woody brush shocker

After months of vigorous scrubbing my plastic tooth brush splayed and ugly had come to the end of its working life. Greatly excited I got out my wooden and natural bristle completely biodegradable toothbrush.

It didn’t work. There was not enough in the way of friction the bristles were too soft and pulpy. I thought perhaps they just didn’t work with salt which I have been using since my tootpowder ran out. So even though I have given up plastic wrapped dentifrices, I bought a tube of toothpaste Nope, still no good. I have had to abandon the wooden toothbrush and buy a plastic one.

If I had been in the U.S. of A I could have got one of these recycled brushes but I’m not.

Don’t let this put you off other natural bristle products – my hairbrush is fantastic, the kitchen cleaning brushes superb ad my floor sweeping and hand brushes just wonderful.

Find more plastic free products with the >>>A-Z<<< plastic free index

Spitti Valley, Kaza, plastic and water bottle refills

lonelyhouse

Originally uploaded by misssometimes

The journey to Kaza is one of the most impressive I have ever been on. The narrow road crawls its way through the Spiti Valley a fantastical landscape of rivers and spectacular mountins, the highest still snow covered, the foothills swathed in grass and alpine flowers. There are plump cushions of sage colored foliage purple and yellow flowered, pink primulas with yellow edged petals, bright red pom poms on wiry stalks, a kind of stunning blue poppy, and dark maroon sprawling buttercup. But best of all there is hardly any rubbish.

Sadly the same can not be said for Kaza. Kaza is the administrative centre for Spiti – the main town, though town is rather overstating the case. There are some old traditional houses and some new hotels. It’s nothing special and what little charm the town has is ruined by the rubbish. Oh that place is dirty and plastic is to blame.

In the old days all rubbish was biodegradable. Biodegradable rubbish can go on the fields, be burnt, and be used to feed the animals or left to rot. Plastic of course doesn’t biodegrade in fact it pretty much lasts forever. It may fall apart or degrade but it only breaks down into smaller pieces of plastic. It is not edible – quite the reverse and thousands animal die each year from eating plastic. Burning it is problematic – it smells dreadful, releases toxic chemicals into the air, adds to global warming and results in poisonous ash which still has to be disposed of.

Plastic bags, crisp packets, and mineral water- you name it and it comes in a disposable plastic packaging. That’s disposable but indestructible throw away packaging. The age old methods of waste disposal cannot deal with this new kind of rubbish so it ends up dumped in fields and littering the streets.

Even if all that plastic it was collected up then what? There is no landfill site no waste incinerator. Such facilities are extremely expensive to install and maintain. Money that this region really doesn’t have.

Yet there is a really cheap solution to this problem STOP CREATING PLASTIC TRASH. As tourists we can at least do that to help preserve the environments we have come to visit.

Bottled water is the obvious place to start. Worldwide we, annually, use approximately 2.7 million tons of plastic to bottle water each year, and it accounts for approximately 2.5% of the world’s oil consumption. And it isn’t even that clean –visit www.wewanttap.com for details.

Thankfully the good folk at www.spitiecosphere.com will help you. You can refill your water bottle with steralised water for free though they would like you to leave a donation.

Steripenmandu

As you know I love our steri pen for saving me, as it does, from polluting remote villages and pristine landscapes with dirty mineral water bottles. I got mine from E bay but if you are in Katmandu you can buy them from.

KEEP …. map and address here

(You can also buy sterilized water to fill your own water bottle here at 10 Nepalese rupees a liter)

Or

Mount Everest Equipment Store UP School Road Tamel.

leather slippers

You may feel I was a little hard on Jodhpur and I have to say the town grows on you. And one thing it does really well is leather slippers and sandals. These come in a huge range of styles from curley toed Ali Baba to simple mules. But the greatest recommendation of all is that they are all plastic free. These alone make it worth a visit.

Plastic Free Leh

Ladakh Anti plastic protest

Originally uploaded by plastic is rubbish

Plastic rubbish in and around Leh is a real problem. Plastic lasts for centuries, doesn’t rot and is inedible. Burning it at best smells bad and adds to the green house effect, at worst is lethal. In short plastic cannot be easily disposed of. Plastic waste requires special disposal facilities which Leh does not have. Most plastic trash ends up dumped in the mountains despoiling this beautiful and fragile environment. Every bit of plastic rubbish you create becomes part of that problem.

If you don’t want to leave a pile of everlasting trash behind you, here are some ways to reduce your rubbish

Water – don’t buy water in plastic bottles get your bottle refilled. Boiled, filtered water refills can be got from the Woman’s Alliance, Ladakh Ecological Development Group LEDeG, Dzomsa and some other places. You can pick up a map from LEDeG showing all of them or download it here.

Biscuits – don’t buy bickies in plastic wrappers, the bakery on Main Bazaar Road sells a wide variety sweet and savory loose and they use paper bags.
Hair conditioner – try this vinegar rinse. Organic apple vinegar can be bought from Dzomsa. It comes in a glass bottle BUT it does have a plastic lid. Maybe you could ask about returning the bottles and lids to be reused? Let me know how you get on.

Toothpaste – those damn tubes get everywhere so you could try salt – can be bought in a paper bag from Dzomsa ( though it is reinforced with plastic sellotape). Or you could bring your own home made tooth powder.

Landry soap – unwrapped from Dzomsa – can according to the blurb be used to wash people as well. I am pretty sure you cold find this in the market if you looked.

Shampoo – using solid soap to wash your hair works and this handmade soap from the Organic Store comes plastic free.

Loo roll – it’s hard to find toilet paper that doesn’t come wrapped in plastic but Dzomsasell paper wrapped rolls.

You can down load an eco map of Leh showing the above locations here. It is part of Leh eco guide which you might find useful. It lists such things as green hotels and discusses the environmental issues facing Leh.

For info on a plastic free trek try here and if you need some plastic free treking snack these are good

Find more  plastic free products with the >>>A-Z<<< plastic free index

Johdpur

Johdpur

Originally uploaded by plastic is rubbish

Jodhpur has ideas above its station. Granted it has a fort – a big fort and some rather nice old blue houses clustering along arrow almost traffic free roads. True it has a colorful market and a range of interesting shopping opportunities. Yes it comes with all the usual rajastani bits and bobs some step wells, a lake, onion domed cenotaphs of exquisitely carved marble etc.

But it has some major failings. Rubbish for instance. Right outside our hotel was a large and malodorous rubbish dump where everyone including our hotel piled up their daily trash. Every day the cows and dogs and litter pickers would come turn it over. By the end of the day it was an unholy stew of tattered food smeared plastic bags. Every street had its own festering pile that for the five days we were there remained uncollected.

In the old town the streets were lined with open gutters of flowing water. Perhaps they were meant to carry dirty water away from the city. Maybe they would have done so if people hadn’t filled them with yet more plastic bags of rubbish. These inevitably formed
A damn and finally the back log of greasy water flecked with scraps of food would overflow onto the street where it mixed with the cow dung to create vile smelling slurry. Eventually somebody would clear the gutter but the excavated sludge was then left piled on the side of the street where again it remained uncollected. It too smelt bad.

Even more distressing was the state of the pools and step wells. These great tanks of water were built by the Jodhpur Nobs and so were pretty grand. They consist of a large body of water with flights steps and adorned with pretty pavilions and seating areas. They should have been delightful places to sit and relax but the water is covered with a slick of plastic rubbish.

Jodhpur you are one big tourist town – ban plastic bags and keep your self clean

Here’s what tourists can do

Say no to plastic bags – natch! We have brought our own Onya Bag (Chico Bags in the US) with us. They fold up really small.

Refill your water bottle from the water cooler in the square by the clock tower. It tastes good, is indeed cool and there is no charge. We treated ours with our steripen but old Indian hands drank it neat.

For a place to stay try here

Find more plastic free products with the >>>A-Z<<< plastic free index

The new shampoo

Back in the early days I gave up buying shampoo in nasty plastic bottles and took to making my own from soap flakes. However I got to thinking why bother with all that flaking and making – surely soap is soap is soap. Turns out yes it is and you can wash your hair with a bar of soap just as well as anything else including shampoo which is just runny soap.

I find its best to wash twice.

Now this is really good news for back packers cutting down as it does on not only your plastic waste – excellent result – but the amount of stuff in your wash bag and so in your rucksack. You might think that’s nothing when you are back at home,  when you are carrying the damn thing while being mobbed by rick shaw wallahs, every bit of weight reduction counts.

However I have had bad experiences with Indian soap.  Soap bought in a cardboard box comes wrapped in a plastic bag inside.

But not this soap….

Himalayan Blends soap comes in a fairtrade box made out of recycled cotton. For more check out their site  www.villageartisan.com hand milled by khan and sons vpo palloor chamba hp

If you are in Leh you can buy it from the Organic Store.  If you are in Shimla, you can buy it from the everything shop on the Mall.

Find more  plastic free products with the >>>A-Z<<< plastic free index

make your own safe water

Now its easy to give up bottled water in England but what of when yo are abroad in countries where the water is not so reliable. India for example. It is not always possible to refill you water bottle with sterilized water. as in Leh, the Hemis trek or Arambol.

Most parts of India just don’t do that and will want to sell you water in those vile plastic bottles that are now such an ugly part of the Indian landscape.

The steri pen is my solution to that particular problem. Stick the sticky bit in a liter of water – switch on and 90 seconds later the water is safe to drink. Weighs next to nothing and is tiny.

For more information visit the following sites.

steriPEN and for

great reviews of the product here and here

what it kills

good converter here

I bought mine on E bay.

Trekking Snacks

Biscuit wrapper in a mountain stream – plastic of course!

Though the food at the home stays does the job it is sometimes basic and often repetitive. Though they will make you a packed lunch the less said about them the better. You may feel the need to take some additional provisions with you.

The purchase of plastic free, light weight snacks is difficult I know but here are a couple of options.

Dried fruit can be bought loose in the market on the main street of Leh or in paper bags from Dzosmos. (where you can also refill your water bottle with filtered water while you are in Leh)

If you or the trekking party you are with do buy plastic wrapped snacks please do ensure that they are disposed of properly even if that means taking your plastic wrappers back to Leh with you. There is no guarantee that they will be properly disposed of there but at least it will keep the hills cleaner for longer.

Plastic Free Trekking

Organized by the Snow leopard Conservancy, these treks allow you access to some of the amazing scenery around Leh. You stay in villagers homes – I say village but sometimes it is a single farmstead- and have to walk from place to place. There are no roads. Everything that goes into the mountains has to be carried there on the backs of donkeys. needless to say there is no rubbish collection everything that goes into the mountains stays in the mountains.

For hundreds of years the ecological balance has been maintained. Rubbish is composted or burnt or eaten by other less fussy animals. Even now this landscape is wonderfully clean and rubbish free. But all that is changing with the advent of plastic. Plastic is of course difficult to burn, doesn’t biodegrade, and kills those animals who eat it. Once it is in the landscape it is there for decades looking horrible and causing trouble.

Thankfully there are people like the Snow leopard Conservancy who are are trying to preserve snow leopards and the environment in which they and the farmers live. They have several amazing projects including the home stay treks. As well as board and bed, your host host will provide you with boiled filtered water. All you have to do is take your own refillable water bottle for plastic free hydration.

What a great scheme.

NB  Don’t rely on there being bottled water for sale – there isn’t any. Ha!

For more details go to

www.himalayan-homestays.com

www.markha-valley.info