Easy Eco: 5 Tips to become more eco

Among everything going on in the world right now, we can’t forget that there is a climate crisis. So I’m going to propose a few ways in which you can become more eco easily. In fact, you probably won’t realise that you're doing it!

Disclaimer: Nobody is perfect, it’s really f-ing hard to be eco-friendly in all aspects of your life, these are some simple things I have been doing/have started implementing that I think are easy ways to be a little more eco in your everyday life. If everyone makes a little change that will lead to a massive change.

Get ready to unleash your inner Greta Thunberg…

Buy Second Hand

Fashion - Thrift shops are cool, fashion comes in cycles anyway so get your 70’s florals or your 90’s slip at a fraction of the price, in better quality and while saving the planet. It’s a win-win scenario.

Classic Books - Dead authors don’t need your patronage, so buy your Dickens, your Flaubert, your Tolstoy second hand, all those dead guys don’t need your money anymore. Save your cash and save the trees. If you really want to spend absolutely nothing as you don’t mind reading on a screen then download them for free onto the kindle app or from Gutenberg! Also, a recent discovery is Better World Books, they are cheap, offer carbon-neutral shipping and also donate 1 book for every book you buy to a good cause!!

Furniture - The same reasoning as fashion, old school furniture is generally better quality because it’s still in existence after all these years. It’s also more eclectic than your Ikea flat-pack stuff.

Now that is one big pile of…

Buy a Vacuum Flask

If you love coffee, and often get it on the go, just get a flask rather than those godforsaken takeaway cups! If you’re feeling even more spendthrift with a dash of Marxism thrown in for good measure, brew your own coffee at home or find an indie coffee shop instead of handing your hard-earned cash over to massive corporations!

I have the Kinto Day Off Tumbler, and while it’s not exactly cheap for a vacuum flask it will make back its price very very quickly and each time I use it I can feel proud that there is one less takeaway cup ending up in landfill! And its rather sexy I must say, as travel mugs go…

4 Minute Shower

Be a little more speedy, that’s all you need to change. Sure it’s lovely to close your eyes and bask in the tropical waterfall that your shower becomes, but there are people out in the world that don’t have access to water! Don’t waste so much of it! People in Africa, Asia and South America have to walk miles to get a small amount of often dirty water, their communities and countries are already suffering from global warming, so pay them some thought and think about what the future holds for them if you keep taking your everyday luxuries for granted. Also. with the money, you save on your water bill maybe you could turn that into a donation for a water charity!

Don’t Waste Food

So much food is wasted every single day. Don’t buy more than you need, if you think you might not be able to eat something before it goes off, freeze it if possible. If a recipe just needs egg whites, save your yolks in the fridge for something else tomorrow. Batch cook, so you can use up stuff and feed yourself for a few days rather than giving yourself a massive portion that you end up putting half of into the bin. Just be smarter about waste, it’s that easy!

Don’t Leave the Lights On!

Each year the WWF hold Earth Hour where for just one hour everyone turns their lights off from 8:30 to 9:30. Imagine if we could do this just once a week. How about having a weekly movie night where you gather your household around the tv and watch a film in the dark, or maybe crack out some candles (even better if they are homemade) and have a candlelit hour or two reading or a candlelit bath as part of a pampering evening. Make your Eco event a healing event for you too, then you’ll come to see them as coinciding in the same space, to save the world you can save your well-being too.

There’s a French phrase that I love ‘on est pas à Versailles ici!’ which translates to ‘we’re not in Versailles!’ so check yourself, don’t leave all your lights on, you’re not in Versailles, you're at home, save some energy for your bank balance and for the well-being of the world!

oh here’s one extra for good measure

Buy some Reusable Produce bags

You know those plastic bags they have in dispensers in supermarkets to put your fresh fruit and veggies into, well think about how many of those must be used every day. It’s probably quite alarming, and yes they keep your fruit and veg separate and safe but you could opt for an eco version like these ones from The Plastic Free Shop.

There we go, 6 Easy Eco Steps that we can incorporate into our lives without any real difficulty. Do you have any eco tips and tricks to share, pop them down below in the comments section and let’s get saving the planet!

My Thoughts on Dune

Frank Herbert’s Dune is heralded as one of the greatest Sci-Fi novels ever written, its influence in the genre is absolutely undeniable, but, is it actually any good? Let’s find out.

Spoilers ahead so proceed with caution if you haven’t read the book!

Dune is a mammoth of a novel and granted there is a lot that happens but I found it to be quite boring in places. I loved the beginning of the novel with the political intrigue, the foreshadowing and the imminent danger that Leto was caught up in. I also enjoyed Yueh’s internal struggle about his betrayal and his role in the assassination of Leto. The Bene Gesserit were fascinating and the litany against fear is something I will take from this book and use in my life, as I feel like the line ‘fear is the mind killer’ can be a powerful mantra for anyone in a time of anxiety or difficulty (Hello 2020 I’m looking at you).

So what was boring? Well the Villain, I didn’t really want to read about him and delve into his thoughts. The Baron was rather one dimensional and his paedophilic obsession with young boys was vomit-inducing. I also found that the novel was just a bit too long, if some of the desert roaming stuff had been condensed then I would have enjoyed the novel a lot more than I actually did. I also found flicking between the story and the glossary to understand all the invented terms rather irritating as it instantly removes you from the narrative and reminds me of reading ye olde classics for English literature at uni!

Another thing is the question of whether Dune is problematic or not. You have a white saviour narrative, the uncanny references to Iraq (I mean the name of the planet is Arrakis, it’s too similar to be a coincidence) and Arabic culture and history. The spice Melange as a metaphor for the oil crisis, the list goes on. What was Herbert doing, as a White American Man, should he have been allowed to play with a whole culture’s history and use it for a novel? On the flipside, Paul can be seen as a villain, if you read the novel as a treatise on the dangers of colonialism and the violence of white supremacy it becomes something else entirely. Maybe this is what Herbert was trying to craft, a politically woke novel. One can hope. And actually, Quinn’s Ideas (go follow him if you’re a Sci-fi nerd his videos are brilliant!) on Youtube makes the perfect case for this:

The novel can also be read from an ecological angle, the world of Arrakis is a delicate and balanced ecosystem. Water is precious and the sandworms are revered as gods. But, a disturbance in this balance would be catastrophic, just like global warming is going to and has already caused immense harm to Earth. There are a few lines that stand out to me on this subject…

"The historical system of mutual pillage and extortion stops here on Arrakis," his father said. "You cannot go on forever stealing what you need without regard to those who come after.”

I feel like this is exactly the sentiment that needs to be adopted by society before it’s too late!

Back to my overall thoughts on Dune, I’m still harbouring mixed feelings but I like how much there is to analyse, and this review is only hitting the surface. I am still excited for Denis Villeneuve’s cinematic adaptation as I know he will take the best of the novel and make it pop on screen, and I’m pretty confident that Timothée Chalamet has the skill to play Paul as a complex and morally ambiguous character. But is Dune the greatest Sci-Fi novel ever written? It depends who you ask…

Be a Voice for the Planet

This is important. If you can spare 5 minutes of your time to watch this video and add your pledge to Voice for the Planet, then you are on your way to saving Earth and all her wonderful inhabitants. That may seem like hyperbole…but when you think about it. And I mean really think about it, it’s not. If everyone can pledge to make a small change in their life to lessen their impact on the environment then that adds up to a whole lot of change!

What little things can you do to help?

• Waste less Food.

• Omit one use plastic from your life.

• Buy Vintage.

• Re-sell or recycle.

• Write to a member of your Parliament, ask them for a new deal to preserve our one and only home!

• Encourage your employer to go Eco.

• Don’t litter.

• Protect Bees - if you see one struggling try getting them a little drink of sugar water and perhaps help them thrive in your garden with a cute little Bee Hotel.

• Volunteer to clean up your woodlands or beaches.

• Spread the word - use these hashtags #Call4Nature #OurVoicesForThePlanet #FightForYourWorld.

Don’t forget its the little things that count, and that if you encourage the person next to you to make a little change then the chain goes on and on and on.