Month: July 2015

Cotton Wool

2019 Update – a couple of years after I wrote this blog I discovered Cheeky Wipes,  they’ve totally knocked it out of the park with their reusable pads. Bamboo on one side, soft minky on the other, they wash really well and they are a really generous size. I now recommend these to everyone!

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I recently turned 30 so decided it was about time I got less haphazard in my skin care routine, apparently your skin is official ‘ageing’ from 25…oh heck!

With my new skin care habit came one I was less pleased with, ridiculous usage of cotton wool! Since I’ve started blogging I’ve definitely start to pay more attention to waste, and throwing several cotton wool pads in the bin everyday just didn’t sit right. I had it on my list of things to research when a comment popped up on my blog from the lovely Davina. She pointed me towards reusable pads and so I thought it was worth a go. 

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I use 4-5 pads a day for toner and eye make-up remover, I probably spend £1-£2 a month. I bought two packs of washable pads from Love the Planet at £7.75 each. If they last me a year I’ll have saved money. 

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The pads are huge and thick so instead of using three pads (one for each eye and then toner) I’m finding one pad can do the lot. Once you’ve used them you stick them in their little bag and pop them in the washing machine. I bought two packs because I’m not the most organised person when it comes to clothes washing! They wash great and so far haven’t gone grey or stained.

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This is definitely one change I’ll be sticking to! 

I’m having some time off blogging over the summer but if there’s something you’d like me to tackle in the autumn please leave me a comment! Thanks for reading my quest towards ethical living.

My month of whining…

Well a month into my ethical wine journey I’ve discovered that I have many friends who care about the issue (or just enjoy drinking a fair bit of wine), that shipping wine is better than driving it and that I really don’t know much about the uses of sulphur!

Buying wine online
Before I round up I want to give a final mention to the online option for purchasing wine. During a previous challenge we switched to Good Energy, the lovely people there sent us a £50 voucher for Vintage Roots an organic wine company. We’ve never bought wine online so we were keen to give it a go. We purchased a few bottles of wine and some organic beer. The red wine won last week’s taste test, the white is yummy (and currently fuelling this writing!) and my husband certainly approved of the beer! All the wine I bought was Fairtrade and they have a pretty good selection, they also specialise in more niche vegan and no-sulphur options among others, so definitely one for ethically minded. 

Another online retailer doing something totally different is Naked Wines. Their business model is pretty pioneering and they describe it as follows;

‘Our customers, called Angels, fund talented, independent winemakers and get rewarded with delicious wines at wholesale prices in return.’

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Basically customers pay into an account which Naked Wines invest in winemakers. It takes the Fairtrade model a step further from the basic ‘we pay a fair price’ to actually investing in everything from grapes, winery space, barrels, bottles and other direct costs. I loved that when our box of wine arrived (we cashed in another voucher) in contained stories of the people Naked Wines have helped build their own businesses.

A word of warning
Naked Wines were recently acquired by Majestic Wines (more actual detail here). Though they have pledged to not mess with the brilliant business model they have however said they will invest financially in Naked Wines rather than opening more stores. Why do I say however? Well if Majestic makes it’s money from bulk sales of prodominantly non-fairtrade wine and this is how they can fund Naked Wines winemakers, if you are ethically minded you might find that that cancels out some of the good. This may not matter to most people and I’m very happy to be proved wrong or corrected! The more I read about Naked Wines the more I love their way of doing business, creating great wines and sustainable, ethical businesses along the way. It would be amazing to see if this model can be replicated in other industries.

What will I change?
At the end of this month the change I am going to make is to buy organic and Fairtrade where possible. This will most likely mean sticking to buying online and if I’m caught with an empty wine cellar I’ll pop to Co-op to pick up one of their many Fairtrade bottles!

Thank you to everyone who has commented, drunk wine, asked questions and given me tips, it’s always good to know people are reading and responding to my ramblings!

Next week I’ll be back with some thoughts on cotton wool. I know what you’re thinking…it’s going to be off the chain!!