Dairy farmers direct

Since the supermarket price wars, many consumers have made a conscious decision to support Aussie dairy farmers by choosing branded milk (such as Dairy Farmers, Pura, Pauls) over the supermarket home brands. 

We think that by choosing the more expensive milk we are helping the farmers.  It's an important gesture, showing with our purchasing power that we believe the production of milk has a true value of more than $1 per litre.  Unfortunately, according to The Checkout on ABC1 by buying those big brand names we're not helping the dairy farmer.  The farmers are actually paid the same for the milk because the milk that ends up in either branded or home brand bottles is bought from the same farms and is processed in the same plants (by Lions and Parmalat) - it's just different packaging. All we're doing by paying more for these big brands is increasing the profit Coles and Woolworths make on the same milk!  

This episode of The Checkout explains, recommending that the best way to help dairy farmers is to buy milk from collectives or direct from a farmer who produces the milk in your region (see a list below).

For those that can, the benefits of buying from local dairy farmers include:

• the milk is less processed and more fresh (retaining more of the nutritional value)
• it has travelled less food miles
• we know the actual farm that produced the milk and thus we can learn more about animal welfare and sustainability practices
• they tend to offer more unique choices such as unhomogenised and glass bottles.  

The welfare and treatment of dairy cows is also of great concern to many people - that is why growing numbers of people choose not to eat any dairy products at all, or want to know specifically how the cows and calves are treated.  Calves being sent to abattoirs is a concerning reality of the dairy industry.  When you know exactly which farm the milk is coming from you can ask the farmer (or even visit to check for yourself).  For example, Barambah Organics gives this statement on its website:

At Barambah Organics all the calves that are born on our property stay within our care. Our calves are not considered by us to be waste products.  At the age of 6 months we take the females and males to our other properties... No Barambah calves are sent to the abbatoir.  We often get asked the question "When are the calves separated from their mothers?" Each calf is different and needs to be individually assessed and monitored after birth... The calf is not separated from its mother until it is truly on its way and fit and healthy.

 

We started a list of dairy farmers direct milk that may be local to you, but then we found this very comprehensive list by Flavourcrusader.com  Thank you to them for the research to help us all.  We have not assessed the sustainability or animal welfare practices of the below.

SE Qld
Scenic Rim 4Real Milk (only distributes within a two hour drive of their South East Queensland farm)
Barambah Organics
Maleny Dairies (seen at FoodWorks)
Cooloola Milk (Gympie region, seen at IGA - Rainbow Beach)
Cooloola Jersey Organic milk (available at Food Connect)

SA
Bd Paris Creek Farm
Fleurieu Milk Co
Alexandrina Milk

NSW
Liddels for lactose free milk (Murrary Goulburn Co-operative)
Devondale long life (Murray Goulburn Co-operative)
Norco (seen at HIlls Bakery - Ferny Hills, Megafresh - Carine, Woollies - Annerley)
Country Valley (Picton)

VIC
Organic Dairy Farmers

WA
Brownes

For unhomognised and unpasteurised (straight from the cow) you can consider raw milk marketed in Australia as "bath milk" (i.e. apparently for bathing in, not for human consumption).  Heavenly Bath Milk from the Northey Street Markets in Brisbane and Cleopatra's Bath Milk at organic/wholefood stores.

As Flavourcrusader.com says:
While supermarkets compete over the price of milk, dairy farmers step out of the ring and compete with quality. For distinct flavour, seek low temperature pasteurisation and milk from a single-origin herd. For creaminess, look for Jersey and Guernsey cows, or unhomogenised milk. For a better world, support those who cultivate rich soil, minimise plastic and go above and beyond for animal welfare.

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Are you "eco-effective"? Inspired by No Impact Man.

How much of our consumption of the planet's resources actually makes us happier and how much just keeps us chained up as wage slaves?

This week in Brisbane we've had a 'No Impact' immersion.  We watched the film No Impact Man, and as Biome founder I was fortunate to take part in a Q&A panel afterwards.  I'm also reading the book, which explores in more depth the impacts that New York City-based author Colin Beavan attempts to negate in his year long lifestyle experiment.  It's a great read that I am finding more effective at changing my habits than other environmental books.

I connected with Beavan's philosophy and the messages that we have conveyed over the years with our eco-retail business--and, based on the world wide interest in his project it seems to be working for many others.  He delves into the motivations of why 'we' spend our lives working to earn money in order to be able to spend it on buying more convenience and material excess in the pursuit of elusive happiness.  These words stood out:  It's not that while trashing the planet the human race is having a party. Quite the opposite. We feel a malaise and guilt that at another time in history might have motivated action, but at this time seems instead to be coupled with a terrible sense of helplessness.

Beavan wanted to find a way to encourage a society that emphasises a little less self-indulgence and a little more kindness to one another and to the planet.  But, if he was to write a book about changing other people, he realised that he ought first to worry about changing his own actions.

And so began his year of inquiry--to put the habitat first and see how that affected his family; and, most importantly when it came to his own despair, was he as helpless to help change the imperilled world we live in as he thought?

"Eco-effective"

Beavan followed the words of the environmental scientists William McDonough and Michael Braungart: "Saving this planet depends on finding a middle path that is neither unconsciously consumerist nor self-consciously anti-materialist. The idea for No Impact Man is not to be anorexic but to be abundant, not to be eco-efficient but "eco-effective."

His philosophy is based not only on reducing consumption but also on changing what is consumed so that it actually helps or at least does not hinder the world.  He argues that humans need to figure out what our world is able to productively offer us rather than considering only what we want.

After all, this harmonious existence is how most other species on earth live.  He illustrates this with the simplicity of examples from nature.  "Lions neither starve themselves nor gorge to the point of wiping out the gazelle population. Instead, they promote the health of the gazelle herd by culling its weaker members and preventing herd overgrowth which in turn prevents overgrazing of the savannah. Animal waste does not poison the ground but fertilizes the soil so that it can produce more vegetation for the animals to eat. Bees feed on the pollen of flowers but far from damaging them they provide the crucial service of pollinating them."

Beavan references the book Cradle to Cradle, where McDonough and Braungart discuss the Menominee tribe of Wisconsin, who have harvested wood for sale from their forested land for many generations.   He writes: "In 1870, the Menominee inventoried 1.3 billion standing board feet of timber on their 235,000 acres. Since then, they have harvested nearly twice that amount--2.25 billion board feet. Considering the "clear-cutting" methods of the corporate lumber merchants you hear about, which completely strips land of its trees, you'd expect that the Menominee would have barely a single tree left...In fact, they have 1.7 billion board feet left, more than they had in 1870, and a thriving forest ecosystem."

"That's because the Menominee tend to cut only the weaker trees, leaving behind the strong mother trees and enough of the upper canopy for the arboreal animals to continue to inhabit. They have figured out what the forest can productively offer them instead of considering only what they want to take from it."

Stage one: No waste - not even toilet paper

No Impact Man sensibly approached his project in stages, taking on one impact before tackling another. His first stage was to live without making garbage.  Beginning with an inventory of all the rubbish AND recycling they generated, Beavan and his wife committed to producing not a skerrick of output.

"wash the spoon" - posters-for-good.tumblr.com

This concept of recycling not being as 'green' as we believe is building momentum.  In Junkyard Planet,  author Adam Minter, says recycling has the tendency to absolve our conscience about acquiring the next new thing.  The vast majority of rubbish and recycling are items used for less than 10 minutes.  Beavan talks about the loss of the "waste not, want not" ethos his grandparents held dear.   Items pass through our hands with little gratitude for the precious resources that were consumed in their production.

Recycling is in fact not very different to rubbish - there is no "away".  Many of the health and environmental issues of dealing with the massive global recycling industry are pushed onto the poorer nations - China for example, where Australia sends container ship loads of toxic, dirty waste for "recycling".

The holy grail is an empty recycling bin--and that is what Beavan recognised and lived by for the year.

How can you achieve this?  No Impact Man showed us: do not accept anything in to your life that needs to be recycled or thrown away.

• buy food with absolutely no packaging (by shopping at farmers markets and whole food stores) - even their milk was purchased from a farmer that refilled the same glass milk bottles
• take your own containers and cheesecloth and produce bags to the take out store or food market
• use reusable cloths instead of toilet paper, napkins, baby nappies
• bake your own bread, make your own yoghurt

Any 'waste' you do produce should be organic matter that can be composted at home with a worm farm, Bokashi or compost heap.

Beavan's family ate a pretty simple diet based around shopping direct with the producers, only eating what is in season and only eating food that was grown within a 250 mile radius of New York. This helped with eliminating packaging waste - but Eating Sustainably was the third stage and we will leave that for another blog post.

Read more about the No Impact Man project here and consider participating in the week long experiment.  See more activism quotes on Biome's Pinterest.

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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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