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 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
I woke up this morning to the depressing news that CoBikes, Exeter's bike and electric car hire scheme, had gone into administration and would be ceasing operations. Sadly I can't say I'm entirely surprised. CoBikes were an absolute lifesaver for me during the pandemic when, thanks a hasty decision to prioritise bringing my plants home … Continue reading Public vs private luxury: why are we so willing to accept that we can’t have nice things?
This past weekend saw the first Glastonbury festival post pandemic. Now that the stages are silent, the cows have returned, the revellers are home and the more organised among them may even have made their way through the horror that is post-festival laundry. And as always, after the party comes the cleanup. Glastonbury employs a … Continue reading Shrinking your festival footprint
My bushcraft, hiking and other outdoor activities have always been motivated by a love of the natural world and a desire to spend more time learning to understand and appreciate it. To me the other side of this equation is a responsibility to try to minimise the damage I cause to the living world I … Continue reading Lightweight plant-based eating outdoors
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?
There has been a fair amount of alarm in sustainable living circles recently over an an investigation conducted into bamboo mugs by the respected German consumer testing organisation Stiftung Warentest, published here(pdf) and kindly translated into English by my father here. The report found that they were often misleadingly labelled as biodegradable when they are … Continue reading “Bamboo” mugs – not as green as we thought?
Is it worth trying to reduce your personal impact when we need to tackle climate breakdown on a systemic level, or is it just, as George Monbiot calls it, pathetic micro-consumerist bollocks? Edit 20th May: replaced the embedded Facebook video with a Youtube one as it didn't seem to be visible to some people. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ir-XjQhOyNQ … Continue reading Pathetic micro-consumerist bollocks
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
The natural world is so busy and full of beautiful, remarkable things to pay attention to that it sometimes causes me problems when I help out at the bushcraft school where I was privileged enough to spend many of my weekends this summer. I frequently find myself going out to collect firewood and coming back, … Continue reading Out of sight, out of mind: the problem with balloons
Tangled Bank Foraging and Fibre Crafts 