ZERO WASTE

Ever experienced your dish cloth wasn't eco-friendly enough? Well, we've got the answer: make it out of hemp!   Hemp is a plant that you can make a special kind of string out of. As long as this string isn't processed it's completely biodegradable, meaning it can be composted in nature as good as anything! Therefore this dish cloth wouldn't kill the fish in the ocean should it be dropped in there.   Hemp also possesses resistant properties against mold and other fungi, which means there won't be any suspicious mushrooms growing on it. And now you might say, "but my non-eco-friendly, low-time-use, plastic dish cloth doesn't mold!" My response is: first of all it's not eco-friendly, and second of all, you can make the hemp cloth yourself! Just buy some hemp string, learn to crochet and make one! And when that one stops working, make another one!   I made the dish cloth in the picture during my visit to Poland with Erasmus. I saw that other people...

During this mobility we learned about sustainable ways of reducing the use of single used plastic in our homes.  We got the chance to make a wax wrapper out of bee wax and cloth. Wax Wrappers are used to contain food while, for example travelling or just storing it. These wrappers can reduce our use of plastic and it's more eco frendly. When we made the wax wrappers, we took cloth and put it in a frying pan filled with melted wax at around 60 degrees Celsius. Then we took the wax wrappers and let them dry, followed by crumpling it to make it easier to bend. Using my own homemade wax wrapper has been a positive experience. It is easy to use and keeps food fresh longer. Although it made my hands and fridge greasy every time I used it. It didn’t feel sanitary to use it as a wrapper direct on food.     The wax wrapper can replace plastic wrap, which is a common one time use product. Plastic wrap is often used and gets thrown away directly after, by using a beeswax wrapper ins...

On October 2nd, Valsätraskolan in Sweden had the honor to host the first week in our zero-waste project. It was a week full of new experiences, friendships and learning outcomes. Our idea for this week was to have a mix between field trips to different places in our nearby area and workshops in school.  This is what happened in Uppsala:  Monday All our guests came to the school in the morning. After a welcomes peech from our principal we had some team building activities at the school. In Sweden all students get free school lunch so we had lunch at school before we took a walk downtown for the afternoon activities.  Here is the Swedish team:  Afternoon: City tour in old town Uppsala with mixed groups and tasks to complete around town.  Here is the whole group in Uppsala botanical garden:  Tuesday Bus from Uppsala to Eskilstuna First, we visited Retuna secondhand shopping mall. There we got a showing of the mall and the history behind it. Then, t...

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