Tangled Bank Foraging and Fibre Crafts
Learning about and trying to live lightly on this beautiful planet. The natural world, inclusive bushcraft, evidence-based environmentalism and sustainable living.
I'm still wearing a mask in 2026. In part it's because of the inconvenience getting sick causes, making me fall behind in my weekday job and potentially lose money if I have to cancel my weekend craft courses. In part it's because if I have to in a crumbling empire in a cyberpunk dystopia I … Continue reading Going with the Flo – why I’m still wearing a mask, and the one I’ve chosen
I was so lucky last month to marry Charlie, the most wonderful person I've ever met. I wish I was a better writer, I'm rather better at facts and figures about carbon sequestration than I am at heartfelt romance so I can't really do the whole experience justice but it genuinely was the best experience … Continue reading How we made our wedding as sustainable (and affordable!) as possible
A photograph of the children's book Antonio's Rainforest by Anna Lewington, which has a young smiling boy and a picture of sunlight shining through vast trees on the cover, lying on grass with daisies in. This year for my five year old niece's birthday I bought a lovely book by the ethnobotanist Anna Lewington, about … Continue reading The Amazon is still burning. What can we in the UK do to help?
Why you shouldn't leave your packaging at the supermarket checkout, and what you should do instead The growing awareness of the impact of plastic pollution is being matched by an increasing awareness that plastic recycling is not the panacea it has been sold to us as - plastic can only be recycled into a lower … Continue reading Packaging, piñatas, and punching up not down
Today the Government announced that from April 2020, plastic straws, drinks stirrers and cotton buds with plastic stems will be banned from sale to the general public in England. Much of the commentary I've seen on social media seems to see this as a victory for sustainability advocates, but while I've never understood the point of … Continue reading Grasping at straws
With the recent growth in interest in sustainable living I'm seeing a lot of posts of beautiful people with Instagram-worthy lifestyles sharing their clearly enviable life decisions, and I just wanted to push back a bit against the rather intimidating impression this gives that no one ever gets it wrong. I've certainly made some mistaken … Continue reading Failure Friday: coffee filter funnel
We are becoming increasingly aware of the problems caused by plastic waste, particularly single use packaging, and of the inadequacies of our methods of dealing with it as it becomes clear that recycling is not the panacea it was sold as. It's therefore encouraging to see a new scheme being launched to tackle the problem … Continue reading Closing the Loop for grocery packaging?
With the caveat that environmentalism is increasingly framed as a matter of individual consumer choices rather than collective action, which is bad news both for the movement's likely effectiveness and the way we think of ourselves and one another in society, I do nevertheless believe that personal environmental choices are worth making. This is not … Continue reading Ways to reduce single use
Tangled Bank Foraging and Fibre Crafts 