Rachael Smith is a young, comic artist from the UK, who has just undertaken a three-week residency programme in Prague, organised by the Czech Literary Centre in cooperation with the International Lakes Comic Art Festival. During her stay she recorded her life in the Czech capital through short comic strips, which she immediately shared with her fans online.
'Quarantine Comix'|Source: archive of Rachael Smith
I met with Racheal on the last day of her residency to discuss her work and her impressions from the Czech Republic, but I started by asking what brought her here in the first place:
“It was actually the Lakes festival that suggested me as a resident here to the Czech Literary Centre [a section of the Moravian Library], and luckily for me, they accepted me, so here I am.”
What did you work on during your stay in Prague?
“I am mainly known for my auto-bio comics, or my diary comics, so I thought while I was here, I would just make diary comics about my experiences here, about soaking up the culture and learning about how people live.
“So I have just been making comics every day about my experiences. And it was important for me that I could make the comics and upload them online so that my fans could come on the journey with me, in a sense. So that’s what I wanted to do!”
I believe this was your first visit to Prague. What was your impression of the city and what was it like working in a completely different environment? Did you find it inspiring?
“Yes, I have never been to the Czech Republic before. It is so beautiful and I have really loved it here. It’s been very different working here. There was a lot of restrictions and I don’t have all the materials I am used to having. But that was good, in a sense.
“I think having restrictions on how you can work sometimes force you to be more creative with what you are saying in your work. And, as I said, it is just breathtakingly beautiful here. So I hope I have done it justice in my drawings!”
'Quarantine Comix'|Source: archive of Rachael Smith
What did you like about Prague? Did you have time to visit places?
“The apartment I am staying in is quite close to Vyšehrad, which is really beautiful and I have been there several times already. Otherwise, I just love walking around the centre. I love all the squares and I love how Prague has a lot of green spaces. I guess London has that a little bit, but it seems Prague really considers it important to have green spaces.”
I know that you also tried to learn some Czech….
“Yes, I can say hello, and thank you, and ask for a glass of red wine. But otherwise, I struggle.”
You recently published a comic collection called Quarantine Comix, written and drawn every day during the 2020 lockdown. What inspired you to start doing these comics? Was it a sort of therapy, a way to overcome your loneliness?
“During the lockdown I was trapped away from my partner and I couldn’t see him for a long time, so I went into a bit of a depression.
“My friend Heather suggested that if I am good at anything, it is making people feel less alone through my comics. So I started documenting what I did every day, which made me do things every day and it was actually very cathartic.
“I started putting the comics online and a lot of people told me that they were helping them, that they made them feel less alone. So I just carried on and they ended up being put in this lovely book.”
Do you record your life regularly, or does it only happen in unusual moments, such as the lockdown?
“I have done in the past. One of my most famous books is called Wired up Wrong, which is a black diary comics about my experiences with mental health and my issues with depression and anxiety, talking about my coping mechanism with that.
“I have another one called Stand in Your Power, which is a very similar book about going through a break-up and relationship issues. I made them sound very bleak, but they are actually very funny!
“So I am known for my diary comics and it felt very natural that that would be what I would do on my residency in Prague.”
What has drawn you to the genre of diary comics in the first place? What are the advantages and disadvantages of this genre?
“It was ten years ago, when my therapist suggested that I start drawing, because I told her it was something I loved to do. She suggested that I draw something every day that was good that happened to me, to try to be more positive about life.
'Quarantine Comix'|Source: archive of Rachael Smith
“So I started doing that and I started putting them online and I called the project One Good Thing. And I just found that really helpful and cathartic to get it out there. Also, the added benefit that I wasn’t expecting was that it actually helped other people. This has helped me think more positively about life.
“So at that point I thought: this is actually quite important, I should continue doing things like this. So then I wrote Wired up Wrong, and from there, it kind of snowballed.
“I don’t do diary comics every day, but when I do, it’s very rewarding. It’s a kind of instant gratification putting them online and having people immediately come back and say: Oh this is great.”
“So I put my comics on my Twitter and my Facebook and my Instagram and people comment on them and talk about them.”
Garner has spent thousands of hours on her diary, writing every morning and night. It’s been useful for her other books – and it’s taught her she’s never alone
When I was young, I liked writing. It was the only thing I was any good at, and I wanted to do it all the time. But I knew I would never be able to write a book.
A book, back then in the 50s and 60s, meant a novel. Novels were all I knew about. I’d read hundreds of them. But I thought you couldn’t write one unless you had an “idea” that you wanted to “express”. Writers, I learnt at school and university, had plots, and characters, and things called “themes”. I didn’t have any of those or know how to get them. All I had was a million details. I couldn’t see how it would ever be possible to make a container for the cascade of interesting stuff that poured past and through me each day.
But I liked pushing a pen, so I went on taking notes of the cascade as a way of keeping my head while it rushed on by, trying to capture bits of it in good sentences with grammar and punctuation, to get it into words in a way that relieved me. That’s how I started to keep a diary; and I’ve never stopped.
Eventually I got older and figured out how to pretend I was writing in the proper way. When I published my first “novel”, smart-arses saw through my charade and blew the whistle on me. “She’s only published her diary.” “She talks dirty and passes it off as realism.” This stung, but there was no point in caring. I was using the only material I had: the world as it presented itself to me, and through me. In other words, I was using myself.
‘During these hours of peculiar solitude, in conversation with myself and no one else, I’m free.’
Photograph: Darren James
Pretty much everything I’ve ever published was drawn from this compulsion to watch and witness and record. Great chunks of the diary turned out to be useful in the books I taught myself to write. I learnt to “invent characters” who could do and think things that people could interpret as “themes” if they wanted to. But it was all based on my driven, daily-and-nightly habit of writing things down. In my heart I always liked my diary better than anything else I wrote.
When I sit down to write something for publication, I’ll do anything to avoid the desk. I drag the chain for half a day at a time. I eat biscuits or put on the washing or vacuum the mats or lie on them and curse my fate. To write with conscious purpose I have to corral myself, to buckle on a harness before I can even start.
But every night before I go to sleep, and every morning when I open my eyes, I pick up my diary and my fountain pen, make a note of the date and time, and start writing. I never don’t want to. I never don’t feel like it or can’t be bothered. I just do it, sitting up in bed, and when I’ve been writing for 10 minutes or maybe an hour and feel like stopping, I stop – because I’m not writing for any reader other than myself. During these hours of peculiar solitude, in conversation with myself and no one else, I’m free.
I used to think (and often have been told) that there was something self-obsessed and neurotic about keeping a diary, that it was a way of defending myself from the world. Why would anyone be interested? Why on earth should a perfect stranger care, let alone feel something, when I describe, say, a dream I had of a bear in the back seat of a car? A broken umbrella in a bin, a rat in a kitchen, a bird that sings all night in a park? Isn’t it almost pathological, sitting there scribbling away by myself?
But I get letters from people. Strangers make lists of the things they recognise, and send them back to me. Sometimes they even say, “Thank you. This could be my life. This could be me.”
What I’ve learnt, from editing the diaries into books and putting them out there, is that during those thousands of private hours, I’m never alone. If I go far enough, if I keep going past the boring, obedient part of me with its foot always riding the brake, and through the narrow, murky parts that are abject or angry or frightened, I find myself moving out into another region, a bigger, broader place where everybody else lives: a fearless, open-hearted firmament where images swarm, and there’s music, and poetry that we almost understand, fleeting moments of sky and dirt, subtle changes in the light, a feather of a hesitation, mistakes and pain and getting over pain, all kinds of shouting and dawn and small nice things to eat, and being allowed to carry a stranger’s baby round a garden, and singing in the car all the way home.
Aberdeenshire GP Catriona Lawson talks to Tom Moberly about how keeping a diary has helped her to reflect and keep things in perspective, especially during the pandemic
Catriona Lawson has kept a diary on and off since she was a child. “It was the traditional childhood thing of writing down your thoughts because they seemed really important and because it gave you a chance to think things through.”
Since then, she has put her thoughts and feelings down on paper when she wants to reflect. “I can be mulling something over, and chewing it over and ruminating on it,” she says. “But if I write it down—and write down a few things that aren’t really related to it—suddenly it looks quite small.”
She says that the role of her diary has been different at different times in her life but that she tends to return to it when she has had a lot to think about. “When I do write something down, it usually has all the factual ‘this happened, that happened’ stuff but it also includes the thoughts and feelings and hopes that come out of that. And that’s where the value lies.”
Since the start of the pandemic, Lawson has found herself turning to her diary more regularly, and at the moment she writes in it every day, usually in the evening.
“It’s been more of a discipline and an opportunity to reflect while things have been busy and there’s been such a lot of change,” she says. “There have been stressful times in the past when I’ve kept a diary—partly as a way of putting things in perspective and getting them out of my head and being able to go off and do something else.”
Lawson is careful to ensure that any people mentioned in the diary, especially patients, are not identifiable. “Nobody’s going to want to read it, but if anybody was to pick it up, I would want it to be something that could be read.”
She says she would absolutely recommend to others the practice of keeping a diary, but that everyone should find what suits them in terms of how and when they write. “If it suits somebody just to write down a few details so that they can refer back and say, ‘Oh that was when I did that,’ then that’s fine. If they want to do something much more reflective, great. There are lots of different ways. Do what fits you.”
How to make the change
Treat yourself to nice stationery. “Have something that you’re happy to sit down with—maybe a nice notebook or maybe a file on your iPad,” Lawson says.
Leave the boring bits in as they can be interesting to come back to
Consider writing daily to get the details right—and try to include the small things
Don’t make it a chore “It’s something to enjoy, so think about why you want to do it,” Lawson says
Diary writing helps train the “writing muscle” and is good practice for anybody who wants to do more writing
For close to a year, beginning with the first “temporary” closures in March 2020, critic and novelist Charles Finch began keeping a diary of his life during the COVID-19 pandemic — a record that began with an assignment from The Times that month. The following excerpt from "What Just Happened," out Nov. 9, chronicles a day in that life, during which, unexpectedly, the Beatles change everything.
September 22
Some days you wake up feeling like a different person than the day before. Not very often for me — mostly it happens behind my back. But I woke up today and remembered something strange that I had vowed in stoned clarity last night, during a long walk toward the Griffith Observatory, which was to remind myself: Listened to Beatles for first time since age 10. But I hadn’t forgotten.
I have listened to the Beatles a lot since I was 10, probably more than any other band. At boarding school I used to drop my backpack on the floor of my room the second the school day was over, put "Abbey Road" on my CD player, then fall on top of my covers and go to sleep as the wintry Massachusetts day faded. I wrote a book listening exclusively to "Revolver" and “Rubber Soul.” I’ve seen Paul McCartney live twice. Once was in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I drove four hours to see him by myself, feeling stupid the whole time, and then, about eight minutes into the concert, discovered to my shock that my arms were raised and eyes were closed, and realized with a start that this must be how religious people feel. The other time was at Dodger Stadium in 2019, not long before COVID — a huge outdoor crowd, the kind that wouldn’t look the same for a long time, or maybe ever —and Ringo came on at the end. You could feel people’s hearts bursting. The last two Beatles on stage, right in front of us; everyone understood it was sacred, at least to some.
Paul McCartney at Dodger Stadium in 2014 — his first concert there since the Beatles broke up in 1970.
(Los Angeles Times)
Yesterday it was a cool evening at last after this blazing month, half a year into quarantine: no sign of a vaccine, still (like so many people) immunocompromised, grimly determined to stay home and stay safe. I was walking in Griffith Park. It was cloudy, the wind measuring everything, swaying the tennis nets. Discarded blue surgical masks fluttered around the street, and walking the empty hillside felt good, my body limbering and loosening.
As I walked, I thought about the last few days, which I’ve spent writing a long descriptive passage of when I first got badly sick, as a kid. It’s the first time I’ve written about it. Though the condition still affects me, I thought I had moved beyond thinking so much about those acute days. But maybe not. I thought moodily of the way I should really have put it, which was to say that ultimately there’s just one of those “two types of people” things I believe, and it’s that there are those who have been sick and those who haven’t. Neither side is special, and by “sick” I don’t mean any specific thing, I just mean there are people who have been at war with their bodies. Not pain, but a contraction of your whole existence into nothing except pain. Everyone has to answer for themselves whether they know what that feels like.
Then, while I was walking in long pissed-off strides, thinking about all the things I should have written, I realized that Spotify had tossed out a Beatles song at random. I kind of avoid them on Spotify — too tender, too real. It was “I’ll Get You,”which is really a true 50/50 Paul and John song, and as I listened, the song slipped behind my defences so easily that it took me a moment to realize what was happening, that I was hearing it, first in indistinct glimmers, then completely, with the same ears as I had when I was little.
It sounds so slight the day afterward, like most such experiences. (It’s all in William James.) But it wasn’t. When the song ended I put on a random Beatles playlist, practically in a trance. I didn’t even want to look at my phone for long enough to get distracted by a text, I didn’t want to lose the feeling, and walked for hours through the night, listening. I had put so much of myself inside those songs for safekeeping. If I was someone who could cry, which is an aspiration I have, I think I would have cried; at least, my face was warm, and I had a feeling of disbelief which is what I think crying must be like, when your inner life and the world are so different that you can only reconcile them by crying tears.
There are millions of bigger Beatles fans than I am, but I feel stubbornly certain in my heart that no one can love the Beatles morethan I do. They were incredibly alive to me from the moment I heard them. Looking back, I think it was their joyfulness I found so mesmerizing. Even their saddest songs have an undercurrent of happiness. (You’re never too far from a 7th chord with the Beatles.) I think it’s because they were four working class kids whose crazy plan had actually worked. Especially in their early pictures they look dumbstruck to be so famous and gifted and rich and happy. It’s there in their first perfect song, "Please Please Me." A minute and a half in, John and Paul mess up the lyrics, then sort of cover it as they launch, with John laughing — but not to the listener, just caught up in the happiness of the playing with Paul, this other genius he found in Liverpool — and then covering the laugh with the start of the chorus.
Charles Finch learns a Steely Dan solo early in the pandemic.
(Charles Finch)
That joy in life, that freedom, is what makes their music different from all other music. “Even in the most sublimated work of art there is a hidden it should be otherwise,” said Theodor Adorno. I’ve prodded the thought for soft spots, because aphorisms can be cheap, but I think it’s brilliant and sad. I also think there’s an exception: the Beatles. Even at their most grizzled, they were on a grand adventure. “When you get to the top there is nowhere to go but down," Philip Larkin once said. “But the Beatles could not get down.” None of them was even 30 when the band broke up.
Last night, I listened to all of it. In my head I tracked the other songs in which various band members laugh (“I Should Have Known Better,” “It’s Only Love,” “If I Fell,” etc.) and observed with intense satisfying scrutiny just how weird and sad and good John’s parts of "A Day in the Life"are, so much of each that it’s hard to believe it’s a part of mainstream culture, until you remember that one of Paul’s transcendent gifts is to lift the sensation of hopelessness from a song without rejecting its presence. I listened to “I’ve Got a Feeling.” “Everybody had a hard year.” I nodded, in the misting dark, as I headed home. In my defence it was very late by then. Everybody had a hard year.
Something obvious occurred to me, which is how vitally important music must have been to so many of us since the start of the lockdowns. Usually we encounter dozens of people a week; now, for months, if you’ve been keeping safe, it’s one or two a week, greeted with tight, scared, friendly nods at the grocery store or pharmacy. In this solitude, music takes on strange new emotional intensity, or at least has for me, from the tender start-of-quarantine March moments when I was listening to Fleetwood Mac (could we handle the seasons of our lives? Unclear!) to the cooling summer company of Funkadelic.
But this felt different, as if the music had reached farther into me than usual. As I arrived home completely sober, completely exhausted and listening to “Hello, Goodbye,”I said hello to these four old friends of mine, and I very cautiously said hello to myself when I was eight, a person whose characteristics and dreams I think I have largely forgotten. But that was me, as definitely as I am myself now.
“Hello, Goodbye” was their first single after their manager Brian Epstein died. It was with Epstein’s death and that song that the Beatles lost their initial illusions, and their music from then on became more interesting, and it also became inevitable that the band would end. Typically brilliant of them to give us an album from their 20th year together without having to get there, which I think they knew they wouldn’t: Sgt. Pepper.
Am I alone in having gone into different parts of myself during these last few months? I think no, it’s the other way: that none of us had to think about ourselves and how we move through the days of our lives this deeply before. All of us went inside as certain people in March; it will be interesting to see who walks out. Whatever it was, the music as I walked felt like water flowing down dry riverbeds. It occurred to me that in this year of change, it might be possible for me to change. I went to bed at a rare peace with everything — or really, truthfully, with the deep past, I suppose, which has always been so present in my adult life, never cleansed of its meaning, rushing farther away and closer every minute.
If you were to sift through your rubbish and recycling bins, just how much waste would you find?
From takeaways and toothbrushes to cotton wool and cat food pouches, the UK generated 222.2million tonnes of total waste in a year, according to latest figures from the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA).
While the UK recycling rate for waste from households is on the increase, it’s alarming to know that it’s not just rubbish – we’re also wasting 4.5mtonnes of food each year.
But what can we do about it and who, if anyone, is to blame? To find out, we asked six families to tell us just how much waste they produced in a week and what #Just1Change they would make to help the planet.
Here’s how they got on…
Ndah and Valentine Mbawa
Ndah and her husband have three daughters aged, 13, 12, and seven (Picture: Supplied)
Ndah says: We are very conscious of what waste goes where as we try to train the children in the habit of recycling and energy conservation. Sometimes, it’s the children keeping us on track.
Monday: We have a cat and when I fed him this morning it struck me that we don’t really think about how much waste she produces and where it should go. She has dried food, but also a pouch every day and I’ve never once thought about whether that can be recycled or not, as they have a metallic looking inside. I need to investigate more…
Tuesday: We do try to be as green as possible, and today I am making sure that everything goes in its correct place. For example, if I take any plastic wrapping off anything, I’m ensuring nothing that is non-recyclable goes into the recyclable bin and that all food waste goes into the caddy.
Wednesday: It’s day three and I’m already spotting how much we throw out – canned tomatoes, juice boxes, plastic and glass bottles, crisps, cat litter… I know it can sometimes look more than it is, especially with recycling, as it’s hard to fold down, but it’s still amazing how much we get through even though we try hard to be green.
Thursday: We run two businesses and one is a subscription service called A Gran Smile, which people use to send gift boxes to their elderly loved ones. It means we tend to have quite a bit of inventory arrive in cardboard boxes and I’m realising now how much paper and cardboard is a culprit in our waste levels. I know it’s recyclable but we could still probably cut down on how much we use.
‘Having three children means we do create a fair bit of rubbish,’ says Ndah (Picture: Supplied)
Friday: We like cooking food from scratch, which means our kitchen waste mainly constitutes cans, cooking oil bottles, plastic packaging and food peelings. However, on a Friday we do like to get the odd takeaway, which I know generates cardboard and plastic waste.
Saturday: Today is ‘big shop’ day and a real eye-opener into how much plastic supermarkets and suppliers use. From plastic-wrapped grapes and plums to the little bit used to seal top of bottles and containers, like ketchup or mayo. There’s just no need.
Sunday: Having three children means we do create a fair bit of rubbish. There’s lots of cleaning always to be done, which doesn’t always include eco-friendly products, and now they’re older I’m noticing the kids don’t always recycle as much as they could – I sometimes find the odd crisp bag and yoghurt pot in the bins in their rooms.
Conclusion: Keeping track of our rubbish has made me realise the huge amount of waste that is being brought back from supermarkets and shops. I never appreciated just how much there is that is non-recyclable as it usually just goes in the bag without me noticing the quantity.
My #Just1Change: Buy less – or try buying only as we need more often, so we’re not generating waste from unused or expired food items.
Vic Paterson and Greg Pritchard
Vic, 46, is married to Greg, 37, they run a wellness clinic and have two cats and five dogs (Picture: Supplied)
Vic says: We’ve always tried to be reasonably ecologically friendly. Our local authority is one of the few places in the UK that doesn’t use wheelie bins – it’s all rubbish sacks (recyclable and non-recyclable), so we get a bit of a feel for how much we’re throwing away. However, as we run a soft tissue therapy business from our home, it does tend to generate quite a lot of waste, which is annoying.
Monday: The first thing to get chucked out was a carton of oat milk and a plastic milk carton, both recyclable so they got rinsed and put in the recycling! We also received some junk mail – despite not ever remembering signing up for it – and a load of mailbox leaflets, none of which appealed to us and all of which went straight in the bin. I feel bad for the companies sending them.
Tuesday: Our dogs eat dry food that we normally buy in big bulk bags. However, we’ve ran out so it’s an emergency trip to the local supermarket for a smaller bag and a few items for the house. I make sure to take a couple of packable nylon bags rather than forgetting and then buying a reusable carrier bag.
Wednesday: More junk mail. The dogs have gone through one bag of dog food, so I’ll need to get another tomorrow. The business is busy, so the home cooked meals of the last two nights are abandoned for frozen food from the supermarket. Although masks are no longer compulsory, I’m still wearing N95 masks, but they come individually wrapped, which makes me feel quite guilty.
‘Our local authority is one of the few places in the UK that doesn’t use wheelie bins, so we get a bit of a feel for how much we’re throwing away,’ says Vic (Picture: Supplied)
Thursday: I love my hot chocolate machine, but the grated chocolate that is sold for the machine comes in single serve sachets, which seemed quick, easy and a little indulgent when I bought them. Although the sachets are made out of paper, I find myself wondering why it doesn’t come in jars or a large bag – surely that would be more environmentally friendly? I go to the supermarket and pick up a lightweight mop that comes with disposable wipes pre-prepared with disinfectant. It seems like a good idea for our wellness clinic, State 11, although there’s lots of cardboard in the packaging and I try not to think too much about the wipes.
Friday: With work being full on for the last couple of days, we’ve resorted to some protein based, add-hot-water type meals to grab and go, which means very little waste as they come in large multi-serving bags. I also finish a packet of antihistamines and can’t help but think the packaging could be a lot smaller.
Saturday: I’m not sure how we’ve gone through so much milk this week – or cheese! My favourite is a smoked one that only comes in slices. Thankfully, the packaging is easier to recycle now that there isn’t little pieces of thin plastic between each slice (which wasn’t recyclable) but the downside is the slices all stick together. We’ve also finished a couple of spray bottles, which you could refill with concentrate and dilute with tap water. Surely that would be better?
Sunday: It’s the end of the week, so I check the business rubbish. We use a lot of kineseology tape, which comes in large cardboard boxes, and each piece of tape has backing paper. It’s all recyclable, but still seems a lot.
Conclusion: I was quite pleased about how much of what we had was recyclable, but I wish there was some way to easily ‘unsubscribe’ from the junk mail! Our bulk buying means there’s less individual packaging but keeping the diary for the week meant I was much more aware than usual of what we do have that comes in individual packaging.
Our #Just1Change: We’re going to put a sign up on the door saying no flyers and get ourselves removed from mailing lists.
Ellie Good
Ellie Good lives with her two children, aged seven and nine, and works from home running a creative business (Picture: Supplied)
Ellie says: I have been concerned about climate change since I was a child – at seven I wrote to my MP to ask for glass recycling! I am now involved with a community-focused environmental campaign group called Eco Action Families, but struggle to live as green as I would like as running my own illustration business and looking after my family leaves very little time for trips to the plastic free shops.
Monday: I’m frustrated by the amount of paper marketing that was dropped through the front door this morning. I need to get one of those letterbox stickers that says ‘no junk mail’.
Tuesday: I love a good cup of coffee in the morning, but hate that you can’t easily get coffee in a bag that’s at the very least reusable or recyclable. I will need to look for a small indie roaster I think as the commercial brands are not yet ready to package theirs responsibly.
Wednesday: I have a horrible cold. I normally try to stoically sit out minor illness, but this is a real stinker. I hate blister packs and sachets, but today I am grateful for what’s inside them.
‘Running my own business and looking after my family leaves very little time for trips to the plastic free shops,’ says Ellie (Picture: Supplied)
Thursday: I was satisfied to send off two wholesale orders of my products using only upcycled packaging (boxes, bubble wrap etc) that I had received from buying things online. #Rubbishwin! However, I also had to throw away a plastic pot today because it had no recycling information on it. #Rubbishfail.
Friday: Today I feel angry that I spend so much time separating waste. Yes, certain things like food should be my responsibility, but companies and the government must shoulder more of the burden here. For example, I bought a pair of shorts for my son online, which arrived in two plastic bags, one with a built-in hanger, plus a cardboard insert. So much waste for one pair of shorts.
Saturday: Only put two small things in the general waste today. Hurrah! I try so hard to keep plastic waste down when feeding the children, but sometimes I buy picnic stuff in the supermarket, which always come in a plastic box – and I never know whether it is recyclable or not.
Sunday: I’ve got friends over but am feeling quite drained and didn’t have the energy to cook, so I bought some things from COOK, a company I think has a conscience. A lot of the packaging was card, but I do wonder if the plastic trays that the nibbles came in will make it to the recycling plant, or just get tipped in the sea, or onto a mountain of plastic in another country… I wash them up too, before I put them in the recycling. It annoys me that this may be in vain.
Conclusion: This week has shown me that I definitely work hard to keep us as green as possible, but there’s still so much plastic. I am chronically aware of it all and hate that I can’t do better.
My #Just1Change: Finding a coffee brand with sustainable packaging and getting a ‘NO JUNK’ sticker for my letterbox.
Gen and Charles Edwards
Gen, 63, lives with her husband Charles, 72, in Leeds (Picture: Supplied)
Gen says: Our ‘waste’ habits have definitely changed over time and we’ve definitely noticed how packaging has moved on over the years. We seem to generate more than ever, even now there’s just the two of us, as the kids have moved out. Recycling also really bothers me, as I’d like to think that most of my waste is recycled or composted, but I always wonder what happens to the rest of it?
Monday: I am grimacing every time I separate packaging and put some in the recycle bag, and some in the dustbin. For example, tomato or fruit packaging tends to be 50/50 with half recyclable in the form of paper or card cartons or plastic trays; the other half a throw-away cellophane – or plastic-type wrap.
Tuesday: While food shopping today, I notice that despite buying bespoke drawstring muslin-type bags from the supermarket for me to place loose fruit and veg, most of the time the stuff that could could be loose – apples, pears, tomatoes, avocados – is pre-packaged anyway so I seldom use these bags.
Wednesday: I work as an Intuitive Energy Healer and my last session often finishes around 6:15pm and the last thing I want to do then is start making a meal from scratch, so I tend to buy HelloFresh (cardboard boxes, lots of fiddly little containers) or ready-made supermarket meals (tinfoil trays, cardboard packaging and cellophane that must be removed before popping in the oven). Tonight I opt for baked beans on toast and scrambled eggs – and believe it or not, I recycle my eggshells by crushing and using them in the garden as fertilizer.
‘We’ve definitely noticed how packaging has moved on over the years,’ says Gen (Picture: Supplied)
Thursday: I think I drink far too many iced coffee products – apart from the dodgy health aspect of too much sugar, the plastic cups add up. I do like the new paper straws from the brand I buy, but never quite know if they drift off, divorced from the rest of my recyclables (like socks in a washing machine) and end up in rivers anyway?
Friday: Charles likes fish on Fridays so earlier in the week I bought a delicious fish pie from the supermarket – wrapped in a tinfoil tray, a cardboard wrapper and a cellophane sheet. More recycling and downright throwaways! Gulp.
Saturday: Had a Chinese takeaway for dinner tonight. Although it comes in plastic containers, I’m OK with that – we wash them and re-use them to pack food in the fridge or deepfreeze, also to take snacks with us on road-trips.
Sunday: I do the odd mop around the place on weekends if I can be bothered and generally we use loo products that are quite toxic for the environment – there’s more plastic too, of course.
Conclusion: At the end of the week, we noticed that our throw-away, black bin rubbish is maybe half the volume of the recyclables. I think in principle we’re doing the ‘right thing’ – but we definitely need to make more of an effort to ‘reduce’ in the first place.
My #Just1Change: I’ve stopped drinking packaged iced coffee and started making it myself at home. No more straws!
Sonali Saujani
Entrepreneur Sonali, 33, lives in London (Picture: Supplied)
Sonali says: I am quite excited to do this as, like most people, I throw things away without thinking. One thing that I have noticed is as much as I love how accessible Amazon and online shopping is, the packaging definitely needs looking at, so it will be interesting to see just how much waste it really creates.
Monday: As I’m only expecting one delivery this week, I realise that how many packages I get really does impact the amount of rubbish I’ll create. Sometimes it can be up to three or four a week, as I tend to bulk buy things like washing pods and dog food. I also notice today how much kitchen roll I use to clean up, so am trying to use reusable cloths sometimes.
Tuesday: A lot of my general rubbish comes from my French bulldog, Luna. Not only is it her food, but also her medication. She is on several types for her skin. The one that causes the most rubbish is one called Atopica, it comes like human medication, in a box, with a leaflet and four sheets of plastic, each containing just five tablets. I also clean her with wipes as she has allergies – I don’t like using them, but they are medicated, so it’s really an easy option.
Wednesday: This was a really busy work day for me, I spent most of it on my laptop, on client calls. I drink Nepresso coffee a couple of times a day and I must admit that at first I did worry about what happened to the pods. But then I discovered there was a recycling scheme, so I collect all my pods in a bin, and transfer them to the bags Nespresso provide, and they collect them when I call them to. So there’s no rubbish there.
‘This week has definitely made me more conscious of the amount I throw away,’ says Sonali (Picture: Supplied)
Thursday: I went out today so actually put on makeup – which meant I had to use cotton pads to take it off again. If I’d gone out more I’d obviously be throwing away more, but it’s been a quiet week for me. I have tried reuseable make up pads such as the Halo, but they need constant washing, so felt that maybe it could be a waste of water and electricity in itself? Instead, I’ve switched back to disposable cotton pads.
Friday: I have a grey bin where I put all the rubbish from my business called Enigma, which sells crystals. A while back, clients began to request packaging that is as eco-friendly as possible, which I try to do. Sometimes it’s not as minimalistic as would like. I want people to imagine they are opening a gift as crystals are a form of self love. But in hindsight, this probably creates a lot of rubbish on their end – just not much mine.
Saturday: Looking at my food waste, most of it has come from breakfast, where I like to eat eggs in the morning. My boyfriend came round and cooked pizza last night too, so there’s a little bit of waste from that.
Sunday: Today was a really quiet day for me, so I pottered about the kitchen a bit and cleaned up using reusable cloths (a la Mrs Hinch!).
Conclusion: This week has definitely made me more conscious of the amount I throw away. I need to start using more reusable things like my kitchen cloths. I think I am doing an alright job, for now, but I also think it’s down to the bigger companies to make sure they are thinking about the amount of rubbish they produce.
My #Just1Change: Use less kitchen roll!
Jolene and Gavin Phillips Howell
Jolene, 42, and Gavin, 42 have two children aged eight and five (Picture: Supplied)
Jolene says: I was very excited and dubious at the start of this experiment. Being a family with two small children, I expected to have lots of waste, and did wonder where I was going to store it all for the week!
Monday: We always remove all items from their outside packaging and pour them into containers or baskets straight away. As I’m doing this, I notice just how much packaging comes with stuff. Our cereal gets poured into pouring containers, crisps and snacks loosely put into tubs. It’s so annoying that we could literally fill a whole bag for life with the excess waste that comes from that!
Tuesday: We use HelloFresh four times a week for two people. I find the packaging to be very minimal due to the small amount of ingredients provided – I know some people find the sachets a waste, but in my opinion, there would be a lot more packaging if I were to buy the full-sized ingredients from the supermarket.
Wednesday: As I put more packaging into the wheelie bin I make a mental note to recycle my own waste into something useful when I can, such as crafts for the children with cereal boxes. I run agift company called Obscenity Cards from home, and over the last five years I’ve learned to reuse every bit of packaging I receive. The only wastage I get is the little cellophane strips that I peel off to seal my cards, but I changed to biodegradable cellophane card wrappers last year so that doesn’t worry me.
Thursday: As I make the kids packed lunches for school, I can see that snack wrapping seems to be the most wasteful. I’m always filling up the recycling with wrappers, crisp bags etc. We all go through a lot of snacks in the week and it’s made me think very strongly about how I could further reduce that waste. Thankfully, almost all of it is recyclable, but it’s still a lot more than I thought it would be!
‘We all go through a lot of snacks in the week,’ says Jolene (Picture: Supplied)
Friday: My husband and I are doing Sober October – had we done this another month, we would have had a fair amount more included in the collected waste this week! Even so, knowing that we’d normally get through two or three wine bottles and up to 12 lager cans/bottles – it does make me think about how much waste comes from that.
Saturday: I try to use as little cleaning products as possible – for example, I use warm soapy cloths for wiping down surfaces, dry cloths for dusting, etc. I don’t use surface wipes nor do I use a lot of bleach, sprays or polish. The only real regular cleaning waste is washing tablet boxes and discarded wet wipes, which my children use a lot of. This does make me feel guilty as I’m aware they’re not good for the environment, but it’s a kind of necessary evil when it comes to snot and other bodily fluids we won’t mention!
Sunday: We do our main shopping today and having seen how much waste we accumulate from the snack type foods, I would like to see more items packaged with a strong paper as opposed to plastic such as small packets of sweets, small chocolate bars, breakfast bars, that type of thing. I have always bought fruit and veg loose where I can, as it’s much more environmentally-friendly and cost-effective – but it’s not so easily available where I live, unless I travel further to a larger supermarket, which usually isn’t convenient.
Conclusion: I’m very surprised how little waste we have after a week. We use wheelie bins and it appears lot more when looking inside an unorganised, full, messy bin. We are doing a lot better than we thought as a family of four and I feel quite proud – although, there’s always room for improvement!
