Autumn arrives and she beckons us home to the hearth - after a Summer season of family holidays, festivals and weddings, I have arrived to the satisfying feeling of landing in the warmth and familiarity of home. It's a great time to begin afresh, with the beginning of the new school year and new courses, it’s a perfect moment to get everything in order - cleaning, making medicines that will see us through the Winter, stocking up cupboards with plums, blackberries and apples, tidying my desk and sorting my paperwork! It's a full and satisfying time.

Lighting the fire and welcoming in the spirit of Autumn, I ask her to hold my family and me in these quieter months that we may be nourished and restored, rested and renewed. It's a great time to commit oneself to a creative project and make your own personal intentions for the journey you intend to travel through the darker months, and where you wish to be when you emerge in the Spring.

Many other creatures are tending their homes too, and in Autumn the spider can be seen in her newly woven web waiting patiently for her Winter store of food. This morning as I walked through the wood, I noticed I had absent-mindedly destroyed quite a few of these meticulously woven webs as I trod my way down the path. Feeling somewhat regretful, I took to stepping over these carefully woven webs so that the spider can catch, not just her food, but also her Winter dreaming.

So, if you are inspired, when your nest is prepared, light the fire and/or candles, fill the air with sensual smells and make intentions, spoken from your heart to the flame, that you may dream through the Autumn months, catch nourishment in the web of your womb and come home to the hearth.

Day 19
 
A plastic-free day!
 
 
Day 20
 
Today I needed a few things. The first was laundry liquid which I bought a jar of at Earth.Food,Love, the zero waste shop in town. Ordinarily I put 20p into the powder machine at the launderette and, every time I do, I tell myself that I need to buy some more Earth-friendly stuff, but then it slips my mind until I’m there doing the exact same thing the following week. Since I’ve been house sitting though I’ve got into Laundry Liquid and the one available in the shop is amazing – it smells divinely of lavender and is so concentrated you hardly need to use much.
 
Next I need olive oil but the zero waste shop has not as yet been able to get it in big enough containers so I buy a glass bottle elsewhere. It has a metal lid which I know has plastic on the inside but, right now, in my few spare minutes lunch break from work, I don’t feel there are better options.
 
 
Day 21
 
Today I need pins and the options are a plastic box of plastic-headed ones or a plastic wheel of plastic-headed ones. There’s not much in it really so I opt for the wheel and feel rubbish that I don’t have more time to find non-plastic ones somewhere else.
 
 
Day 22
 
Today is the last day of the house sit and, again, I’m rushing around the local health food shop in a few minutes of lunch break trying to buy supplies for our hosts for their return. I buy kefir and celery, both of which include plastic – the kefir in the lid and the celery in the wrapping. I also buy kefir for myself. I feel like I’ve totally failed on being plastic-free and it’s due to time and energy and not having the space to think of other things I could have bought.
 
 
Day 23
 
Today I am thoroughly exhausted and also have an infection on my foot. I read up on how to treat it naturally and I need salt and bicarb to do so. I have neither, so my husband pops to the local supermarket and buys both along with a – dare I say it – ready meal for me for later since I can’t actually get of bed. The ready meal is, of course, in plastic and feels like the ultimate sin whilst the bicarb is in a plastic container that can be refilled in the future and the salt comes in a glass pot with a plastic lid – again, it can be refilled. I have also read that kefir will help this infection and I feel the need to have it every day so I am going to. I would ideally like to get some water kefir grains and someone was giving some away earlier in the week so I’ll see if I can track them down.
 
 
Day 24
 
I need medicine for my foot today and the best thing I can find is a locally-made talc. Unfortunately it comes in a small plastic container but I feel this is an emergency. At least if I need more I can probably get it straight from the supplier in a paper bag. I also buy loose teas at Neals Yard and ask them to put them in paper bags rather than plastic. They willingly oblige although they too use the plastic-coated labels that come through the scales. All my food purchases in the health food shop are plastic free but I also want kale to juice and here it only comes in a plastic bag. Luckily I know that the Greengrocer at the bottom of town sells it loose so I make a special trip to get it. It takes a bit of extra walking and time to get there but it feels good to have made the effort.

 
Day 25
 
I remember that I can make pancakes with gram flour and water, no milk required. I’m so pleased and it makes me realise how simple it can be to make important changes to our consumer habits. I am able to buy peas in the natural packaging of their pods at the farm shop and I take my own vegware container for a takeaway salad. Everything else I buy is loose veg and eggs in a cardboard box.
 
 
Day 26
 
After both a breakfast and a lunch of chickpea pancakes – hope I don’t go off them - I
make my way into town to buy groceries and head straight for Earth.Food.Love, the zero waste shop, with a basket full of large empty jars that I fill up with seeds, grains and nuts. Next I head to the health food shop and buy loose veg. This whole challenge is starting to feel a lot easier. I’m not even really thinking about all the plastic-wrapped food on the shelves anymore, I just know I can’t have it and the discomfort of still wanting it or thinking that it’s going to make my life easier, has gone. It does help to keep watching clips of turtles with plastic straws stuck about 5 inches up their nostrils or caught in plastic bags which have deformed their shells as they’ve grown, or divers collecting plastic trash from the sea bed and children playing amongst rubbish in rivers and, although I often feel like my little effort won’t really make that much difference, I’m encouraged to read of whole towns and cities elsewhere in the world who are also embracing this challenge and I hope that, like me, those people are finding ways to sustain this after #plasticfreejuly is over.
 
 
Day 27
 
Again, today all of my purchases were plastic free – apart from the inside of the lid of the jar of kefir, which I’ve talked about before. Occasionally it feels a bit like the food we’re eating at the moment is very restricted – I’m not sure we’ve ever consumed this many pumpkin seeds on consecutive days before – but I am finding myself being more creative with ingredients and most of our meals are now made completely from scratch. I did buy some nut burgers today because I had a very long day at work and I have found a brand – GoodLife (I feel they deserve a plug) – which doesn’t use any plastic packaging, only a cardboard box which, I’m finding, is rare these days! I have to say, I’m also starting to feel really good in myself now too which goes to show that conscious living is good for you and the planet!
 
 
Day 28
 
Had a takeaway lunch from an amazing Dosa stall on the market. Not only does the man who runs it grow a lot of the vegetables he uses, but he also serves the dosas on a thick paper plate with wooden cutlery. What a great, sustainable-as-possible food outlet! Later I went for a cup of tea but decided to track down a café that served it loose rather than in bags having recently found out that most – yes MOST – teabags contain plastic! Unbelievable when you think that a teabag HAS to be heated and often soaks for a while. I’m not sure what “grade” the plastic is but we were living with plastic free teabags for quite some time before these were introduced surely? I’m wondering what is the point of plastic in a flipping teabag??! As usual with sustainability in mind, it’s time to go back to the “old ways” – loose tea made in a pot or just a small amount in an infuser or the bottom of the cup. This summer I’ve been drinking teas made with herbs and flowers picked fresh from the garden, the allotment or the wild. They are so much more potent since teas sit around in teabags for a long time before they make it into our cups and can be a low grade substance to begin with anyway. I found one café out of the five I enquired at which served tea loose so I took a paper cup of it away and declined a lid. The woman behind the counter told me I could take my own cup in too if I wanted so, another time, I will.
 
Again, I bought lots of veg for dinner and wanted to get my husband some meat but there’s nowhere in town that sells organic meat that isn’t pre-packed in plastic so I decided I would make us some seed and bean burgers later on. I haven’t made burgers/sausages from scratch for a really long time because I haven’t had the time, space or energy but tonight I will. Good habits are developing!
 
 
Day 29
 
No plastic was bought today!
 
 
Day 30
 
I almost managed a plastic-free day today except that my foot infection had got so bad that I decided to go down the pharmaceutical route and bought some medication for it which came in small plastic bottles that can’t be re-used.
 
 
Day 31
 
The last day of #plasticfreejuly and I really mess up! I so wanted to end on a good note but I spent the best part of the morning grappling with a printer that just wouldn’t work and got myself into a total, running-late, freaking out kind of state. I had to get a parcel off to the drop-off point which is a tiny shop in the area. Since it was almost lunch time and I would be in a meeting for the rest of the day and I hadn’t really eaten any breakfast, I knew the wise thing to do was to buy food in this shop. For a small store on a housing estate it does really well with some interesting things to buy though not much that wasn’t wrapped in plastic in some way. I grabbed a large packet of crisps which look like they’re in a foil packet but there is plastic involved too. I could kid myself that there isn’t but I know there is. Apart from that, I did fulfill the plastic-free remit, buying the food for dinner at the farm shop where everything was loose and the sausages could be wrapped only in paper.
 

Day 10
 
Today I bought milk – in a plastic bottle – but not for me, so I don’t feel it counts.
 
Day 11
 
I pretty much managed a totally plastic-free day today. I shopped at the local farm shop where all the veg I bought was loose and both the butchery and the cheese counter obliged to only wrap in paper rather than extra plastic bags. Unfortunately the labels they stuck on each packet were plasticky and, when I opened the can of beans I’d bought there, I found it had a narrow strip of plastic film inside it. I’m wondering what becomes of this film though. I imagine that cans get melted down in the recycling process so does this little strip simply get burned away? I will do some research.
 
Later my husband picks up some of my prints from the framers. They have a plastic wrap around the outer edges to hold them together and protect them. I don’t feel like I’ve “bought” this as such although it is very much single-use plastic that has just ruined my day!
 
 
Day 12
 
I pop into a supermarket for a lunch snack and there’s not a great deal in there that doesn’t involve plastic! ALL of the organic fruit and veg are wrapped in it. I don’t even bother scouring the shelves for anything that isn’t but manage to get some onion bhajis from the deli counter in a paper bag – it does have a plastic sticker on it though. Later I pop to the greengrocer’s where everything is gloriously loose. I fill the basket with lots of lovely fruits and vegetables. Something else I need is a birthday card – they’re ALL wrapped in plastic of course so I decide to make my own instead.
 
 
Day 13
 
I’m bleeding today and it’s one of those days when I just want to eat and eat and eat. I’m working in the restaurant all day so I’m able to eat there but later on I need a snack and it can’t be sugary. I go to the health food shop but, apart from fruit which isn’t filling enough, there’s nothing available that isn’t wrapped in plastic. I fancy a smoothie – filling and easily digested – but there are none here so I go for a glass jar of kefir. I know it has plastic on the inside of the lid but this feels like an emergency situation and I will re-use the jar.
 
 
Day 14
 
I don’t buy any plastic today whatsoever. I’m house sitting for a friend and she’s left mozzarella in the fridge to be eaten up so we still get to have a treat!
 

Day 15
 
I don’t buy anything with plastic today apart from the sticker on the sausages at the farm shop again.
 
 
Day 16
 
Today my husband bought two sacks of compost. It wasn’t until afterwards that I realised that, of course, the bags are plastic and, since I was giving him the money for one of them, I inadvertently bought it.
 
 
Day 17
 
Today I needed to go to the Post Office and also wanted to buy some fish for my husband’s dinner. I decided to venture to our local small town though, with further thought, I knew I wouldn’t be able to get fish that wasn’t wrapped in plastic there. I remembered that there’s a Fish Deli in the next town along so I went there instead. I told them I was doing Plastic Free July and they said they only ever wrap the fresh fish in paper anyway. Next I needed something for myself so I took a pot of their homemade hummous, in a vegware container. Since my last vegware purchase I’ve read that they have to be in a temperature of at least 40 degrees to break down. What are the chances of that in the UK? Perhaps it is possible inside a vast rotting heap in Summer though I’m not so sure. Bio-plastics certainly do assuage consumer guilt, but do they really work in practice? The best thing to do seems to be to take your own containers everywhere you can and shop in places that will accept them without question. The woman in the fish deli told me that they are all about sustainability so she was glad to hear I was shopping there especially because of it although I paid over £10 for two items so not very personally sustainable I have to say!  
 
 
Day 18
 
Everything was pointing to a Spanish omelette for tonight’s dinner except that old fall-down, the milk. Fortunately, still being on my house sit, there was a large carton of milk in the fridge and it was still usable, so I made a huge omelette! Apart from that I only bought a few loose fruits but instructed my husband to get his own sausages since I wasn’t venturing anywhere that wouldn’t wrap them in plastic. I almost bought a tin of beans but that little plastic film inside would have scuppered things so instead I used peas (from the house sit freezer) which my husband doesn’t really like, so I hid them in the depths of the omelette and he was none the wiser.
 
I have to admit that so far this week I’ve been looking forward to the end of this month when I can buy anything at my own convenience again. However, there’s a big part of me that really can’t continue to do that. I’m feeling that if I can get my shit together I can get better at this. I can soak dried pulses ready to cook the next day, I can switch to water kefir, I can keep taking my own containers out shopping and I might even be able to source milk straight from the dairy in one of them. I live off-grid, without a fridge, so I shop pretty much everyday for food anyway and don’t eat a huge amount of dairy products or we use them up very quickly. Summer has, as usual, been pretty hectic and I haven’t been in a good groove with myself but rather just about getting by with some half-decent nutrition. When Autumn comes I’ll be much more ready and able to come home to myself and lick this thing!

Day 1
 
Meringues, beans and a little bag.
 
I’m going to a party tonight and, wanting to turn my gorgeously fat and juicy home-grown blackcurrants into a delicious dessert that can be made in about 10 minutes (between a 9 hour shift on 4 hours sleep and the party itself), I have opted for a pavlova.  Unfortunately the meringue I tried to make last night didn’t work out – Xylitol is not a sufficient substitute for sugar in this scenario it turns out – so I was forced to purchase some instead. My choices were some beautiful nutty plastic free ones from a French café at 90p a pop or a (plastic) pack of 6 at a third of the price. Since I needed at least 10, affordability won out…
 
During my lunch break I quickly popped to the plant stall on the market to replace the French beans that a rabbit has had the pleasure of tucking into over the last week on my allotment. So pleased to find they were still available but, as I was just about to hand over the cash, I realised they were in plastic trays! Shit! Now what? I explained to the woman on the stall that I was doing Plastic Free July and she said that someone else had had the same dilemma earlier but had taken the plants anyway. That made me feel better about my imminent purchase but, after the meringue situation just hours earlier, it didn’t feel okay. In the end she suggested I take them, plant them out and bring the trays back for her to re-use. Since the remit is to avoid buying single-use plastic, I felt this was an agreeable alternative.
 
Earlier in the day I had bought a little gift bag to put the party’s host’s present into. On getting home I noticed that it had a small plastic hook on it. I hadn’t registered it at the time, which goes to show how vigilant one must be and how easily plastic can sneak into our lives without us noticing. My first day of buying no plastic has not gone well at all but, all of these things have brought the whole campaign into better focus and I shall endeavour to do better from now on.
 
 
Day 2
 
Husband and mayonnaise.
 
When food shopping today I forewent the plastic-wrapped variety of delicious salad leaves I usually go for and opted instead for a “naked” lettuce, and rued the fact that I still haven’t sown my own!! Other than that, all my purchases were plastic free (having also foregone tofu). My husband wanted sausages though and they were wrapped in plastic. He also wanted ice-cream which, although in a cardboard tub (including the lid), does have a plastic film between the two. Since he was paying and has opted out of Plastic Free July from the get-go, I concluded that I wasn’t breaking any rules. Personally I put my tub of ice-cream back in the shop’s freezer because of that thin film although I did have a couple of spoonfuls of his later on. The jar of mayonnaise I vigilantly checked for a plastic seal around the lid (I found none) turned out to have one on the inside so I guess that rules out jars for the next month as there’s no way of knowing the score until they’re open.

Day 3
 
I’m having dinner with friends tonight and I’m taking dessert. I have blackcurrants available again so I’m making a dairy and gluten free chocolate cake. Going shopping I merrily filled my basket with everything I needed but realised half way round that the coconut oil was in a massive plastic tub! Still haven’t quite got the hang of this! I scoured the shop for some in a jar – yes, I know I said only yesterday that jars are out but this one is a great size and I will re-use it.
 
I’ve ordered a screen online for the back of the car. It’s plastic but it’s not single-use. I felt I really needed it but still, buying any kind of plastic isn’t sitting well with me at the moment.
 
Day 4
 
Okay! I’m way more prepared today. It’s stir-fry for dinner so I take a plastic tub with me to put husband’s chicken in at the shop. Isabella and I spend the afternoon together preparing magazines for Seed Festival and we get chatting about our dinner. ‘Stir-fry and noodles,’ I say as I immediately realise noodles come in plastic packages. Arse! Rice then. I remember I don’t have rice and I’m not going to town especially to buy it from the Zero Waste shop. Thinking of substituting with a half packet of mung bean pasta that’s been in the cupboard a while… Isabella comes to the rescue and lends rice. At the shop I buy the chicken, butcher says bringing own tub is a good idea.
 
Day 5
 
Quiche
 
Last night’s leftovers suggest a quiche for tonight’s dinner but that would involve milk which only comes in plastic round here as far as I can tell. I think about scouring supermarkets for glass-bottled but I don’t really have the time and I don’t think I’ll find any anyway. I try to think of other things we could eat tonight. Pancakes…no, they also involve milk and even alternative milk cartons aren’t plastic-free. Buy a quiche ready-made? No, it comes in plastic and often contains palm oil. Grr. Ermmmmm… a depression  creeps over me, this plastic-free scenario is seriously limiting my food freedom! I go shopping, fill the basket with loads of lovely fresh organic veg, I want an ice-cream but opt for a peach instead and decide it will be quiche tonight but with extra eggs and no milk. I have a quick look at the deli counter hoping there’s something there that will make my dinner more interesting and indeed, there’s a bowl of goats curd cheese. Hooray! I’m much happier now! I buy a tub (vegware, biodegradable) and make a quiche that’s fine without milk (even if the gluten-free pastry was a bit tough in places!)
 
 The sun screen for the car arrived and, although it will get used over and over again, it came wrapped in not one but two plastic bags. However, since I keep every plastic bag that comes my way, these will both be re-used. The outer as a postage bag again and the other will join my collection of about 400 (not even joking!) others to one day become a bin liner.
 
 
Day 6
 
Loo roll revelation
 
I always buy loo roll in bumper packs and I always get the bargains as long as they are FSC stamped but today I was prepared to buy less for more by way of individual rolls. Very happy to find a bumper pack in fully compostable wrapping for only a £1 more than I would usually pay. This is definitely a keeper of a brand for after July. Yay, I feel like I’m getting somewhere with this now.
 
We’re off to Seed Festival tomorrow so I gather some supplies for the weekend. I have ‘snacks’ written on my shopping list but, apart from the plethora of loose fruit and veg going into the basket, there is not a snack in sight that isn’t wrapped in plastic! I’m quite sure that even the crisp packets that look like they’re foil still contain some plastic so they’re a no-go. I guess I’ll just have to find cake whilst I’m there!
 
On the way home from work I need ice cream. It’s been a long day and the intense heat has sapped all my energy. I lose all willpower and am completely up for reneging on being both sugar- and plastic-free. Luckily the ice cream I want also contains palm oil so that’s that then, I don’t have it. My senses return before leaving the shop and I head home for a slice of quiche instead.
 
 
Day 7
 
Today I’m preparing to go to Seed Festival for the weekend. Apparently there’s no electricity available there but my car has a port for a 12v phone charger which I don’t have. I feel the need to get one, not so I can be on the phone all weekend – I’m actually looking forward to some screen-free time – but I don’t want to be stranded on the motorway without access to the breakdown service should such a situation arise. I appease myself with the fact that the charger is not single-use but am frustrated by its packaging, a plastic tray inside a plastic box which I can’t put to further use.
 
Apart from that the rest of my personal purchases – bread from the market, a new dress and some matches (chosen over a lighter) – are plastic free. The magazine needs a clipboard and I’m imagining a leather-covered cardboard one, but all I can find is plastic. Again, not single-use, but one of those irritating acquisitions that COULD come in other materials if only suppliers could get on board with it.
 
 
Days 8 & 9
 
Seed Festival
 
Seed Festival is a place where, on one hand, you don’t need to worry about a thing. Everyone is friendly, there’s amazing food available without a single plastic accessory involved, water comes from a natural spring, and you cannot cease to be entertained or cared for. On the other hand, Seed is all about exploring, highlighting and acting upon some of the most heart-breaking socio-political and environmental injustices on the planet so, in the bigger picture, there’s a lot to think about and digest.
 
For the entirety of the first day there I did not have a single dalliance with plastic BUT, on the second day I came across a stall with kefir on it from a small, local, independent, bio-dynamic dairy. I love kefir, it does my gut the world of good, I drink it often and I had been craving it the day before so I was over the moon to find it here! There was only one drawback – it was in a plastic bottle. I took a paper cup over and asked them to pour half into it which I would drink there, and then refill with the other half which I would take away for later. But there was still the matter of the bottle. Would it get re-used? ‘Probably not’ was the answer, ‘though it would definitely be recycled.’ Hmm, not really enough to assuage my single-use remit. They asked if I could up-cycle the bottle – to be honest, I felt I probably wouldn’t so they suggested I just take it with me and bring it back when it was empty and they would deal with it from there. But I knew that bottle was ultimately my responsibility because I had, in effect, bought it.
 
Re-grouping with friends who had watched the Plastic Ocean film the night before and who reported that our plastic waste is sent to China where only 20% of it is actually recycled and the rest is thrown into rivers to make its way out to sea, compounded my feeling of fickleness for giving in to the kefir purchase. I vowed that I would keep the bottle and use it for something. I have no idea what that will be. Right now it is sitting in front of me as a reminder of my weak moment when habit overpowered my resolve and I feel sad about that because it really wasn’t a necessary purchase although what it has done is bring the whole plastic thing home – quite literally! I feel way more in touch with the issue at hand and now even just the word “plastic” feels icky and toxic and wrong.

We are living in incredible times, when a new wave is surging, washing over and through the old paradigm. No area of life is left untouched. Rising within this wave is the voice of the feminine, that which has been quieted, shut down and ignored is now awakening. Rumblings from the Earth mother’s belly herself, calling us to stand up and speak from our hearts. Within this rise of the feminine which can be seen through the numerous and inspiring projects emerging all over this beautiful planet is the voice of woman.

Women are rising, remembering our sacred innate connection to the Earth, reclaiming our shared voice and power as we gather in circles, round fires, in fields, woods, village halls and sitting rooms.

Together we are an undeniable force, a power as ancient as the Earth herself, together there is nothing our hearts will not achieve. Together we are changing and challenging the face of Politics, Law, Education, Community, Family life and Celebration. Helping to bring the connected heart back into our world. Girls and Women across cultures rising up, speaking out and calling for change. Each voice is an inspiration and a support to our own. We believe in each other, help each other with that next step and through each woman’s unique story is reflected the true power and beauty of woman.
 
At She Who Knows we are gathering women’s voices from this diverse and global movement, creating a magazine that offers a more reliable and accurate reflection of who we are as women than most mainstream magazines offer women at this time. What if a magazine could mirror, not only your struggles and longings but, your true power, beauty and worth? It is our hope at She Who Knows that we are creating just such a magazine.
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