upcycleuae@gmail.com
Blog Layout
How to use our reusable Tea bag
Sep 29, 2022
It may be hard to believe, but most brands of tea bags which you get in the market contain plastic. We always believed that they are made of paper and hence they are good for the environment. But in order to stop tea b...
If you want to store the green leafy vegetables in the produce bags, you just have to follow these simple steps. Spread the greens on the chopping board. Cut off the thick stems/ends. Take an upcycle produce bag in which you want to store the spinach. Wet the bag under running water. Then squeeze it well. Place the greens in the wet produce bag. Close the wet bag and store it in the vegetable drawer of your refrigerator. You greens will stay fresh for longer duration.
Additional tip : By cutting off the ends most of the mud goes away. It is better not to wet the spinach before storing. But in case you do want to wash off the mud, then after washing the spinach spread it out on a towel and store as mentioned above once dry.
We all know how the problem of plastic is responsible for polluting our land and oceans. Our addictions to single use plastic item has lead to a huge long term impact on the environment.
7 year old Nirvan was super excited! It was his birthday in a couple of weeks and he was already planning his guest list and cake. Most of all he was excited about gathering all of his friends together to celebrate. Ther...
Plastic is really a miracle material. In my many years of living independently, I have used a lot of plastic. Earlier I was not bothered about my purchases. If I was thirsty, I would buy a plastic packaged water bottle from the store. If I was shopping for groceries, I would use the plastic bags the store offered me. If I wanted a snack, I'd buy one pre-packaged meal, ready for me. If I had parties I would buy the disposable plates, spoons etc available at the supermarket for my convenience. I have also grown up in a city in India with no experience of the outdoor life or nature. So shopping for functional things was natural. No thought, only convenient consumption. So needless to say this HABIT was a difficult one to BREAK. But when the realization came I knew I had to do it. Sometime back while doing a course on REIKI, I had learnt that if you repeatedly do a particular thing for 21 days then it becomes a habit. I decided to apply it. There are plenty of replacements for all these plastic items. In fact, these replacements existed well before plastic came along. My reusable water bottle replaced my need for buying plastic water bottles. I have cloth bags that now replace the plastic bags when I shop. And snacks are now carried from home before stepping out, in a steel box or a cloth bag. The solutions were already there. What I needed was a way to remember these solutions. Getting into a new habit of remembering, was the bridge I needed to cross. The way I overcome it was by planning in advance. With no habit of prior planning, I went to weekly planning. Whatever was needed to be done in the week was listed down and then I had to find ways to do it without creating any waste out of it. This continued for few weeks until it turned into a habit which I was immensely happy about and gives me great satisfaction. The lesson I learnt during this process was going ‘plastic free’ or ‘zero waste’ is a lifestyle change that will take time. It’s a journey. Take it day-by-day and be proud of the little things you do, as this will help build your confidence for the bigger steps. You don’t need to go out and buy all the zero waste products! Look around your home first, see what things you can upcycle and creatively use what you already have. HAPPY UPCYCLING! -Anupama Gokhale
I love being a hostess. So, when I moved into a new apartment, I loved decorating it and calling friends over for dinner get togethers. Quite surprisingly, setting up this house was a real eye opener for me, because we were generating so much waste- discarded Amazon plastic covers, cardboard boxes, and obviously a lot of vegetable and fruit waste. So, I started reading up more about how to reduce the waste. One easy change was reducing how much food we ordered. But that resulted in even more organic waste. That’s when I turned to composting, to handle the waste at source. First step was to segregate the waste into organic and recyclable waste and non- recyclable waste. Being able to see the waste in separate groups, made it easy to change practice to reduce that particular kind of waste. Composting is the naturally occurring process of decomposing the dead organic matter into nutrient-rich, crumbly substance that we call compost. The main ingredients in any composter are green matter (nitrogen rich, wet waste like fruit and vegetable peels) and brown matter (carbon rich, dry waste like leaves, coconut fiber etc). Composting can be thought of as nature’s way of recycling. I compost using one Plastic composter and one terracotta composter. These two are enough to handle the daily kitchen waste (mostly vegetable and fruit peels, tea leaves and coffee grounds and sometimes leftover food) from my two-person household. The process of composting is really simple. I make layers of composting powder and organic waste in the composter until the bin is full. Then I let it sit for forty to fifty days for the food to decompose into organic manure. Finally, once the compost is ready, it can be used in plants as fertilizer or can be used to make more compost! Since I have started composting, I feel so powerful, knowing exactly what is happening to the kitchen waste (and while working on reducing the other waste in an attempt to become zero waste). Also, contrary to popular fear, foul smell and bugs do not get attracted to the composter if kitchen waste and compost making powder are layered correctly, and water balance is maintained. However, if bugs do come in my composter, I know that is a good sign, because it means that nature is busy at work turning food waste into compost! Nothing in nature works in isolation, every process has its key characters, microbes are the main guys in the composting story, sometimes worms and bugs are strong supporting characters. My composting journey started in 2019 as an attempt to move towards less wasteful lifestyle. My “Aha!” moment with composting happened when I harvested my first batch and saw that watermelon and musk melon peels had literally turned into dirt. Since it was my first time, I was quite skeptical of how the end product will look like, but after the first harvest I was sold on composting. I am sure if you try it, you will too! Happy Composting! – Tanushree Rawat