Listen, I’m not going to lecture you: we all know that we need to eat way, way less meat – beef in particular. We also need to shop less sloppily to cut down on food waste. That is easier said than done, we can’t all live next to a butcher, baker and grocer and shop every day like it’s 1950. You can’t meal plan down to the nearest scrap, life just isn’t like that. We can only try.
You’re a really conscientious bunch and I’m not saying that just to suck up, I mean it. You could teach me, probably, a thing or too about behaving in a more sustainable way.
These are just recommended services that you might not have heard of, which might put a spring in your vegetarian-shoed step.
Milk & More – this only operates in certain bits of the UK – and is under the umbrella company of the Muller dairy business. It is insanely popular with everyone who uses it. They deliver all sorts of handy stuff in cute vans.
Oddbox – the delivery of wonky fruit and vegetables not up to supermarkets’ cosmetic standards. There are also a billion other veg box schemes that I imagine you’re already signed up to, if you want to be signed up to one.
Halo Coffee – they make and deliver compostable Nespresso-compatible coffee capsules.
Too good to go – this is an App that lets you sort of rescue food that would otherwise be thrown away. Stores upload food that needs to be eaten today or will be chucked – you pay a cut price for it and then go and fetch.
There are also a whole load of pages on the internet detailing the top ten most environmentally-damaging foods, (beef, lamb, shellfish, pork, anything imported), and the top ten least damaging foods, (anything local, peas, beans, broccoli, potatoes, onions). I mean none of it is a massive surprise – and I now have acute anxiety about the amount of kale, courgettes and carrots in our diet – but still.
It sounds to me like the packet-free shopping trial they did at that Oxford Waitrose was such a success I think we’ll start seeing it everywhere.
But until then, I’m particularly interested in knowing if there is a packaging-free store where you are, where you can bring your own container and get refills of olive oil, rice, pasta and other basics.
Mine is Earth, at 200 Kentish Town Road. You?
Almond & Co in Westbourne, Bournemouth – only recently opened but by all account doing well and the staff are so, so lovely.
A more modern way to shop has arrived in Topsham, Devon. Nourish offers sustainable, eco-friendly packaging free shopping and an extensive range of store cupboard foods and other items which you can weigh out yourself and make sustainable living a bit easier. I love it. Another branch has also opened in Magdalen Road, Exeter. Just mind you don’t trip up on your halo on the way out.
And Zero on Fore Street, Exeter, now
HISBE in Brighton is great. Also have kombucha on tap for you to fill your bottles with, if that floats your boat!
listen I know I sound like a dick but I freaking LOVE kombucha
I have a 750ml bottle of it from Hisbe on my desk as I speak! Can’t get enough of its vinegary bracingness!
Agree, HISBE is great! I’m a native Brightonian but live in London now, I always have to go in to pick up some nice things when I’m visiting, usually I’ve come straight from Hope and Harlequin (the best vintage shop in world – so sustainable!). I love the Nordic vegan cafe two doors down as they do amazing coffee (and I’m not even bothered by coffee usually).
For Earth’s Sake in Cranleigh is brilliant. Also Keep in Farnham and Noel’s Farm Shop in Sutton Green, near Woking for those down this way. Waiting patiently for something to open in Guildford so I can walk and not drive and make my halo shine even brighter.
Hi. There was an interesting prog on BBC2 last night about supermarkets and it turns out that food coming from far away is not always bad eco-wise because if it’s substantial enough (wine from NZ, bananas from Columbia) it’ll come on a ship, which is fine. But if it’s asparagus, eg from Paraguay, it’ll be too delicate for a ship and will come on a plane which is obv bad. As you’ve said, beef is the worst, along with lamb, regardless of how local it is, simply because converting feed to food via an animal is so incredibly inefficient and carbon creating. Chicken is better because they don’t live long and don’t fart much. One of the best things we can all do is to eat all we buy – apparently bread is basically low carbon but becomes high because so much is chucked.
Chicken is THE MOST hideously produced, unethical meat in the Western diet. They’re “efficient converters of feed” as in they’ve been bred to turn feed into flesh fast. This makes them a relatively cheap source of bland protein. They are reared (crammed into) sheds of 10,000 plus and even so-called “free-range” ones live in vast colonies of this size or larger. Ditto “free-range” eggs, which are laid by hens in colonies of 16-32,000. If you want to eat chicken or eggs I’d suggest organic (as the rules are much, much stricter).
As for your point about beef and lamb – yes they are slower/less efficient converters of feed, but there are a lot of other factors involved in the equation than just feed efficiency. We should eat a little bit less, but better quality meat.
I’m not an animal rights activist by the way, I’m actually a dairy farmer. I like tofu as much as I like steak.
P.s note on Milk and More, Muller is a massive corporate that doesn’t give a shit about farmers. The milk might be plastic-free but it’s the same stuff you buy anywhere else and Milk and more doesn’t benefit primary producers in any way. If possible, find a genuine independent milkman/woman in your area.
What about Yeo Valley, I always buy their stuff as it seems like a good co-op? Also its the ONLY spreadable butter not crammed with palm oil!
Yeo Valley was a family owned company, recently bought out by Arla Foods which is a huge, Europe-wide cooperative. I’d say more ethically minded than Muller? Also organic if that’s your thing?
When i last did some research on this, Yeo Valley were the only big player who use dual-purpose cows so the boy calves can at least be sold on rather than just, y’know, 🔪👎🙈. Not a given even with other organics. Hopefully still true.
I’m not sure about being the only ones using a “dual purpose” cow part, sounds like some clever glossy marketing. A lot of farmers have dual purpose breeds, they’re not necessarily the answer to everything though – they are a bigger animal therefore require more food etc. There are lots of farmers who rear dairy-bred bull calves, not just Yeo Valley! One of the major barriers to this more sustainable way of farming (and most of the reason many farmers have to shoot bull calves at birth) is that supermarkets and meat processors in the U.K. like an enormous, uniform carcass. They don’t like anything small or non-uniform as it doesn’t fit their processing setup and doesn’t fill the plastic packaging properly. P.s I like that you’ve done your research! We all need to be more discerning. What I find interesting is how many people question every tiny part of the dairy chain while happily munching away on eggs and chicken…. and pork….
I’m in the states (where if anything the chicken conditions are usually much worse) but I do work for a farmers’ organization – I generally tell people that if they can’t afford much in the way of farm-direct meats etc, do eat smaller animals (chickens, rabbit if you can get it and don’t mind it) and odder parts of big animals, with a good bit of beans and tofu interspersed. Nose-to-tail eating is still much more popular in the UK than the US, most of the small-scale meat farmers I know wind up trying to eat all the organs and strange bits themselves, so they’re fairly desperate to offload all those hearts and livers and neckbones. Even the bone broth thing hasn’t really helped move odd parts along.
Of course if one CAN get the direct-from-farmer meats/eggs/dairy I don’t think that one should worry so much about the species of meat as about the farmer… where I am we also wind up balancing that conventional pigs are more efficient and have fewer methane burps than conventional US-style cows but they create a lot of local environmental disasters because we sincerely cannot be arsed to roof their poo tanks… and we’re in a hurricane zone…
Having an allotment and growing our own veg has been amazing and an eye opener. I have kept a butternut squash for over two months and it was fine. Gluts of courgettes are dealt with by gifting to neighbours and making and freezing puree and soup. Gluts of chillis are frozen or pickled. Home grown spuds are delicious. In london you’ll be on a waiting list but elsewhere probably not. In our tiny london back garden we still grow stuff and herbs outside our back door are a must. You don’t need to be an expert, mother nature and the internet will guode you.
A dairy farm down the road from our kid’s nursery here in Lincolnshire just opened a milk vending machine. £2 for a reusable glass litre bottle, £1 a litre for milk and they take contactless. So good. I find its usually just milk I go in to the supermarket for regularly. Now I’m going to try (!) To meal plan and go once a week, and then get lovely fresh milk from the farm.
The olio app!!!
Can I recommend a food writer rather than a shop? Anna Jones. We’ve been trying to cut meat down to an occasional treat rather than something we have daily and I’ve found Anna’s books completely brilliant for ideas about how to eat a plant-based diet, with enough hearty, fillings recipes (lots of veggie books I’ve got seem to assume everyone has the appetite of a bird).
Top tip, thank you! My husband (our cook) is happy in theory with a few vegetarian meals a week, but just feels so sad about the prospect of a meal without meat. He loves a good recipe book so this could be the ticket.
I’d add most Middle Eastern cookbooks to that. I would describe us as committed carnivores, ie I would never want to stop eating meat, but I find we eat so many delicious vegetarian things without really thinking about it, because basically every other culture beyond Northern Europe does vegetarian food so much better than us! Currently loving anything by Claudia Roden, esp Arabesque; Joudie Kallah’s Palestine on a Plate; Sabrina Ghayour’s Persiana. Ottolenghi just has too many ingredients and is too much faff for me.
My top tip: for most recipes calling for roasted peppers or aubergines, do them on a barbeque, not in the oven. More flavour, peppers peel easily and, if you can convince whoever does the bbq cooking to bother with veg, additionally you outsource this element of cooking too… My husband will do a whole load of aubs and peppers early on and then reload the charcoal if we are having meat. The veg usually goes into bowls and is used the following day, and is none the worse for that.
“As nature intended” – Just reopened after a really long refurb in Sw12, plus various other locations (I think London only though – sorry)
A packaging-free place recently opened in Norwich called ReSource. We have mostly cut out red meat over the last few months and try to eat vegetable based and chickens that have had a tertiary education. We also use the local farm shop as much as possible. My brother is vegan, and I am attracted to the principle, but I find complete vegetarianism a difficult concept to apply to a house with small children, diabetes and a constantly low blood count. Reader, I think I would balls it up and kill us all. Besides, if I became vegan he would then have to go one step further to maintain sibling superiority and become some kind of cult spiritual guru, and we don’t need another one of those, so I’m really saving the planet in my own way.
There is a lovely ethical micro dairy (keeps calf with cow, glass bottles, raw milk) not far from Norwich, called Old Hall Farm. Will deliver too…
Thanks Kate – the one with the Jerseys? I think I’ve heard of it and will check it out. Also, have just had a lightbulb seeing you post about something local – was it you who wrote about the netting of the swallows nests at the supermarket? Because I never write “disgusted of Norfolk” letters but I sent them an absolute howler based on that, and I’m not saying it was the threat of my loss of custom that ultimately SAVED the baby swallows, but I’ll let everyone join the dots for themselves. (It was largely down to Kate. If indeed it was Kate)
How lovely to know you are local to me! Yes, the one with the Jerseys – just opened a lovely cafe too. The baby swallows/Tesco shocker was indeed me (and you and twitter power). Thanks so much for supporting. x
The Zéro Shop, Merton Abbey Mills, Colliers Wood, SW London
When I was in our local Sainsburys last week – they tannoy was saying to bring in your own containers (I think for the deli bit). Small steps but a start. Just need to remember to bring the blooming things in. But it worked, for me, with the 5p bag charge – I can do this !
There is a fab no-packaging shop in Marlborough in Wiltshire, just off the high street.
https://www.packagingnotincluded.co.uk/
Liberté Chérie on Portobello Road.
The Bishy Weigh in York. I LOVE it. Just a brilliant shop and I feel WORTHY after visiting. Which is probably not the point but even so, I’ll take it.
Waitrose Oxford trial is ongoing until end August, Deliveroo is also trialling reusable packaging here in August, so if you get a chance to visit Oxford over the summer buy lots of Deliveroo and Waitrose Botley Rd to support the trials!
Great comments
Useful list of bring your own bag places across the country here: https://thezerowaster.com/zero-waste-near-you/
I mean BYO containers, not bag…
Ripple Living in Cardiff!
Thanks for the coffee capsule recommendation, been looking for something like that x
For those of us in SE London there’s Shop Without Packaging: Lee Green, London, SE12.
There’s also Beetroot & Beans on Dartmouth Road, Forest Hill SE23
In Birmingham, there is the Clean Kilo in Digbeth (not tried it yet but it is apparently the UK’s largest zero waste supermarket so it sounds like it sells everything. It would involve a car journey or bus journey with two small children for me hence not having tried it yet – plus saving up containers rather than recycling them which I keep forgetting to do). In Kings Heath there is Xover Nutrition which is a vegan shop but also sells shampoo bars, and refills of cleaning products, shampoo, shower gel etc. I filled up a massive Persil bottle for under a fiver the other day. Also the lady was lovely and the soap and shampoo bars are a lot cheaper than Lush ones but still nice.
I do think someone needs to work out how to get online supermarket shopping working with less packaging – with the aforementioned two small children it’s not easy to do the weekly shop in store and even when I say I don’t want plastic bags with my online shop I still seem to end up with loads for fruit and veg etc. The French supermarkets use food composting bags for their fruit and veg which would be a good start.
Trying to eat a lot less beef and lamb, but we still get through a LOT of milk which presumably is almost as bad?
It’s helpful to see the comments above about shipping vs air freight – it seems to be really hard to find out the carbon footprint of different foods, and again shopping online makes it harder to see where something has come from. It would be good to have traffic lights on packaging in the same way that we have for fat, sugar etc.
Milk is not “bad” please can everyone stop feeling so guilty about everything all the time?!!!! One of the bigger ways we could all help the environment is to stop taking so many flights?! *ducks for cover
That’s good as we get through nearly 20 pints a week! (but mostly from a local dairy re your comment above) Guilt plus a sense of existential environmental dread is my default setting at the moment, but yes agree flights are probably one of the biggest things people can cut down on.
The Clean Kilo is ace but I agree about it being a faff to get to. Can try and combine it with a trip to the market but you have to be very assertive there to get them to use your own bags and not a trillion blue plastic ones.
There has been talk of the Clean Kilo people opening another shop and South Brum has been mooted….
Also wanted to add, according to Isabella Tree in Wilding – cattle that spends ALL year out on scrubland (rather than eating super-rich barley rye and wheat etc) and so is totally grass fed is actually pretty fine for the environment and their methane production is not nearly as bad as the poor bulls given grains while cooped up in barns half the year. As you can tell, the specifics escape me, but if you can afford proper grass fed, full-time outdoor beef now and then as a treat it’s not too bad.
Emily in essence you’re correct, there are lots of specifics I won’t bore any of you with, but pasture fed meat and dairy is pretty ok environmentally and ethically (I’m somewhat skeptical about the purported magical added health benefits though).
Interesting program last night called The Honest Supermarket. There was a section discussing the carbon footprint of a family’s regular shop. I was surprised to hear that bananas and sturdy fruit like melons are not as bad as you think as they are robust enough to travel by boat, which is much lower carbon expense than traveling by plane – which is how they transport a lot of soft fruits and berries etc unfortunately.
Just moved up north and the packaging free shop in Leeds Kirkgate market is better than anything I found in years of living in north London. Pine nuts, cashews, penne, the lot. They even have reusable stainless steel straws, plastic free suncream and razors. I’d move into that covered market if they let me.
Zero Joe’s in Windsor- just opened last week, set up by a local mother and son. BYO containers and fill with lots of staples. Good luck to them!
I live in a small market town in East Sussex, where there’s not much of a market any more. I walk to work (tick) and shop every day but it’s supermarket shopping (no tick) as the independent butchers, greengrocers and fishmongers disappeared long ago. The two pints of skimmed milk we drink every week come via milk & more. I could cycle 25 miles along a busy dual carriageway to HISBE in Brighton but why ever would I want to do that? And if 55 years ago we hadn’t moved from East Dulwich I could nip up to Beetroot & Beans in Forest Hill. Strange to think that I could probably have a much more eco-friendly lifestyle if I lived in the middle of a big city, compared to now with countryside (but a declining farming industry) on my doorstep.
Yes Katie you have hit the nail on the head
For those in the Chichester area, we have The Refillery
http://www.drapers-yard.co.uk/shed/the-refillery/
Wayside organics does wonderful seasonal veg boxes to collect or delivered locally, potatoes with the mud still on!
http://www.waysideorganics.co.uk
I also found an independent milkman who delivers milk, butter and other daily essentials from a farm 2 miles away using http://www.findmeamilkman.net
With a dairy intolerant toddler who also has an egg allergy if we don’t eat meat it has to be vegan, but I’ve found it surprisingly easy to do this! Instead of looking for meat/dairy substitutes all the time, (which even if nice are usually disappointingly unlike the real thing) I’ve looked to other cultures where they’ve veen happily cooking a lot of vegan food for years i.e. places with large buddhist/hindu populations. Yes you might have to get a few specialist ingredients in initially but most things can be adapted to local/more sustainably sourced veg.
We have Just Footprints in Chester, I’ve loved refilling my spice jars for next to nothing and they sell a lot of the plastic free living stuff you generally only find on the internet (if you live in a village/town/small city) so you can have a proper look at it before buying anything.