Recycling plastic bags

Green newsflash!  You can stop throwing away flexible plastic bags like bread bags, grocery bags, frozen food, pasta and confectionery plastic packaging.  Recycling plastic bags is now possible in Australia.

We all know that hard plastic such as plastic bottles and containers can be recycled through kerbside recycling bins, but until now our household has been putting flexible plastics in the rubbish (meaning off to landfill).

We now gather all soft plastic in a separate bag and take them to our local Coles supermarket to the Redcycle bin located at the front of the store.  From there, the bags are used by Australian recycled plastic manufacturer Replas to make a range of products such as outdoor furniture, bollards and decking.

For those not able to visit Coles, we have asked Redcycle to let us know whether there are other options for non-metro residents to drop off bags.

The greenie ideal is for product manufacturers and distributors to take responsibility for their product throughout its entire lifecycle, including what happens to it at the end of its life.  Redcycle is a true product stewardship model where everyone involved in the life cycle of a product, including the consumer, has a role to play.

Soft plastic bags are a great scourge on our environment, ending up in our waterways and oceans. Alternatively, they are dumped in landfill or transported overseas to be dealt with there (that's another story!).  Recycling plastic bags not only helps reduce the pollution, but it also reduces the need to use precious resources to make virgin plastic.

What types of flexible plastic bags can be recycled?

• ✓ Bread bags
• ✓ Biscuit packets
• ✓ Frozen food bags
• ✓ Rice and pasta Bags
• ✓ Confectionery packets
• ✓ Cereal Box Liners
• ✓ Newspaper wrap
• ✓ Plastic shopping bags
• ✓ Old green bags

Find more info here about Redcycle, an initiative of  Melbourne based consulting and recycling organisation Red Group.

Greenie fact
According to Clean Up Australia, Australians are sending 429,000 soft plastic bags to landfill every hour.  That seems an incredible number!

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Glass Containers for safe food storage by Wean Green

 

Fabulous new larger size glass containers from Wean Green make it even easier to use glass at home for all your food preparation and storage, as well as for lunch boxes, picnics and outdoor catering.  

Wean Green by Glasslock glass containers are made from strong tempered glass with leak-proof, high quality snap lock lids made from BPA free plastic. Pictured above are the Meal Cube on the bottom, Meal Bowl and Lunch Bowl.

Here's the fabulous full range of glass food containers.  These glass containers can be used for limitless uses - see some clever ideas below.

Glass container	Volume	Available in
Meal Cube	900ml	Singles
Meal Bowl	720ml	Singles
Lunch Cube	490ml	Singles, 2 pack
Lunch Bowl	400ml	Singles, 2 pack
Snack Cube	210ml	Singles, 2 pack, 4 pack (garden mix)
Wean Bowl	165ml	Singles, 2 pack, 4 pack (garden mix)
Wean Cube	120ml	Singles, 4 pack (garden mix & one colour)

Uses for your Wean Green glass containers

Soak your nuts and seeds: activated nuts and seeds boost their nutritional value and make them more easily digested by your body through reducing physic acid and neutralizing enzyme inhibitors. Some great nuts and seeds for soaking are cashews, almonds, pumpkin seeds and sesame seeds. Simply take your nuts and seeds, put them in separate glass containers, cover them with reverse osmosis or purified water, let sit overnight, drain and rinse and then use as desired. You might try a yummy raw cashew cheesecake.

Storing Homemade Flavours: Create your own spice mixes, sauces, salad dressings and spreads. This will be a fun new way for you and your family to explore new tastes and flavours! Try adding some great detox flavours to your creations such as cayenne pepper, ginger and cinnamon. The wide variety of Wean Green glass container sizes makes them perfect for holding all of these homemade mixtures so that you always have quick access to your favourite flavours to add to meals.

Make Single Serving Raw Avocado Chocolate Pudding:  Awesome idea for school and work lunch boxes rather than pre-packaged single serve sweet treats. Make a simple and delicious raw chocolate mousse with avocados, raw cacao powder, unsweetened almond milk, raw almond butter, agave and soaked dates for a nourishing snack or dessert on the go. You can add in additional flavours and raw food toppings such as raw cacao nibs, goji berries and coconut. Use Wean Greens snack cubes or bowls to have the perfect single serving size. Find a gorgeous vegan avocado chocolate pudding recipe here.

Ideas from the Wean Green blog  http://blog.weangreen.com/new-ways-to-use-your-wean-greens/ written by Marni Wasserman is Culinary Nutritionist  & Health Strategist at Toronto’s First Plant Based Food Studio. 

Lunch boxes:  And of course, glass containers are absolutely perfect for everyone's lunch boxes!

1. Today I Ate A Rainbow Kale Chips
2. The Pioneer Woman Fruit Salad 
3. Organic Celery with Not Enough Cinnamon’s Homemade Peanut Butter
4. Raw Organic Almonds

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Tanjung Puting orangutan sanctuary expedition

In September 1996, my mother, father and I shared a truly remarkable journey to "Camp Leakey" at the heart of Tanjung Puting National Park in the south of Kalimantan, Indonesia.  This precious place is where a young Birute Galdikas arrived in 1971 under the mentorship of Prof. Louis Leakey, beginning 42 years of relentless endeavour to save the orangutans and their forests.

Without the work of Dr Galdikas and the Orangutan Foundation International and its supporters, this tiny peninsula of jungle would certainly be clear felled like the thousands of clear-felled hectares pressing at its boundaries.  It is one of the last havens for the orangutans and the other species that share this wild jungle home, such as the proboscis monkey and toucan (read more about Dr Galdikas below).

Dr Galdikas is one of my heros and shining lights. When I question what we are doing at Biome or I struggle with the pressures of the competitive retail industry, I try to remember what she endured and achieved.  How she dared to dream, lived her dream and helped our planet.  We can't all devote our lives to such significant work in the wilds of Borneo, but we can do something to help the environment each day in the sphere over which we have control.

Avid readers of National Geographic Magazine, our family was drawn to primates and we hoped to see them up close one day.  The opportunity came to visit Camp Leakey 17 years ago while I was working in Jakarta for a public relations firm.  It was a time before the internet and mobile phones!  I remember organising the trip via a chain of land-line phone calls and messages in broken Indonesian.  There were no blogs to read the advice of other travellers.  So when we hopped off the tiny plane that flew us to Pangkalan Bun, we had very little idea of the expdetition that lay ahead.

As in most jungles of the world, rivers are the highway and so we set off on a long narrow boat called a Klotok up a small tributary of the Kumai River. Our four crew were enthusiastic and entertaining hosts. For the next few days we lived a dream.  We saw proboscis monkeys leaping from high branches to land as far as they could across the river and then swim like crazy to beat the crocodiles.  We swam in the river at Camp Leakey so smitten by the adventure we forgot about the massive crocodile we saw sunning itself earlier. One gloriously serene night our boat was lit up by a galaxy of fire flies shining from the long river reeds all around us.  And of course, we saw up close many orangutans of all ages, from playful orphans to a massive male with large cheek pads. 
                        

Feeding time at one of the stations where young orphaned orangutans are reintroduced to the jungle.

Poking her or his tummy out for a tummy tickle from me - 17 years ago!

Hee, hee ... Spot the similarities!

Breakfast on the Klotok. One of our crew, Dad and I.

As we now know so well, the orangutans' rainforest home is being destroyed for palm oil plantations and illegal logging.  There are a number of amazing organisations fighting to protect them.  Please consider volunteering your time to help them out or making a donation through sponsoring an orangutam.

Today, similar organutan tours to the one undertaken by us are run by the Orangutan Foundation International to raise vital funds to continue their work.  Some include the absolute honour of being accompanied by Dr Galdikas!

This video captures some of what we saw.  It was wonderful to come across this as we did not have any video memories of the trip. 

About Dr Birute Galdikas

In 1971, Biruté Mary Galdikas and her then husband, photographer Rod Brindamour, arrived in one of the world’s last wild places, Tanjung Puting Reserve in Borneo. There were no telephones, roads, electricity, television, nor regular mail service. The reserve was being logged and the laws protecting wildlife were not enforced. The rhinoceros had already been hunted into extinction in the area. At this time, very little was known about orangutans in the wild.  Before she left the U.S., she was told by her professors and others that it “couldn’t be done”; she wouldn’t be able to study orangutans in the wild.  They were too elusive and wary, living almost entirely in deep swamps.
Before long, however, her hard work and determination had paid off. She set up “Camp Leakey,” named after her mentor and began documenting the ecology and behavior of the wild orangutans. Four years later, she wrote the cover article for National Geographic Magazine, bringing orangutans widespread international public attention for the first time. The article was illustrated with Brindamour’s photographs.
(Ref: http://www.orangutan.org/dr-galdikas-bio#sthash.CNH7NpMW.dpuf)

Camp Leakey is the site of the longest continuous study on any primate. She has also protected one of the last havens for orangutans in Borneo despite the tremendous pressures from illegal logging and mining interests.  Read more of Dr Galdikas' life work and achievements for the orangutans

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5 Rawsome Protein Ball Recipes

Raw, real, unprocessed, containing just the ingredients you want and nothing else!  It's easier than you think to whip up these protein balls or bars at home (also known as a bliss ball, goodie ball, treat ball!).

Here's five of our favourite rawsome protein ball recipes, perfect for a pick me up any time of day.

1.  Tree Nut, Tahini and Loving Earth Cacao Protein Ball

Protein ball recipe image copyright accidental-greenie.blogpost.com

We whipped up this raw, vegan protein ball recipe to celebrate the arrival of Loving Earth raw cacao at Biome. Woo hoo!  Super simple recipe (free range with your preferred substitutions): place approx. 4 tblsp Loving Earth raw cacao, cup or so of dates, 2 tblsp tahini, cup of mixed nuts like almonds and cashews, and 1 tblsp coconut oil into a food processor and whizz! Adjust ingredients till you can scrunch together into small balls. They set hard in the fridge or freezer.


2. Walnut and Raw Cacao Nib Bliss Balls

This recipe is from Thermomix super-cook Quirky Cooking.  Jo says the mixture of dates, nuts and raw cacao make these balls like mini 'high protein power bars' - but they're much better for you than commercial power bars!  Why are they called 'bliss balls'? Because raw cacao contains "naturally occurring phytochemicals like theobromine (considered an aphrodisiac), phenylethylamine (PEA – released when we fall in love), and anandamide (the ‘bliss' chemical)."  See the full recipe at Quirkycooking.blogpost.com.au


3. Coconut Lemon Meltaways

Contains almond flour (you can make this, or buy it - however most store bought Almond flour is not raw), dried shredded unsweetened coconut, coconut flour, salt.  Combine wet ingredients separately: agave, maple syrup or honey, lemon juice, vanilla and lemon zest.  Strem wet ingredients into dry in a food mixer. Then mix in coconut oil to thicken (buy coconut oil here).  Form into balls.  The trick now: warm them in a dehydrator or oven (set at it's lowest heat, leaving the door cracked open) for an hour or longer.  Finished balls will be dry on the outside and melt-in-your-mouth moist on the inside. Leave to chill and set in the fridge before you eat. Full recipe at addicitedtoveggies.com 

4. Carob & Tofu Balls

 Made with medium firm tofu (patted dry and mashed), dates, maple syrup, carob powder, vanilla, tahini, ground almonds and dessicated coconut.  Mix together and shape into balls with your hands.  Full recipe at mydarlinglemonthyme.com.au


 5. Raw Cinnamon Orange Energy Bars with Orange White Cacao Icing

A bar rather than a ball, but still raw, delicious and packed with protein from chia!  Contains almond butter, dates, organic coconut oil, orange juice and zest, agave or other sweetener, chia seeds, hemp seeds, pumpkin seeds, raisins, raw oats, cinnamon.  Uses a food processor to blend and then press out ingredients in tray and leave to dry overnight.  For the Orange White Cacao Glaze use raw cacao butter (not coconut butter), sweetener and orange zest.   Full recipe on rawmazing.com

Find more protein ball recipes on our Pinterest collection. And for even more delicious inspiration check out NaturalNewAgeMum's post 10 amazing bliss ball recipes.

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