The Green Johanna – composts everything

I started composting with a simple black bin, the economy discounted version from the council. I chucked the food in and it biodegraded down into brown sticky stuff.  For 14 months all was well – then the rats arrived. Now I had been extremely careful what I put in it. No cooked food or dairy was to be found in there but seems the rats liked salad.

I stopped putting food waste in but the rats stayed.

It was like a kind of rat hive in there.

And they still ate everything I gave them, even the leylandii hedge clippings. Now while I admire anything that can eat and apparently enjoy Leylandii I cant stand rats.

So I went out and  got myself a Green Johanna   compost bin. It is considered to be the rolls Royce of compost bins, and  is priced appropriately. However it claimed to be rat proof and able to compost everything including cooked food waste and bones.

Wincing slightly I parted with the cash and it duly arrived flat packed ready for us to erect.

The full kit Includes:
1 x Mixing stick
4 x Outer rings
1 x Lid
1 x Base
2 x Doors
1 x Bag of fixing screws
1 x Instruction manual

It was easy to install and looked just like an ordinary compost bin. Except it had a floor. It came with  complex sounding  instructions which we ignored, and a stirring stick we rarely used. Despite this it worked fine.

Two years later I can confirm that it can dispose of a chicken carcasses, lamb shanks a dead rat and PLA plastic pots. The live rats have left – moved on to find more accessible bins no doubt.

Plastic we use….

This compost bin is made of plastic and I am fine with that because I think that plastic is the best man for the job. It is waterproof, rot proof, light weight, and best of all, RAT PROOF.

Even at its slightly eye watering price it is still affordable.

More importantly it keeps a lot of biodegradable rubbish out of landfill which reduces our carbon foot print.  See  pressing reasons to get your own bin for more on this

We will also get some compost for the garden so reducing our reliance on manufactured fertilizers.

Its worth it.

More information can be found at

Living without  bin liners

Something Rotten – a compendium of composting posts – being revised

PLA Composting – oh yes it does – being revised

Want to reduce your plastic rubbish? Check out these plastic free products sourced as part of our boycott  >>>The A-Z plastic free index<<<  

Related articles

• First Compostable Toothbrush! (praxisbioarquitectura.wordpress.com)

The Blog Map

All the information in the blog can be accessed from here. Follow the links in blue to open the chapter and enter the world plastic. Enjoy.

 The Plastic Boycott

Introducing us plastic and the boycott.
Including the plastic we REFUSE and the plastic we DO use

A Plastic Free Life

How we live a normal life without plastic
Products, lifestyle tips and recipes so you too can make, bake, buy and live plastic- free.

Plastic the Product

Think PETs, think hamster?
This chapter will explain everything – from how plastic is made, its qualities and what it is used for to the different types of plastic, how to identify them and the chemicals used to make them

Bad Plastic Good Answers

The problems, the studies and some solutions
Plastic is a great product but it sure has a lot of downsides. Here the problems are analysed, latest  reports reported and solutions discussed.

Composting – Its the Future

Something  Rotten
Everything you need to know about composting because once you have no plastic in your bin you can take control of your own waste disposal. Exciting stuff! Live in a 10th floor flat? We have still got a bin for you.

Other Green Stuff
General green and eco info

Dirty Pictures
A Picture Says It Quicker
My collection of trash photos.

Plastic Lifespan

Before we begin, if you think Polymer is a girls name, check out from monomors to hoovers, how plastic is made then get back here.

(Photo credit: Mary.Do)

Plastic is a wonder substance light weight waterproof and rot proof which  means it doesn’t biodegrade.

Biodegrading is the breaking down of organic substances,  (plants, dead animals, rocks, minerals etc.), by natural means. It  happens all the time in nature. We live, we die, we rot and so we feed the next generation. Even if you are a rock. All plant-based, animal-based, or natural mineral-based substances will over time biodegrade.

Here’s how long it takes for some commonly used products to biodegrade, when they are scattered about as litter:

Paper ~ 2-5 months
Cotton rags ~ 1-5 month
Natural fiber rope ~ 3-14 months
Orange peel ~6 months
Wool socks ~1 to 5 years
Leather shoes ~25 to 40 years
Tin cans ~ 50 to 100 years

However products made from synthetic polymers, that’s the plastic we use everyday, do not. These products can last for years, decades, centuries and  possibly for ever.

Plastic takes so long to break down because the long polymer, the basic building block, is a man-made. Plastic is a Frankenstien freakoid.

“Nature doesn’t make things like that, so organisms have never seen that before ”  Kenneth Peters, an organic geochemist at Stanford University, quoted in Life’s Little Mysteries.

Which means the enzymes and the micro organisms responsible for breaking down organic substances  do not recognize plastic. Therefore plastic products are pretty much indestructible – they do not rot or biodegradable.

Of course plastic breaks, tears  and cracks. It weathers and sunlight makes it brittle, It falls apart – it degrades – but only into smaller pieces of plastic.

This degrading process can go on indefinitely it seems.

Particles of plastic of 20 microns in diameter (a width thinner than a human hair) have been found in the oceans and are being found in increasing amounts.

These tiny pieces of plastics are called micro plastic… and are entering the food chain – more here

Disposing Of Waste Plastic

Because plastic lasts so long it is hard to get rid of.  Find out more at getting rid of plastic.

Background Info

Polymers, how plastic is made and what it is used for

More info on biodegrading

Life’s Little Mysteries article

Plastic bags are GREENER….

THEY ARE! THEY ARE! THEY ARE!

Environment Agency a UK government body has done a
Life Cycle Assessment of Supermarket Carrier Bags Report SC030148
The report concludes that a reusable cotton bag would have be reused 393 times to be a green as a plastic bag.

.

This, claim some plastic bag makers, proves their product is the greenest.

.

Here are their maths….

It takes less resources to make one plastic bag then it does to make a reusable cotton bag.

.
Therefore a cotton bag has to be used 131 times before it equals a plastic bag.

.
If the plastic bags are then reused twice (so they are used 3 times in total) the cotton bag has to be used 393 times before it equals the environmental impact of the 131 polythene bags.
If the plastic bag is reused as a bin liner ( which is what most people do with them) then it is 327 times.

.

Erm sorry but do your cotton bags fall apart after 393 uses? Fall apart so badly they cannot be repaired? Mine don’t.

.

I have fair-trade organic string bags which I bought back in 2006 when I started my boycott. I have had them for  6 years now.

.

Here are my maths….

.

Say I use one string bag 3 times a week. That would be for the weekly supermarket shop, the trips to the local butchers and green grocers, going to the pub to get plastic free take-outs, town on a Saturday to get library books, clothes, and bits and bobs, bringing food home from the takeaway (and yes we take our own pans), carrying cabbages from the allotment, carrying cushions and all the other gubbins you use a bag for.

.
So say I use one string bag a very conservative 3 times a week over 52 weeks, (and the bag does go away with us and has been all round the world ),  I will use that bag at least 156 times a year in total

.
Over 6 years  I have used that bag 936 times.

.
If I didn’t have a reusable bag I would have to have used 312 plastic bags in that time –and used them a total of 3 times each, (I would NEVER reuse plastic bags as bin liners).

.

That’s 312 bags in the trash to be disposed of.

.
They will most likely be landfilled or incinerated. There is a very low chance they will be recycled.

.

Some of them might have blown off the truck during transportation. Wind blown refuse is a documented cause of litter. Here’s a picture of bags in trees in England.

Because we spend a lot of time abroad, some of them would have gone into bins in isolated villages in remote parts of the world – places that lack a waste collection service. Those bins would have been emptied into the river. Here’s a picture of plastic bags in a river in Myanmar.

My cotton bag is already 3 times greener than the plastic alternative.

.
That bag is good for a good few years yet. It got a hole once but I sewed it up. That was due to rats not age.

.
Other considerations…

.
You can get so much more in a string bag then a plastic bag. My string bag is worth at least 2 plastic bags for capacity.

.
The study is talking about woven cotton bags and mine are cotton string bags.

My cotton produce bags, made from woven cotton and bought at the same time as my string bags, are still going strong.

.
When my bag does fall apart I will reuse it as a net to grow beans up then eventually compost it in my own compost bin.

.
And as my dear old mucker over at The Flotsam Daries points out, if I made my own reusable bags out of a recycled t shirt it would equal 0 plastic bags. I am going to  that as soon as my string bags give out – though no sign of that so far.

.

More information….

.

Read the report your self right here

Take your own bags- the clever baggers guide to shopping is right here.

The Flotsam Diaries – a great read

Why we don’t use bin liners

Composting – being revised

.

Want to reduce your plastic rubbish? Check out these plastic free products sourced as part of our boycott  >>>The A-Z plastic free index<<< 

What is plastic and why start boycotting it?

Its time to review the basics….

The term plastic embraces a wide range of synthetic polymers that are used to make just about everything. Some products can be easily recognised as “plastic” others  are not so obvious.

Carrier bags? Plastic!  Gel ink – what??

Or the plastic in a product is not apparent. Who knew that drink cans were lined with plastic?

Or is that just me? For sure when I  started my plastic boycott I knew very little about plastic. I started it  in the response to the ever-increasing amounts of plastic trash I saw littering the environment, the water bottles washed up on the shore, the carrier bags tangled in the trees and the crisp packets glinting in the hedgerows.

I knew they were plastic, and that plastic was a synthetic substance that didn’t biodegrade. I could see quite clearly that rubbish was increasing exponentially, and that the environment was suffering as a result.

But was I part of the problem? Well yes.

Back in October 2006 I decided to monitor how much of the stuff I actually “used”. I began saving all the disposable plastic that passed through my hands. A sobering 7 days later and I was running out of cupboard space. Want to see my rubbish? Have a look in my  bin .

It shocked me and I decided then  to stop creating plastic rubbish – it was a my response to plastic pollution. And Village Boy agreed except when it came to Pringles. Oh he knew it was wrong but…. that’s another story. I started the blog  to track my progress.

Now, a few years on, we know there is far more to plastic then the rubbish that meets the eye. We know that plastic is ….

NOUN:

1. Any of various organic compounds produced by polymerization, capable of being molded, extruded, cast into various shapes and films, or drawn into filaments used as textile fibers.

To paraphrase, plastic is a man-made, synthetic polymer derived from a naturally occurring material.  Currently most polymers are derived from  crude oil, (though they can also be derived from plants). These man-made polymers are then used to make everything from  fabrics to fluid gels to rigid molded products.

Polyurethanes for example; a huge family of man-made polymers used to make the hard plastic soles of shoes, foam in chairs, and varnish; products with seemingly nothing in common.

In short,  the definition of plastic is considerably broader then I first realised, and involves a good deal more than sweet wrappers.

Plastic is everywhere and in everything. You might be wearing cotton but I will bet you anything the thread used to sew your clothes is man-made, (natural cotton is not very good to sew with). As for the elastic, buttons and velcro – all synthetic. Your table is wood but the varnish is plastic… and so on.

Plastic is an integral part of our lives and has become so without our being  aware of it. It is a great product but there is a downside. We really need to question our relationship with plastic – and not just to stop the rubbish mounting up

Find out more about the problems with plastic here

Nike Reuse A Shoe Scheme

Here’s a idea

Nike Reuse A Shoe Scheme

You take your stinky old trainers to one of the drop off locations, they are collected up and shredded. They can then be incorporated into running tracks, basketball and tennis courts,  playgrounds and synthetic turf fields.

Whether you think we should be building plastic playing surfaces is another issue. However, if we are going to build them this, reduces the amounts of virgin materials used.

It also keeps thousands of shoes out of  the waste disposal system

You can find drop of locations using the map on the website or search for your nearest location here.

To find out how to recycle plastic (and other interesting ways to deal with dead plastic), go to the Quick guide to recycled plastic

And check out my PINTEREST board for more funky ideas.

Though of course its best to refuse plastic and so reduce the need to recycle.

You can find loads of plastic free products here in my big the >>>A-Z<<<  index

From monomers to hoovers – how plastic is made

Dont know your polymers from your Pollyannas? Think PETs, think hamster? Lets start with the basics

What is plastic and where does it come from…..

Monomors & polymers

Where do natural and man-made polymers come from

Where do we get ethane and propane from?

How oil is used to make plastic

What is It Used For

Products made from synthetic polymers

Next

The problems with  man-made polymers

Wasters of the world unite

..you have nothing to loose but your chainstores hahahahahahhhahhaaa

More images of PLASTIC POLLUTION  can be found on this blog

But there are far more to be had over at:

Facebook  Planet Trash 

Flickr  Plastic Is Rubbish.

Pinterest  great anti plastic images here and other stuff.

Plastic crap in action – try the You Tube Channel here.

Inspired to give up plastic?  Check out my range plastic free products with the >>>A-Z<<< plastic free index

Where do polymers come from?

This post is part of the What Are Plastics Anyway? masterclass – a guide to all things plasticky.

Natural polymers are created as part of ongoing biological processes cotton is part of a plant, wool is grown by sheep and leather is the skin of what ever unfortunate animal.

Man made polymers are, as the name suggests, manmade. The key point here is that though the  base material may be a natural product such as oil, the polymers derived from it are not. They are not the result of a natural process but have been created artificially.

Most synthetic polymers that we use today are made from oil. However as oil becomes more scarce and more expensive, synthetic polymers are being derived from all manner of substances including corn, potatoes and even chicken feathers.

More information

Monomors & polymers

Where do we get ethane and propane from?

How oil is used to make plastic

What is It Used For

Products made from synthetic polymers

The big list of plastics and man made polymers

 

Here are some of the products made from synthetic polymers Dont know what a polymer is?  You can find out here.

Biaxially Oriented Polypropylene -BOPP-

When polypropylene – see below is biaxially oriented, it becomes  the crisp crystal clear stuff used for greeting cards, the plastic wrapping round boxes of tea etc.

Bio Plastics

Plastics made from plants rather than oil.

Bio- degradable Plastic

Plastic with addatives to make it bio -degrade

Compostable Plastic

Plastic that has been certified compostable

Halogenated Plastics
Include:
Chlorine based plastics:
Chlorinated polyethylene (CPE)
Chlorinated polyvinyl chloride (CPVC)
Chlorosulfonated polyethylene (CSPE)
Polychloroprene (CR or chloroprene rubber, marketed under the brand name of Neoprene)
PVC
Fluorine based plastics:
Fluorinated ethylene propylene (FEP)

For more on these check out Dioxins and PVC

High-density polyethylene HDPE plastic code 2

HDPE- is used to make supermarket type carrier bags, chemical drums, jerricans, carboys, toys, picnic ware, household and kitchenware, cable insulation, plastic milk cartons, juice bottles, shampoo bottles, and liquid detergent containers

LDPE (Low density polyethylene) plastic code 4

LDPE- used to make soft clear bags for packing of vegetables some bread and frozen food bags, trash cans, and garbage can liners. Also used to make toys and clothes, dispensing bottles, wash bottles, tubing, molded laboratory equipment and corrosion-resistant work surfaces.  Parts that need to be weldable and machinable, parts that require flexibility, computer components, such as hard drives, screen cards and disk-drives are all made from LDPE,

Nylon

A synthetic fibre used to make all sorts of fabrics

PLA poly lactic acid plastic

A compostable plastic.

Polyethylene terephthalate PET or PETE plastic code 1

PET fibers are used with other fibers to strengthen them, to make a fiber filling, for fabrics, and carpets,  automobile tire yarns, conveyor belts and seat belts, for nonwoven fabrics for stabilizing drainage ditches, culverts, and railroad beds, disposable fabrics for use in medical applications and nappies. Its other major use is for bottles and  jars for food processed at low temperatures –PET starts softening at around 70 °C (160 °F).

Polypropylene PP plastic code 5 

Can be used to make ropes, thermal underwear, carpets, plastic parts and reusable containers of various types. Used in the automobile and construction industries, some car battery casings, oil funnels, and plastic drinking straws, laboratory equipment, loudspeakers, automotive components, and polymer banknotes.

Polystyrene – PS  plastic code 6

Polystyrene disposable (ha!) products such cups, plates, bowls, trays, and cutlery; food packaging like fast food clamshells, meat trays, egg cartons and yogurt pots;  protective packaging  such as shaped end pieces used to ship electronic goods and loose fill peanuts. Find out more here

Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) is a synthetic non stick coating for cookware, to line  containers and pipework for reactive and corrosive chemicals, armoured bullets . Goretex and the Millenium Dome incorporate PTEF. It is an efficient lubricant. And  reduces friction,wear, and energy consumption of machinery.

Polyvinyl chloride PVC  plastic code 3

White brittle plastic until you add plasticisers the most common being phthalates then it becomes soft and flexible. It can be used in both its rigid and soft form for electrical cable insulation, inflatable products, traffic cones applications in which it replaces rubber, construction, clothing and upholstery. It is also used for some clear food packages and  liquid detergent containers. Lots more on PVC here

Silicone and silicone rubberMan made polymers made from siicon and rubber – lots more information here

Thermoplastic polyurethanes(TPU)

Used to make  flexible foam in upholstered furniture and rigid foam such as shoe soles. It also comes in a fluid form in  varnishes, adhesives and  sealants.

Plastic Codes

Plastic codes are the number you find on some plastics to identify the polymers used. There are many more plastics than numbers and new plastics are being made all the time. Find out more here

Brand Names

• Bakelite, i.e. phenol-formaldehyde resin
• Kevlar, Twaron, i.e. para-aramid
• Kynar, i.e. PVDF
• Mylar, i.e. polyethylene terephthalate film
• Neoprene i.e. Polychloroprene
• Nylon, i.e. polyamide 6,6
• Orlon, i.e. polyacrylonitrile
• Rilsan, i.e. polyamide 11 & 12
• Technora, i.e. copolyamid
• Teflon, i.e. PTFE
• Ultem, i.e. polyimide
• Vectran, i.e. aromatic polyamide
• Viton, i.e. poly-tetrafluoroethylene
• Zylon, i.e. poly-p-phenylene-2,6-benzobisoxazole (PBO)

Read More

More information on polymers

Monomors & polymers

Where do natural and man-made polymers come from

Where do we get ethane and propane from?

How oil is used to make plastic

Find out more about plastic, the boycott  and us  here

Related articles

• What Common Objects Used to Be Made Of (wired.com)