A lifetime of eco-friendly living

Within one lifetime, modern living has gone from being environmentally friendly, to harming our planet in more ways than one, to slowly returning back to habits we lost. After a brief chat with Vanessa Bond, who I previously spoke to about her career in the performing arts, she emailed me explaining her life-long commitment to caring for the world we live in, and the changes she’s witnessed long-term.

“I’ve been trying to be eco ever since I can remember!” Vanessa wrote, explaining how growing up post WWII meant every item, from old clothes to pieces of string, was kept to be used again. "I grew up making my own clothes," she added, enjoying the process and saving money too.

Many people in the UK try growing their own fruit and vegetables each year (Image courtesy of Unsplash)

She belongs to a number of organisations, including WWF, Save the Dolphins and BUAV (now Cruelty Free International). Animal welfare has always been important to her, travelling to a shop in Marylebone when she was younger for cruelty free cosmetics, as it was much harder to find products that weren’t tested on animals or contain animal-derived ingredients in the 1960s and 70s.

As a result of Vanessa's love of animals and nature, she has always been vegetarian, and is very nearly vegan, a choice possibly influenced by her grandmother. “She became vegetarian in the 1920s and was truly considered weird,” she explained, before saying how proud she would be of the number of people now opting for the lifestyle.

For many growing up in the last few years, it might seem difficult to believe being a vegetarian was considered unusual, or was highly frowned upon just within the last hundred years. But it’s really only been the last ten years there’s been real change towards the diet.

In the 1970s I started taking plastic bags back and putting them on the counter ... to raised eyebrows

With our demand for food having one of the largest impacts on the planet, Vanessa’s stories of how it used to be make you wonder where it all went wrong. “Both my sets of grandparents grew all their own fruit and vegetables. They had plum trees, blackberries, raspberries, blackcurrants, red currants, gooseberries, rhubarb and all sorts of vegetables,” she listed of just one of her grandparent’s gardens in North London.

When thinking of her other grandparents Vanessa shared, “I remember sitting at the kitchen table shelling peas out of their pods that had just been picked from the garden. Or topping and tailing green beans from the garden. No plastic containers or bags,” she adds, which have become the standard packaging for most items found in supermarkets.

Craft skills like knitting and sewing can be used to make or upcycle clothes (image courtesy of Unsplash)

Vanessa can’t quite pinpoint when plastic packaging became the norm, but she always disapproved and took a stand. “We had always taken our own bags with us. I remember going into shops in the 1970s and saying I didn't want the plastic bag they insisted on putting everything in, and being told that I had to have it or they would think I'd stolen the products! I started taking the bags back and putting them on the counter ... to raised eyebrows.”

It seems we really are coming full circle, with the UK charging 5p on plastic bags since 2015, with many supermarkets removing them altogether. We now take our bags for life with us everywhere, or recycle any that are plastic or paper. Vanessa continued explaining that glass bottles were the standard for every drink, returning milk bottles to the milkman to be reused, or taking bottles back to the store they came from, where she would receive a deposit or credit towards her next purchase.

Thankfully brands and stores have slowly listened to the demand for recyclable, biodegradable or compostable packaging, with even 100% plastic-free deliveries being posted through doors. It seems we are slowly learning from our mistakes and moving forward, and Vanessa believes that's the best thing we can do.

“Every little bit adds to the larger piece, and that will eventually make a huge difference.”

So let's continue doing our bit, for a cleaner and brighter future.

Featured image by Alysia Georgiades