Convenience – Paul Noël

Stainless steel frying pan and natural cleaning products -Environmental loading 21

So last year we decided to reduce our exposure to PFAS and plastic. We’re living in a ginormous chemical cocktail experiment otherwise known as a first world convenient life. OK, so the convenient lifestyle won’t kill you today but what is the consumption of all industrial garbage doing to our health in the long term. We know that both PFAS chemicals and nano plastic particles are crossing our blood brain barriers. Research shows that PFAS chemicals are being concentrated in the glioma of people who have died of these brain tumours. Small plastic particles are being possibly linked to Parkinson’s Disease. Would you want to find out that it’s too late to reduce your exposure once you have been diagnosed with some terrible disease? That’s why we’re trying to reduce our daily exposure. No takeaway cups, no plastic in microwaves, we don’t even use a microwave, no plastic bottles of water and we’ve stopped fruit juice in plastic bottles because that’s probably just as bad. In addition we have ditched for the most part our PFAS Teflon covered frying pan for a stainless steel one. The only thing we haven’t tried is cooking eggs in it. In the photo there are also a number of natural cleaning products so no micro and plastic particles finding their way down our sink and into the environment and potentially back into us. One downside is these products aren’t made locally so possibly carry a heavier carbon footprint. Protect yourself from the modern life as it may one day kill you.

Below are a series of photos in relation to food storage and food miles plus healthy eating just for some examples of the modern life.

Inside the Mercat de Sant Josep de la Boqueria, La Rambla, Ciutat Vella, Barcelona, Spain

Our links

Our Teemill shop site for our organic cotton clothes and bags, https://junagarh-media.teemill.com/.

My author page where you can discover more about my books, https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B07D3ZTQ1L.

This is our website for all our photography and my books, https://www.junagarhmedia.co.uk/.

We are also on Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/21104365@N06/.

Also on Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/junagarh_media/.

Our Etsy shop https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/JunagarhMedia.

On Pinterest, https://www.pinterest.co.uk/paulpaddington2017/

Baby food part 2- really?

So what is being put into the mouths of children? We need to change the way we live, work, travel and consume. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/are-plastic-particles-in-bottled-water-harmful-to-health

Recent studies suggest a possible link between nano plastic particles having crossed the blood brain barrier being responsible for some people developing Parkinson’s Disease, https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adi8716. In addition PFAS compounds are being found to be concentrated in brain tumours, glioma, https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/24/5/5045. So ask yourself, is that cosy, convenient, fossil fuel and derivatives based life really that safe? If it isn’t we need to start reducing our exposure to it.

From a previous post

Homo sapiens, 7 million years in the making yet somehow we now have to feed babies with packaging from trees that died way back before our branch of evolution started growing. Could be it’s more about convenience rather than actually the only way to live our lives. Let’s face it there’s a certain laziness and like of convenience in all of us but this packaging is an environmental disaster. The companies making this stuff are going to want to grow the market and produce more plastic pollution. Let’s join the dots again here. This packaging or some like it will find it’s way into the environment where it will be broken down into microplastics. From there it will find it’s way into the placentas of women and into the younger brothers and sisters of the babies and young children currently enjoying this plastic wrapped convenience food. Would you really do this to a future generation of unborn children? No, then don’t. Change how you feed your kids.

Our links

Our Teemill shop site for our organic cotton clothes and bags, https://junagarh-media.teemill.com/.

My author page where you can discover more about my books, https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B07D3ZTQ1L.

This is our website for all our photography and my books, https://www.junagarhmedia.co.uk/.

We are also on Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/21104365@N06/.

Also on Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/junagarh_media/.

Our Etsy shop https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/JunagarhMedia.

On Pinterest, https://www.pinterest.co.uk/paulpaddington2017/

The cost of convenience – a tree is felled

Somewhere, far from where you are a tree crashes to the ground. It starts it’s long journey and processing to become the everyday objects that we so carelessly distribute and use. Without thinking of where these items come from, what chemicals are used and what the true environmental cost is they pass through our hands.

Our links

Our Teemill shop site for our organic cotton clothes and bags, https://junagarh-media.teemill.com/.

My author page where you can discover more about my books, https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B07D3ZTQ1L.

This is our website for all our photography and my books, https://www.junagarhmedia.co.uk/.

We are also on Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/21104365@N06/.

Also on Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/junagarh_media/.

Our Etsy shop https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/JunagarhMedia.

On Pinterest, https://www.pinterest.co.uk/paulpaddington2017/

Join the dots, the connection between a teabag and plastic particles in your fruit and veg

A blog I posted about our convenient lifestyles and the way we are potentially polluting ourselves.

July 2020

Since the middle of the 20th century we have lived ever more convenient lives without considering the larger picture and now that convenience is coming back destroying our environment and potentially leading to all sorts of health effects in us as well as other organisms.

A new study has shown that our fruit and veg contains nano and micro sized plastic particles, Plastic in your fruit and veg. How did they get there? Other research has shown that our “convenient” plastic has polluted the entire planet from Arctic to Antarctica from mountain top to deep ocean floors. So where did these particles originally come from as they did not just appear? Some may have come from that teabag you use everyday. For hundreds of years we drank loose tea. It never killed us but it was messy. Far better to put it in a bag and far better for marketing it as a brand rather than just trying to sell tea. So instead of having to guess or measure an amount of tea, although many of us still do, the corporate brands put a specific amount of tea in a bag, tie a thread on it and to that add a cardboard tag, another chance to indoctrinate you into the brand. This keeps the marketing and advertising executives in new BMWs but that’s another story. Once the tea is in a bag it is often put into an individual wrapper as per the picture above with another opportunity to hammer home the indoctrination of the brand. Then a number of tea bags are placed into another wrapper, let’s say a box this time, with you guessed it, more branding on the outside. Some of these boxes, depending on brand, are then wrapped in plastic again. There’s a lot of wrapping for a few grams of tea.

So how does that plastic get into your fruit and veg? Well some of it will be burnt releasing toxins and some will be buried. Some will be blown by the wind, find itself in drains and rivers and flow into the oceans. Physical processes will break all that branding down to where it eventually becomes micro and nano sized particles which as we now know cover our entire planet. Some of course will settle on soil that we grow our food on and hey presto will be taken up as the food we eat grows. Then we eat it and the consequences of that are largely unknown but potentially serious. Would you willingly eat the plastic teabag wrapper above? if not go back to buying loose tea and remove as much other plastic from your life as possible. Your body may very well thank you silently for doing so and you may not end up with a serious illness the source of which cannot be determined.

Our links

Our Teemill shop site for our organic cotton T-shirts and bags, https://junagarh-media.teemill.com/.

My author page where you can discover more about my books, https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B07D3ZTQ1L.

This is our website for all our photography and my books, https://www.junagarhmedia.co.uk/.

We are also on Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/21104365@N06/.

Also on Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/junagarh_media/.

Our Etsy shop https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/JunagarhMedia.

On Pinterest, https://www.pinterest.co.uk/paulpaddington2017/

What will happen to me now asked the shower gel container?

An original blog from May 2020. I think we had already stopped buying shower gel like this and had inherited this part used product. Now we use soap bars for body and for hair. It’s time that we all changed.

It’s Number 5 plastic according to the label. Greenpeace say that the US has only the capacity to recycle 5% of this type of plastic. I don’t know about the UK or other places. So where will it end up? As detritus in our rivers and oceans or will it be incinerated adding extra CO2 to the atmosphere and releasing toxic and health damaging small particles for those living near the incinerators. Meanwhile the Faith in Nature soap was sold in a brown paper bag and the shampoo soap bar in a cardboard box. Neither involved carting lots of unnecessary water around between manufacturer and user. Our convenience is killing us and the planet.

Our links

Our Teemill shop site for our organic cotton T-shirts and bags, https://junagarh-media.teemill.com/.

My author page where you can discover more about my books, https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B07D3ZTQ1L.

This is our website for all our photography and my books, https://www.junagarhmedia.co.uk/.

We are also on Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/21104365@N06/.

Also on Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/junagarh_media/.

Our Etsy shop https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/JunagarhMedia.

On Pinterest, https://www.pinterest.co.uk/paulpaddington2017/

Recycling, what will happen to this glass jar?

An item I posted in May 2020 and we’re still smashing glass for recycling rather than reversing the process of delivery from factory to household. How hard can it be?

So here is a container that billions of us have access to. In this case it had palm oil free peanut butter in it. They are very useful containers and good at preserving perishable content but not everyone has access to them. This one was placed in the recycling bag today and collected by the council but what will happen to it?

In all probability it will end up being made into a new glass container of some kind having been taken to a glass recycling centre and broken up and remelted. That however is still not very good for the environment as a lot of energy has been used in the production of the jar. As the lorry that delivered the jar to the supermarket will drive back to a distribution point there is a case for me to return my jar to the supermarket so the lorry can return the empty containers to the distribution point and from there the containers can be sent back to the manufacturer for cleaning and reuse.

This process must be part of any sustainable doughnut economic model. It is also part of a wider discussion on how we grow and package and supply enough peanut butter to all those people who would like to eat peanut butter and not only those that can, but that would have to be a much longer blog.

Our links

Our Teemill shop site for our organic cotton T-shirts and bags, https://junagarh-media.teemill.com/.

My author page where you can discover more about my books, https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B07D3ZTQ1L.

This is our website for all our photography and my books, https://www.junagarhmedia.co.uk/.

We are also on Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/21104365@N06/.

Also on Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/junagarh_media/.

Our Etsy shop https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/JunagarhMedia.

On Pinterest, https://www.pinterest.co.uk/paulpaddington2017/

Convenience or sustainability part 2

This is a post I did originally in early 2020, so time for a re-post. Even if you believe all the greenwash about aluminium being recyclable, its extraction and processing causes huge amounts of environmental damage just to give some individuals a more convenient lifestyle.

On the second of my blogs about convenience or sustainability it is time to mention something that has only been around for 20 years and that I risk hearing howls of disapproval about. Yes, it’s the coffee pod/capsule. As this advertising poster from Bodum states, “Make taste not waste”.

Maybe the plastic and aluminium is recyclable but how likely is it that it does get recycled? We have had the same Bodum cafetiere for decades. Now that’s not a good modern business model but it happens to be hugely more environmentally than these pod/capsule machines. We have found an independent coffee supplier who grinds the coffee for us and there we have it, for us, a perfect cup of coffee every time.

Interestingly enough, John Sylvan, who invented the K-cup in 1995 in the US has stopped using them because although he made his fortune from them, he realises the damage they cause to the environment. You don’t have to live without coffee you just need to be a bit more sustainable when you make it.

Our links

Our Teemill shop site for our organic cotton T-shirts and bags, https://junagarh-media.teemill.com/.

My author page where you can discover more about my books, https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B07D3ZTQ1L.

This is our website for all our photography and my books, https://www.junagarhmedia.co.uk/.

We are also on Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/21104365@N06/.

Also on Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/junagarh_media/.

Our Etsy shop https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/JunagarhMedia.

On Pinterest, https://www.pinterest.co.uk/paulpaddington2017/

Convenience or sustainability? (first posted in January 2021)

A resolution for 2024.

If you can afford it, because despite not being wrapped in the plastic pollution packaging sustainable options are sometimes more expensive, start using less plastic. For the health of everyone it’s the logical choice. We know the breakdown microplastic and nanoplastic particles are everywhere in the air we breathe and the food we eat. Recent research shows they are even in the placenta so how much more serious does it have to become? Are you going to wait until babies are found to have serious problems or are you going to change? It’s up to all of us. Start small, together we are many.

Our links

Our Teemill shop site for our organic cotton clothes and bags, https://junagarh-media.teemill.com/.

My author page where you can discover more about my books, https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B07D3ZTQ1L.

This is our website for all our photography and my books, https://www.junagarhmedia.co.uk/.

We are also on Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/21104365@N06/.

Also on Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/junagarh_media/.

Our Etsy shop https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/JunagarhMedia.

On Pinterest, https://www.pinterest.co.uk/paulpaddington2017/

Smashing up glass, that’s insane

First posted December 2020 and since then nothing has changed.

We take materials from various sources and then use huge amounts of energy to heat them up to make container glass, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_glass#:~:text=Container%20glass%20has%20a%20lower,storage%20of%20beverages%20and%20food.. Then we fill it with something and transport it potentially long distances. The jars are put on shelves where shoppers who have often driven to the supermarket by the jars and take them home. The contents are emptied and then if they are lucky the glass containers are smashed and possibly recycled. A lot more energy will be used to make them back into glass containers again. Others are just chucked in the rubbish. We have developed highly inefficient one way supply chains and here we sit with a high in May 2020 of 417ppm CO2. Nothing to be surprised at if you look how inefficient our systems are. Those same shoppers have to drive back to the supermarket to buy another jar full of their favourite content. The lorries delivering the jars to the supermarket have to return to the depot. Lorries or vans supplying the depot have to return to the suppliers. There is therefore something very wrong with both our economics and our one way supply chain both of which have contributed to the amount of climate change generating greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. We need to change and we need to change now. The value of the environment is not costed or not fully costed into our supply chains because otherwise those glass containers would be reused over and over again.

Our links

Our Teemill shop site for our organic cotton clothes and bags, https://junagarh-media.teemill.com/.

My author page where you can discover more about my books, https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B07D3ZTQ1L.

This is our website for all our photography and my books, https://www.junagarhmedia.co.uk/.

We are also on Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/21104365@N06/.

Also on Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/junagarh_media/.

Our Etsy shop https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/JunagarhMedia.

On Pinterest, https://www.pinterest.co.uk/paulpaddington2017/

Baby food – really?

Published originally in December 2020. Three years later and we’re still no nearer to the drastic changes needed in the way we live, work, travel and consume.