Eco Friendly Products

This week I'm going for an eclectic mix of Eco friendly stuff ranging from Paper bags and bees wax wrap for your lunch, to spray bottles for your bread making, to eco alternatives to cling film.

Compostable plastics

So, in no particular order here's a selection of products that we sell, that in one way or another attempt to preserve the resources that we have around us. If I start with a biggy then, trying to use alternatives to cling film, which is not normally a recyclable product, used to be a challenge. 'Tis no longer the case. Some months ago, whilst on a Zoom call with ever delightful Jo Wheeler from KitchenCraft, she showed me a number of new Eco Products that they had come up with. One of them was "Compostable Clingfilm" which I'd not realised it was possible to make. Well apparently it is, so if you want to be able to throw your cling film away along with your food waste and allow it to gently fester on your compost heap, then this is the cling film for you. £8.99 for a 20 metre Roll.

If on the other hand that still isn't good enough for the Eco man or woman in you, then we have a large selection of silicone lids sold individually, from "Stretch-ii" in 6 sizes 4cm to 20cm in a variety of good colours, £1.99 to £13.99. These use the considerable stretchiness and stickiness of thin silicone to seal jars, bowls and food boxes (that you've misplaced the lids from) to render an airtight seal. Alternatively we also do packs of mixed sizes of lids from both KitchenCraft and Tala (GEH!) both of which provide you with a selection of sizes 6cm to 21cm for a mere £6.99. Finally in the silicone cover stakes there is, again from KitchenCraft their Masterclass Square Stretchy Lids, which when stretched over a bowl do the same thing, but also have an interesting ability, if thrown, to shimmy down a window pane just like those toys from the 80's? that did the same thing. Hours of innocent fun and they double up as lids as well. How do we do it?

Recycled Aluminium

Whilst on the subject of things to wrap up your leftovers in, any aluminium foil is of course recyclable (I'm pretty sure), but the good people at Eddingtons (one of our suppliers) have gone one better and produced aluminium foil from recycled aluminium. A 10metre roll is £4.65.

And lastly in the wrap it up category, we have in Kitchen Craft Natural Elements Range "Grease Proof Paper Bags" in which to carry your sandwiches to work or school, £5.99 for pack 30, and being greaseproof won't allow butter or mayo to leak through them. And in the same range, "100% Compostable Freezer Bags "pack of 30 £5.99, so more compost fodder there. Finally we have no less than three ranges of Bees Wax Wrap. One from Canada, one from Vietnam (see previous emails about their provenance) and one from Dexam, a British made product in a variety of sizes. And if that wasn't enough for you we even now have Bees Wax or Vegan Wax blocks with which to refresh your bees or vegan wax wraps when they start to look a little tired / unwaxy (as indeed those Vietnamese bees must have been by the time they got here). A Tala product for £6.99.

Expanding on the Natural Elements range from KitchenCraft that I mentioned above, there are some very good kitchen tools at extraordinary cheap prices here.

There's a business like bottle brush that I've got my eye on to help clean my Riedel Decanters, there's couple of different shape washing up brushes all with what look like nylon bristles, but if you want to go the whole hog then there's another bottle brush with coconut bristles and a beech handle, very stiff...very efficacious!

The range sells between £2.50 - £4.99.

Talking of storage, when Lock and Lock brought out their first Eco range of food storage, made from 100% recycled plastics I should have gone with my gut reaction, which was yuk, and left it at that. I didn't and as a result we have a large quantity of these revolting looking but otherwise high performing food storage boxes in stock in some pretty strange colours e.g. murky brown, murky green(ish),murky purple to name but three. They are in fact like all Lock and Locks, an excellent product being completely air and water tight. We've been using their "normal" range at home for many, many years and would be lost without them. So I'm wondering if you'd take pity on me and buy some. We now discounting them by 50% .

They aren't on the website I'm afraid, so if you don't live locally then you can still ring one of the shops and they can take an order over the phone and send it to you. At full price they range from £1.99 to £4.50 and you can take 50% off this.

Eco Cleaning

I'm going to finish on a couple of my favourite cleaning products and then I promise I'll leave you be, to finish your Saturday morning coffee...well almost

Eco Egg Hard surface cleaner is just the most amazing cleaner of stainless steel that I have ever come across. Made from a clay "mined" in a small village in France, this stuff brings back stainless steel sinks, pots and pans, to the way they looked when they were new. By way of example, six years ago Josie (my youngest daughter) and I put in a new Ikea kitchen, in our then new extension, along with an Ikea stainless sink. Whenever I clean that sink with the Hard Surface Cleaner it comes back looking like new (barring scratches). And the other day I discovered that this cleaner even removes the Blueing associated with overheated pans, that I've previously though was a permanent marking. So it's even more magic than I'd previously thought! Are there downsides to this product. Yes there is one that I'm aware of and indeed we did have a couple of tubs returned a while ago because of it. The deposit it leaves behind, you have to wipe off with a cloth, you can't just slosh it round with hot water and dissolve it like most surface cleaners. I however, love it and would hate to be without it. And at present we are selling the larger 500gm tub for the same price as the standard (350g?) for £10, not just because we are nice people(that goes without saying, naturally), but because the awfully nice people at Ecoegg didn't have the normal size in stock and offered to send us the next size up for the same price. Very kind, so we are passing their kindness to you.

And talking of cloths I'd like to remind you about their Bamboo Towels. I don't now recall when we first started dealing with EcoEgg, it has to have been 5 or 6 years ago and possibly more. Well we are still using the sample roll, that Simon Weavers (Ecoegg sales manager) sent me to try out before we took the range on. It comprises a roll of 20 towels the size of kitchen paper towels, which you use and then throw in the washing machine (where they shrink quite considerably please be aware) and that you can then reuse time and time again. So we do just that at home and a roll will last you many years, based on my experience. Great product, high ecological and very inexpensive at £10

I almost forgot this.

I mentioned a spray bottle in my introduction and it's just that. Its point of difference is that the body is made of recycled plastic Milk bottles, sourced in this country. It's three quarters of a litre capacity and I'm sure does the job (I've not tested it!). Good for orchids, ironing, hand sanitiser and spraying your unbaked loaves (with water not sanitiser) as you put them in the oven. This last point, as you may already know is to allow the loaf to expand a little more, and it also gives a crunchier crust!

That's it for this week, I trust you have a pleasant and peaceful weekend.

Kind regards

Andrew 

Andrew Bluett-Duncan

Director