Why 2019 Is The Year To Start Growing Your Own Food

This article was written in January 2019 and originally published by Huffington Post UK.

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One of my new years resolutions is to become a better gardener. This includes houseplants, of which I currently only have four spider plants and a Christmas cactus – all the hardest plants to kill. If I could choose a universal resolution for the people of Britain in 2019 it would be to all become better gardeners – and in turn, get more grounded.

2019 may have only just begun, but chaos is already on the menu. With nobody seemingly having any clue what’s to come when it comes to Brexit – not even our own prime minister – fears over what lay ahead are all anyone can talk about. I am pretty sure at this point that many readers are getting rather bored of the Brexit chat – it is clear that the majority of Brits feel uncertainty, so what can we do to feel more grounded this year?

Step outside. Go on, I dare you.

It feels pretty good to feel the earth beneath your feet doesn’t it? There is a sense of freedom, like an energy force radiating right out from underneath your toes. Connecting with the outdoors has become a foreign task to many of us. We go from our car, to the office, to the lunch canteen, back to the office, back to the car and into our homes.

We have a bizarre fear of mud. It’s as if dirt isn’t the thing that we enjoyed playing with as kids, the thing that helped our bodies to grow a strong immunity to a world filled with man-made bugs. If you want a little perspective on what’s happening ‘out there’, the best place to start is right underneath your feet.

To add a little practicality into the mix here, one way to re-gain this connection - and get something pretty amazing out of it - is to start growing your own food. Amidst our daily indoor tasks, food shopping is high up on the list. The retail market value of supermarkets in the UK is £179billion per year. However, the thing about only buying your food in supermarkets is that you miss out on a huge variety of fruit and veg that doesn’t meet the very narrow criteria sold in large retail stores.

Did you know that there are actually hundreds of types of tomato; sweet corn is only one of four basic types of corn and that a courgette is actually a type of squash? Spend a day volunteering at your local community farm and I guarantee that you will come away awe-struck at how many vegetables you didn’t recognise that can be grown in the UK. 

Growing your own food doesn’t have to be a laborious task - welcome to 2019, where you can speak into the air and an electronic box will play you your favourite song. There are countless ways to make food growing less complicated and you don’t even need to have a big garden to do it. Let’s be real, there’s probably an app for this. Start small, get some seeds and sow them in a tub on your windowsill – chillies are often a good one to start with. Move on to tomatoes, courgettes or salad. If you don’t have your own garden or growing space then look into food growing projects in your local area.

In the moments when it feels like uncertainty rules your life, take some time out to get grounded. Get your hands dirty, let soil plant itself in every crevice of your clothing and gain some perspective amidst all of the chaos.

Images and words: Rebecca Tyers
Originally published here.

When It Comes To Plastic Waste, We Need To Think Bigger

This article was written in October 2018 and originally published by Huffington Post UK.

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During September I spent a few weeks in Asia. From the limestone caves of Northern Vietnam to the intense rainy season in Southern Thailand, Asia is a beautiful continent. However, one thing that struck me as I travelled through South East Asia was the amount of rubbish. From the beaches of Krabi to the alleyways of Hanoi, it was clear to me that there wasn’t really anyone taking charge of their waste. I was intrigued to understand more about the state of waste in Asia and continuously found one major issue staring me in the face, plastic. Surprisingly, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam are three of the world’s worst polluters of plastic to the world’s oceans. While we in the West know that we have a big part to play in the fight against plastic, we can easily ignore the impact our choices have on a grander scale if we wish to. However, many communities living in third world countries have to battle with the harsh realities of plastic waste every single day right on their doorstep.

Image: Jjsina via Getty Images

In West Java, Indonesia there is a river called the Citarum. This river has been labelled ‘the most polluted in the world’, and was recently featured on Liz Bonnin’s BBC Documentary Drowning in Plastic. In the last 20 years this river has lost 60% of its fish species, leading many of the local fishermen to instead resort to collecting plastic waste to sell to plastic factories instead of selling fish. It has been reported that China and Indonesia contribute the greatest amount of plastic waste into our oceans and while it may seem like the most we can do as UK citizens is to focus on our own efforts at home, we must not stop there. While it is a positive step for us in the UK to focus on reducing our plastic waste and aiming for a plastic-free society, we can do more to aid in the global fight against plastic waste.

The annual amount of plastic waste in the UK is estimated to be around 5million tonnes. In early 2018 plastic waste exports to China, the country with the highest plastic pollution in the world, were banned. Since the ban the UK has reportedly been exporting plastic for recycling to countries such as Malaysia and Vietnam. However, it has recently been reported that much of the plastic waste sent to be recycled is ending up in landfill in third world countries. Indonesia, Vietnam and Malaysia are three countries that receive plastic waste exports from the UK; these three countries are also three of the top eight highest countries in the world for plastic pollution. Sadly, while we all attempt to be green citizens and recycle, we have little understanding of where that waste may end up. We are all connected; we may recycle a bottle in Central London and it may end up in landfill in a village in Vietnam, the world in 2018 is a global world and we are all responsible for the current state of it. We need to think beyond our own homes and beyond our own borders if we are going to tackle this international crisis.

A number of countries in Asia may be topping the list of plastic waste offenders, but this is not entirely due to their own actions. As the West has developed a throw-away, single-use approach to plastic, our ability to deal with this waste has followed suit. However, many third world countries are not able to keep up with their growing consumer classes who are living out lavish Western lifestyles in countries that don’t have the resources to deal with their waste. As seen with Indonesia’s Citarum River, when communities don’t have the support they need to responsibly process their waste, they have little choice but to dispose of it in the only way they can, by dumping it in the river. In countries where governmental support for waste management is lacking, there has been a tendency to leave locals to sort it out on their own. Not only is this hugely unsustainable, it is also at the cost not only of local people and their communities, but at the cost of natural ecosystems, wildlife and the international community as a whole.

Image: Greenpeace

While we go about our daily lives, switching over to re-usable products and recycling are effective steps we can take to make small changes every day. Yet, on a wider scale we need to be thinking bigger. If we’re serious about making a radical change to our throw-away, single-use society, we need to be holding people accountable and putting plastic at the forefront of our world leaders agendas. This is an issue that affects us as a global community and we need to come together internationally for real change to become a reality. We need to be urging our world leaders to put plastic waste pollution and the health of our oceans high on their list of priorities; we need to push for an international agreement around plastic waste equivalent to the Paris Climate Accord. Education is key, and in our fight against plastic pollution we can educate others and ourselves about the real issues happening in communities around the world. Beyond all this, there are so many innovative technologies and ideas being invented every day to replace plastic, collect plastic waste in our oceans and support marine life. Now more than ever, we need to be supporting these innovators and urging our leaders to support them too. We have the power to change our story with plastic, but we need to go beyond our homes, and ourselves and work as an international community.

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Words: Rebecca Tyers
Originally published here.

Ditching Certain Plastics Doesn't Mean A Company Still Isn't Greenwashing

This article was written in June 2018 and originally published by Huffington Post UK.

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I recently ended a 6-month stint working in retail. As a consumer I used to buy more than 50% of my clothes from this brand. I loved the fabrics, the way the clothes fit my shape and how they were designed in the UK. But I never really stopped to think much about their business practices. Why would I? I want to enjoy shopping for clothes that make me feel good. And besides, they used paper bags instead of plastic and their brand message matched the lifestyle I aspired to live. Sometimes we would all rather remain naïve to what might be going on behind closed doors in the brands that we buy in to. Beyond money or management issues, what niggled at me during my time working in retail was not to do with co-workers or rude customers, it was to do with plastic.

On Thursday and Friday mornings I would often find myself in the stock room upstairs unpacking large delivery bags filled with clothing. This task could take up to a few hours to finish because each piece of clothing was individually wrapped in plastic. The company I worked for are probably far from the worst offenders, but plastic waste in companies is not just limited to food. I have seen many an initiative lately around ditching plastic straws and cutlery, but there is far less being said about fashion companies who use ridiculous amounts of non-biodegradable materials to protect their clothing during transportation.

Image: Laura Lezza via Getty Images

As an environmentally conscious individual working in retail I found it interesting to watch the behaviour of consumers as awareness around plastic waste rose in the last year. I saw customers praising us for not using plastic bags, while I knew full well that we had probably filled about three bin bags full with plastic waste that morning. I personally pin much of the UK’s sudden interest in plastic waste in the last six months to the showing of David Attenborough’s final Blue Planet IIepisode in November 2017. The episode detailed the destruction and devastation caused to marine life due to our dumping of plastic waste and ended with a brief soliloquy from Attenborough, stating that, “the future of all humanity, and indeed all life on earth, now depends on us”. All over social media there was a rallying cry to do something about our destructive habits, and many companies rose up exclaiming how they planned to change. But in the midst of all this chatter, how can we really know whether the companies we buy in to are making real, sustainable change or whether they are simply riding the latest conscious wave while continuing to harm the planet?

The term ‘greenwashing’ came about in the 1980s to describe the behaviour of corporations who attempted to portray themselves as environmentally responsible. CorpWatch, a U.S. based non-profit that keeps tabs on the social responsibility of U.S. companies, explained that greenwashing is when a company attempts “to preserve and expand their markets or power by posing as friends of the environment”. There are countless examples of companies that are banking on environmentalism; who suggest that they have the environment at the heart of their values after making one small environmental move, yet a deeper look at their business practices shows that 90% of their moves are environmentally destructive. It can be hard as a consumer, and tiresome, to decipher whether a company is in fact legitimately sustainable and cares about the environment or not.

Image Source

It has been two years since the Paris Climate Agreement was signed by many of our world leaders, and in 2018 we are still in a position to make changes that could stop serious long-term disasters caused by our environmental failures. In November, David Attenborough’s words were not simply shown on our Sunday night screens for dramatic effect, we are at a crossroads with little time to spare. The fact is that we, as consumers, have more power than we are led to believe. We need to shine a bright light on greenwashing and make it impossible for companies to fool us into believing that they care. Because if we let them greenwash us with their phoney sustainable practices, we will continue to live in over-polluted cities, continue to give our well-earned money to companies that do not respect our personal values and continue to be a force of destruction to the beautiful habitats the world over, that we are already losing at a startling pace.

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Words: Rebecca Tyers
Originally published here.

Why Women Shouldn't Be Afraid To Be Strong And Get Dirty

This post was originally published by Huffington Post UK.

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On the morning of my 24th birthday I put on a pair of old walking boots. They were the sturdy kind, the right level of ugly and perfectly durable. I had worn them every week throughout the summer; it had become a kind of ritual. I would wake up early and catch a train going south, while the rest of the house lay silent, the sun slowly rising over London in milky hues.

There are few things that could inspire me out of my slumber and into a day most likely spent on my hands and knees, ripping weeds from the corners of a poly tunnel, surrounded by frogs and spiders. I have always had an adventurous spirit, a desire for open spaces and moss-filled forests, yet I never saw myself wanting to become a farmer.

I can remember the first time I fell in love, and it wasn’t with a human being. It was early September, the sky was in the grip of a mood swing; the deep purple clouds hung low while the sun clung to their edges. I walked along a path that took me to where the squash had been growing all summer long, an array of shapes and textures. I began picking them, only able to carry two or three at once. Searching beneath the plants leaves to find squash of varying shapes, sizes and colours; the satisfying action of pulling them from their stems, watching the wheelbarrows fill up and up and up.

I felt strong. My tanned legs squatted to collect each squash, unperturbed by the scratches that they would receive, as I grazed the spiky edges of courgette leaves along the way. I felt alive, not because of the imminent rain or my rising heart rate, but because I felt empowered as a woman. No longer believing that I wasn’t strong enough, that the dirt beneath my fingernails signified anything but the work I had achieved. I had fallen in love with this feeling, this action of growing food and the empowerment it offered me. No longer believing that being a farmer had anything to do with my gender.

When I was a child I was not aware that growing food could be a career choice, or that female farmers even existed. My mother was the only example I had of a woman who was unafraid of getting dirty, who never questioned her own strength. I saw women on TV with slender figures in tight dresses, standing back as their men spoke for them. Any woman I saw growing food in the media was wearing a sun hat and doing the ‘light jobs’. No one ever seemed to question the fact that farming was seen as a ‘man’s role’, too hard and heavy for a woman.

Thankfully, for women growing up in 2018 strong female role models are in no short supply. Women who aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty, who are marching out on to centre stage and offering no apology for being strong and sweating over what they love. Farming taught me how to be one of those women, to take ownership of the space I take up in this world and the dreams I have to change it.

As women from all walks of life claim the equal space in society that we have been owed for centuries, it is time for us, both men and women, to let go of old ideals. We can be dirty, we can be strong, we can get stuck in and pull our weight. We do not need permission to take up space in hobbies or professions that we feel passionate about. There is no job that is only fit for a man, a truth that many women are proving time and time again.

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Words: Rebecca Tyers
Originally published here.