Lally Pollen

To address the water theme this week I decided to don a plumbers hat and take on some of the piping in our bathroom. We had a leaky faucet and a loose bolt (it may be called something else in professional plumber circles) in the loo tank, which it turns out was causing it to flush more water than was necessary. Luckily, my father-in-law is a plumber and over the years has instilled in my husband enough know-how that he could instruct me in tackling the issue. So our tap no longer drips, the loo does just what it should an nothing more and I learnt a new skill in repairs (sort of).
Also, the free-cycle gods were on my side this week as I managed to get a full sized barrel that a neighbor was getting rid of, which I plan to use for collecting rain and ultimately watering my plants/ the veg garden. There hasn't been any rain where I live for around a week now and it doesn't look like there will be for a little while now, but that gives me time to get a good set up going.

For this week's focus on food I made pesto out of the dandelions I harvested from the garden. Initially I cleared them to make room for my Eco Change project, but in the spirit of permaculture philosophies and to avoid waste, I tried to put to good use all I could. While the flowers I deep fried in batter, very tasty, the leaves became seriously delicious pesto. The roots meanwhile can be used to make tea. First you dehydrate the cleaned and chopped roots, then once dried, grind them in to a power. This gets a second roasting, after which you can mix with hot water and drink. Typically it seems people refer to this as Dandelion 'coffee' but honestly it tastes a lot more like hot chocolate, surprisingly.
I also made a point this week to eat less meat, only two meals contained any, a fair step down from my usual habits. I actually really liked this change, it made me think far more imaginatively about meals, and put more effort into and enjoying the cooking process.

While I already tend to turn of lights and appliances when they are not being used, this week I went back through the house making sure there were not things I was missing. Sure enough, I realized my computer hardly ever gets turned off but is rather just left on stand by. So I have for a few days now been making sure to turn it off completely each night and I intend to make this a daily habit. I don't have AC and don't plan on changing that, but I do tend to use the heating even in mid-spring, and especially this weekend as I have come down with a nasty cold. I did however, turn the temperature down on it, and have avoided turning it on all together when doubling up on blankets and slippers has done the trick.
I also watched a documentary called Harnessing the Sun and Wind: Inside Our Renewable Energy Future, which focused on two renewable energy projects, a floating Solar farm in Singapore and wind farms by The Blue Circle in Cambodia. It was particularly interesting to hear of the various challenges that each project faced specific to their particular regions. Singapore, for example, being relatively limited in available land and wind is best suited to solar technologies. Given the land deficit, rooftops are heavily used for panels, but the featured project seeks to utilize the surface of the sea and specifically “dead sea space” to expand solar potential in the country. Monitor lizards, various birds and otters present somewhat unexpected challenges to these new water based solar farms. Cambodia, with relatively robust wind channels, has multiple stretches of Government held land which have become host to the country’s first wind farms from The Blue Circle, who also built Vietnam's first. One farm, consisting of around 10 wind turbines can power 50,000 households per day. Until the first Covid years, when this film was released, Cambodia was seeing the world’s highest growth in energy consumption per year. While finding available solar panel space is a notable difficulty in creating a sustainable energy grid in Singapore, the biggest difficulty for both projects is finding green financing. There was far more to the documentary, these were some interesting highlights.

I've been keeping an eye on the plastic my house generates recently, and while this 'audit' will continue, so far some of the most common sources of plastic for us are bread bags, laundry detergent bottles, dog poo bags and pet treat bags. So far I have changed the laundry detergent bottles we usually get to the "eco sheets" which come in cardboard envelopes, thus avoiding the plastic bottles that I find are not great to reuse for much else. I've also sourced a bakery in my local area where I will be able to get loaves and skip plastic packaging, and have started practicing a flatbread recipe that even a non-culinary individual like me can pull off. I am currently receiving the waste bags to use for my dog, so far those made of corn or plant starch bases materials seem like a possible alternative to what I currently use. Finally, this weekend I plan to try a number of different recipes of dog and cat treats, in the hop that I can reduce plastic in this area too. my dog i a very picky very stubborn eater, so we'll see how that goes