My Granny Helka was the No 1. environmentalist I have known.

She was living the Zero Waste life out of necessity and common sense, it was more about saving money than getting rid of waste. I suppose packaging at the time would have been new and fancy, before it all got out of control. For saving money or saving planet here are some of the practical things I remember: 

Plastic Bags: Helka cut them in strips and crochet or knitted them in to rugs for the hallway floor or utility room floors. Seriously. 

Glass bottles: Helka washed the bottles and used them to store home made berry and fruit cordial for the winter months. The ones with screw tops were used to bring milk in for lunch. 

Food packaging: 

Helka’s Tips: Butter wrapping (foil, like Irish butter wrapping): Used as like aluminium foil to cover up cooked food in the fridge or when re heating.

Plastic containers with lid: always washed and re-used for food storage and freezing.

Yogurt pots were washed, stored and used for planting seeds in the spring.

Bread bags: used as sandwich wrappers for lunches.  

She grew vegetables, foraged, fixed and mended old. She is not unique, I am sure your Granny and Grandad had similar tips. We can learn a lot from the previous generations for the benefit of the future generations, and for our own Zero Waste Efforts. 

So anyone up for crochet rugs out of plastic bags? Maybe, maybe not, but we can make better choices tackling the waste problem without loosing our love of convenience either. 

Here’s to our best efforts towards Zero Waste living, please comment and share here your Granny’s or Grandad’s tips that we could benefit in our daily life. Feel free to post images of your crochet plastic bag rugs too :)