ARE YOU SHARING YOUR FOOD?

Some people, including Valentin Thurn, the guy who made the ‘Taste The Waste’ documentary  started a website called www.foodsharing.de .

A website where you can put up food you aren’t going to eat, coz you bought too much or the shit’s growing like crazy in your garden and you can’t eat all of it yourself.

You can put up a “Essenskorb”, which is German for food basket and other people can contact you thru the website and pick it up. I think this is pretty awesome shit!

They only started their website in mid December, but already have more then 5500 active users on their website and redistributed more then 800kg of food since then.

These people really got it together, respect to them! They have also already set up a hotspot in Berlin, including a fridge, where people can drop off and pick up food if it’s available.

Apart from private people, this concept is trying to involve businesses, like bakeries and restaurants which can give food away at the end of the day.
It offers a great alternative to food stamps or food banks by charities.
For a lot of people it’s embarrassing to go to these places and some places make distribution dependent on stupid requirements, like eligibility for welfare.

I love the foodsharing idea, coz it gives people a better social connection and a feeling of independence from charitable and government handouts.

I love this, coz eating is fucking essential to being alive. And most of us spend a lot of money on food.

I love it, coz the concept is expandable, into projects like cooking together, where people cud meet up and everyone brings a couple of ingredients along.

Saying this, I went to a vegan lunch the other day. It was pretty awesome, everybody brings something and you meet somewhere with like-minded people. How great is that, nice food, resource exchange and building of a community! What more could you want!?

I’d also like to say how fucking crazy, disgusting and corrupt I find the propaganda from big corporations like Monsanto and the like, who propagate the need for GM-foods to feed the world!

90 Million TONS of food get thrown out in the EU alone each year. You don’t need much of a brain to understand that the problem of starvation is caused by a dysfunctional distribution system rather then insufficient food production.

As if we just have to produce more food and people in poor countries or poor people in general will just magically be able to afford it!

Countries, in which people are starving in the first place, coz they get so fucked over by corporations and corrupt governments that they can’t grow their own food or have to sell it to countries where people can actually pay for it.

And of curz, the way mainstream media reports about so called solutions to famine is very narrowminded and selective. There is no mention about how much food gets destroyed thru being fed to animals in the meat industry and how industrial agriculture depletes the soil and will make growing food this way in the future impossible.

What I’m saying is, Fuck GM-foods, Fuck Big Agra propaganda and Fuck corporations like Monsanto that make a profit from fucking with people(don’t get me started on GMO’s, that’s a topic for a whole bunch of posts entirely!).

We need to reconnect with our food and stop seeing it as a commodity that is “naturally” freely available in the shelves of our supermarkets for some of us and really scarce for others.
And we need to start seeing it as the stuff that grows in the ground and plays a vital role in keeping us alive.

Love the food and love the people you’re eating it with!

Food is important and it’s more fun to share it!

WHAT I WISH FOR US AS HUMANITY

less of the egoistic, capitalist mindset and more of a together

less competition and more sharing

less hierarchy and more empathy

more sensitivity and connectedness with and understanding of oneself and one another

more connectedness with nature and the realization that we are part of it and cannot live separately, if we hurt nature we hurt ourselves

more understanding for the fellow living creatures on this wonderful planet and the realization of the pain and agony we, as the human race, are causing them

more appreciation for the soil and the plants that nourish us, the air, the water and the sun that keep us alive and the people important to us, without whom this life would be far less fun.

2013! NOW WHAT?!

I’ve really been neglecting my blog baby quite badly lately.
Feeling quite guilty.

Thinking of how I started it and how I was so excited to write every day about all these exciting things, new and old, great and interesting ideas and knowledge.

Maybe it was a bit much for someone who still wasn’t really connected to blog writing?

It took me ages to research, write and edit most posts, several hours. I didn’t just wanna write quick posts with mediocre information.

The end of last year was super stressful for me. Actually, almost the whole year.
My move back to Europe turned out to be far more stressful then imagined and the bureaucratic onslaught that followed was overwhelming.

I have learned so many new things last year and revisited topics that I already knew about.
My favourite topics lately have been “living without money” and “sustainable companies”.
But more on that in my next posts.

I DID make some New Years Resolution. I think they are kind of fun. Even if people often don’t stick to all of them. It’s cool to have a clean, new slate and use the New Year as some sort of deadline and inspiration.

I made a list for the New Year, of things that I am already doing which are good for me and of things that I definitely wanna bring into my life.

Here are some of it:

•Pay more attention to my blog baby

•Spend more time with old and new friends

•Keep an open mind

•Don’t let myself get too stressed by outside influences

•Make more, reuse and recycle more

•Buy as little as possible, especially new things, spend as little money as possible (and still fun)

•Forget about perfectionism

•Work in my own business

•Do new activities were I can connect with likeminded people, learn new things and have fun

•Implement ways of doing things better, like green web hosting, using a community bank or using sites like Freecycle and Ebay’s free section to get new furniture

•Take care of myself, my physical, emotional and mental wellbeing!!

•Take time for myself

•Less internet and facebook

•Eat more fresh fruit and unprocessed food

•Get better at receiving and giving

•Treasure my health, my body, my mind and the time I have to enjoy them and all the cool things I can do with them

Pretty comprehensive list, huh?!
Do you have any New Years resolutions? What are they? And if not, why not?

Burn Your Shit

I don’t know where I heard about incinerator toilets before, but I thought about them today and thought I’d check them out.

First post I found on the net was on this blog.

Here is a little excerpt,

“The gateway to Hades opens up and everything within a couple inches is sucked into its gaping maw. The toilet then incinerates your thoughtful gifts at a very high temperature. I’m guessing somewhere around 8,000 degrees Fahrenheit or the surface temperature of the sun, whichever is hotter. The manual says 1,200 degrees F. For those of you recipe freaks, that’s 1,200 degrees for one hour, then cooled to 130 degrees over the next 45 minutes.”

nice.

I’m looking into off-the grid options for human waste disposal. I looked into composting toilets and composting shit before. But I like the more elegant solution of grey/black water wetland systems much better. Now, if you don’t live on your own land or in the woods, the thought of walking around with a bucket full of shit and thinking about where to dispose of it, gives me kind of a headache.

But there is another option, incinerator toilets. I just had a quick look at them and they seem pretty cool. Clean and handy, you only have a little bit of ash to deal with, less smell and disgustingness then with other sustainable toilet options. The drawbacks are that you have to buy and burn paper liners, that it uses electricity and that it may create some slight air pollution.. to me, the positives seem to outweigh the negatives here. As a on-the-go solution that is. Still love the wetlands idea best I think.

And with under $2000US I think those toilets are pretty affordable.

This is how it works.

And here is a nice instructional video.

Have you heard of incinerator toilets before? What sustainable solution for toilets do you prefer?

 

Lulu And The Loveable Loo

Another great example from the category ‘trippy videos about living healthier, more sustainable lives’. My favourite category at the moment!

Funny kid in the video. Kinda cute. But I don’t understand the box toilet. I mean it’s just a bucket in a box. Give me 3 hours and a boring afternoon and I’ll make you one with enough time spare to bake a vegan cake. Well, maybe not quite..

Anyways, trippy soundtrack too, make sure it doesn’t get stuck in your head! Also, I couldn’t bear the last 2 minutes, you’ll see why. Other then that, great efford. Good to see people making a difference. And to see small companies that have kinda crazy ideas.

Check out the humanure website. Or get the book or something. I might get it one day, sounds like an interesting read!

Humans Are Stupid

Let’s be honest, human beings are fucking stupid. It’s a fact. What human beings do to each other is just extremely disgusting. What we do to animals and our environment, where WE live, is just absolutely appalling.

It’s funny how we deem ourselves intelligent, the most intelligent species on the planet, Yes, even the UNIVERSE!!!
We call ourselves civilized, it’s a fucking joke.

We always think of ourselves as so superior to animals for example, calling people who rape, torture or murder other people “animals”. Saying this sort of behaviour is “inhumane”. No, seriously now, THIS IS HUMANE!! This IS human nature, our nature. I’m not a fucking biologist, but I hardly ever hear about animals raping or senselessly killing each other. I don’t see them destroying their habitat, their homes, the homes of other species, like crazy fucking maniacs! So yeah, we got it the wrong way around. Quite practical, isn’t it?! So we can bask ourselves in our self appointed glory and fucking superiority.

Humans think they are so civilized and advanced, but then the majority of people in the Western world spend nearly every day of the week at a job they hate. Waiting anxiously for the week to be over, so we can continue our “real lives”.

Then we accumulate the most mundane, disgusting, superfluous fucking crap some poor child or some suicidal person in China made for us and are trying to keep up with the latest gadgets that our friends and colleagues have.

We destroy our environment and everything by poisoning the water, the air and our bloodstream. I don’t know how anyone can see the human race and not think we are completely mental and are living in a mass delusion.

But back to the animals. They run around the whole day, sleep, taking care of each other, getting food and build themselves a burrow or whatever it is they do..

They seem pretty healthy. They seem pretty happy. And if we don’t enslave them for some disgusting factory farming procedure they are free to do whatever they please. They don’t collect any stupid possesions they don’t need, they might have a couple of weird things in their cave or nest or whatever, but for us it’s like we trade possessions with almost our whole waking hours.

In a way, animals of one species look very much the same. But then everyone who’s ever had a pet can tell you there are differences in looks and characters and personality in animals. It’s not just those crappy things we adorn ourselves with that make us different. If we would strip ourselves of our possesions and stuff we would look more similiar then we’d think.

We hope that the week will end. We we eat some of the most disgusting crap their is. We throw trash everywhere. Poison ourselves and others and “kill our time” with tv shows and movies that get stupider every year.

It’s not good enough for a species that calls itself civilized, to do all these things. Of course “civilized” is a very vague term, just like “humane”. They have a certain meaning, but they can really mean whatever. “A human” can do all sorts of things, be loving, be kind, be destructive, kill, torture and enjoy flowers in spring. I suppose some people think “humane” is applied to societies, but societies and politics have forever been built on wars, lies, power play and ego tripping.

Another reason why humans are stupid is, we got this beautiful planet, that is mostly perfect for living, we had clean water, the sun, clean rain, plenty of food growing in the soil(definitely have the knowledge for it now), plenty of free space, to move about and build a hut on. And some great technology that can give us free, sustainable energy.

What did we do?! We turned our lives into a template, certain things have to be done and they have to be done a certain way. We sold the land off in little plots at exorbitant prices. Removed ourselves from the food growing process and trusted huge corporations to feed us the best food. Destroyed communities and now feel disconnected. Had plenty of time to play in the sunshine and do whatever we wanted, but no, we exploit each other, animals and the earth. I don’t know if it’s our genes or something, but somewhere along the road we took a hell of a wrong turn.

What I’m saying is, we could have it so easy, but make it so hard for ourselves and each other. We are stupid!

Saturday Update

Today we just chilled. It was raining anyways. So we watched some German videos on alternative living.

Then we made a list of stuff we need to sell on Ebay for our move. Gotta list them soon! As we need to move out of our house several days before we leave. Getting rid off most of our possessions is also gonna prepare us for the minimalist lifestyle.

And I’m just about to sell all the clothes from my online shop. Hopefully that isn’t gonna be too stressful. Also a bit sad, I’d hate to waste stuff.

And one of my blogging friends posted this link about Berlin foraging and mushroom walks in my comments the other day. I thought that was really awesome of her! We were struggling quite a bit with the foraging here and I think that’s gonna be a great introduction to the German foraging scene. I’m really excited about it! Gonna be eating dandelions soon and making woodruff drinks and shit like that.

Earthlings

Here is an interesting documentary. I’m not quite sure if I’ve watched ‘Earthlings’ already, but I’ve heard a lot of people say how it’s THE documentary that changed their life and that it’s the one documentary that made them turn vegan. Wow, that’s quite something! I will definitely watch it again. This trailer contains some really disturbing footage of animal abuse(so does the movie obviously).

If you have some time at the weekend watch it and tell me what you think! Or if you watched it already tell me what you think too. Or if you have any documentaries that changed your life or are just in general great documentaries post them in the comments. Have a great weekend!!

Zero Waste

I really like the concept of Zero Waste. I like the refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle mantra. To me, it really fits into the minimalist lifestyle that avoids overconsumption.

And if you are thinking of partially or fully getting off the grid, then that’s one concept to think about. It’s part of being self reliant and independent, not needing the weekly rubbish pick up.

Also it is obviously good for the environment.

I’m not quite sure how easy it would be to go zero waste in an urban environment, as you would definitely need a compost. Some cities provide compost bins for food waste, but not all.

Most of the rubbish we got in our home consists of food packaging and not much else. And there is always so much of it! Now, that we eat more fresh produce, it’s a shame to throw kitchen scraps into the bin, from where it goes straight into the landfill. If they could at least use it there, to make it into methane or something..

Plastic packaging is obviously evil, but it’s also other things that get discarded, that may be in perfect working condition, which we just trow out because we got a replacement or don’t use it anymore. Think about giving things away, to charity shopes for example.

I loved watching the clips of this Zero Waste families home. I like it because I found some other Zero Waste clips, where people are like really into their recycling. While that is obviously a good thing also, I really like the minimalist approach of refusing to drag waste into your house in the first place. Recycling is good, but plastic bottles still have to be made from oil, consume energy and water in production, recycling and transport processes. So yeah, with some thought, a lot of waste can be avoided in the first place. And it’s healthy, because most of the time packaged food=processed food, unpackaged food=whole food.

I love this and how stylish does their home look?! Here is another one!

And here are some easy tips to get your started if you are thinking about reducing waste in your home.

Go to the farmer’s market and buy fresh, unpackaged fruit and vegetable. Great for you the environment and small farmer’s.

Buy loose foods, reconsider packaged foods. Cook from scratch if possible.

Buy loose dry goods.

Use reusable containers, produce and shopping bags when shopping.

Make your own non toxic cleaners with lemon, bi-carb soda, vinegar or borax.

Make your own cosmetics with coconut oil, cocoa butter, bi-carb and crystal salt.

For more tips and information check out this great link to the tips section of The Zero Waste Home.

Have you tried cutting waste in your home? In what ways?

Natural Dyes – An Introduction

I watched this video the other day and got really exciting about trying out some natural dyes.

If you have a big garden, you can try out all the different plants and their parts like leaves and flowers and barks and roots and stuff. Or you just go into the wild or some herbal shops and get some stuff from there.

Apparently you also have to get mordants for most plant dyes. Mordants set dyes and can also considerably change the shade of the colour, depending on what mordants you use. They are mostly minerals, like alum, copper and iron. Still have to look into how they work. It seems a bit complicated. I want to dye some natural fibres, like cotton and bamboo. I know wool and silk are very susceptive to natural dyes, but I don’t want to use them as they are obviously not vegan.

This video is great too, it shows a purpose-built dye garden.

Pretty cool, maybe I can plant some of these plants.

Have you used natural dyes before? Did you like it?