and the tarragon begins its winter retreat, I craved one more summery meal tonight – crispy tarragon and chilli veggie fritters with garlicky slow-fried zucchini.

We had most of the ingredients but I just added some frozen corn to compensate for its absence in our summer garden this year. You can mix and match veggies for this fritter, depending on what you have in the garden – tonight I used some tiny broccoli florets, a couple of purple beans, some red capsicum, garlic chives and chillies.

You fry them at a fairly high temperature to make sure they’re crispy!

I served them with some raita and an accompaniment of pumpkin leaf kimchi.

PRODUCE > CONSUME

As the produce begins to dwindle and the rain continues to pour, I decided to start off some sprouts and microgreens indoors today to ensure we get a good mix of vitamins over the next few weeks. I soaked alfalfa seeds in a jar of water, and planted sunflower seeds and Beet Bulls Blood microgreens. The sprouts will be ready in a few days and the microgreens in about two weeks.

WHAT ACTIONS ARE OTHER PEOPLE TAKING?

Libby’s action was to attend the Blue Mountains City Council meeting at the former Katoomba Golf Course precinct.  At this meeting community were invited to express our views on how this world heritage area can be developed to explore ways to care for our planet’s natural systems and share these solutions globally.

Her action yesterday was to switch to a more environmentally friendly dishwasher tablet that is bio degradable, no harsh chemicals, no plastic and safe for our waterways.

On Saturday Meredith’s family spend Earth Hour reading by candlelight.

Others have continued to email me about actions they hope to do on the 7th April for World Health Day so that we can try to reach 365 actions in one day. Would love everyone to contribute on that day if you can!

Research by academics at Leeds University, engineering firm Arup and the C40 Cities climate group has identified that 73 per cent of all changes needed by 2030 to keep the world on course to meet the Paris agreement targets need to be made by governments and industry. But private citizens have considerable influence over the remaining 27 per cent. So let’s get cracking!