It’s not just tourists that need to worry about that stuff. I have friends with Somali heritage and they don’t want to go there either, even with having family there.

Ok, but we’re getting dragged into a tangential debate about farming when really my point was that we need to look at waste through the whole supply chain, from farming ingredients to getting put on the shelves. I’m sure we could pick apart the contribution of any one part of that chain and debate how significant it is. Together, at all points in the chain, there is plastic waste that the consumer doesn’t see.

(And btw Canada isn’t in the top 20 of global producers, according to the IMF / CIA World Factbook as at 2018; the EU is number 3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture)

Edited to add: this 2022 UN report states that plastics are used extensively in agriculture and goes into how they are used and how they enter soil and water supplies: https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/40403/Plastics_Agriculture.pdf

And this is another UN report on the issue, stating that Asia is the largest user of plastics in agriculture. When China and India are two of the largest agricultural producers, that’s an issue https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/12/1107342

So according to this link https://www.ciwm.co.uk/ciwm/knowledge/agricultural-waste.aspx

"Plastic packaging waste from agriculture represents approximately 1.5% of the overall volume of plastic packaging in the waste stream in England. The types of plastic wastes arising can vary and be both bulky and dirty often making the management of these wastes difficult. Around 135,500 tonnes of agricultural plastic waste is produced each year in the UK with;

Approximately 32,000 tonnes being produced from plastic packaging waste; and
Approximately 103,500 tonnes being produced from Non-Packaging Plastics (including contamination)."

That’s just England. The data is old (2003 I think), and yes 1.5% is not huge, granted, but that’s of total plastic waste, not just from the food chain. A lot of our produce comes from Asia and North Africa where generally there just aren’t the same facilities for recycling, and environmental issues are not as prioritised. It’s great that there’s very little plastic waste in your farming methods, but it’s not the same around the world.

Which country are you in? Where I live my food comes from all around the world. Recycling is mostly a Western thing. It doesn’t exist in many of the countries that supply our food. I was just going by the amount of crap I’ve seen in many agricultural areas. Plastic sacks, containers etc.

But I bet those paper packages of paper straws were bundled into cartons that were wrapped in plastic, and then those were wrapped with other bundles in more plastic. And even if they’re using cardboard boxes as part of that packaging who knows what percentage of that is recycled, or made from recycled waste. Anyone that’s worked in retail knows the incredible amounts of packaging that get binned every day that’s invisible to consumers.

The problem that strikes me reading through this thread, and similar conversations about packaging, is that we can do all we want to reduce packaging and plastics at the consumer end, but there’s a huuuuge amount of packaging all the way through the supply chain. From farming supplies, to ingredient packaging, and the packaging used to transport food products to stores. By focussing solely on the consumer end we’re not addressing the whole issue. It’s like the obsession with bamboo toothbrushes and paper / metal straws. They’re consumerist solutions to a problem caused by consumerism.

Yeah I think it was the Wikipedia page that I read when I looked up who they are. They’re also fixing search engine results because there’s no reason why I in the UK should be getting so many results for an Israeli organisation when I’m looking for information on organisations in a different country. Well I mean there is a reason but it’s not a good one.

I couldn’t pick just one, but these come to mind right now:

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Maps https://youtu.be/oIIxlgcuQRU

Loads of songs by Anohni / Antony and the Johnsons but particularly this one Hope There’s Someone https://youtu.be/LyMGEq82uL4

Yes. I’d just say “you know how the Courts have the power to do X, and decide Y? Well the government decided to devolve those powers to an independent office, so that people didn’t have to pay for lawyers and deal with complicated legal processes. I work in that office making the Y decisions.”

Sure, here’s the ones I found on Etsy in the UK:

https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/177167563/100-british-wool-filled-inserts-12-14-16

Wool ball filled cushion pads. They’re really plump, and just the right level of firmness, so much nicer than synthetic or feather. Each pay day I’m ordering a couple, and gradually my sofa is turning into a cosy nest.

I always thought it was like a Mr Whippy, but I’m guessing not from this thread! Maybe it’s like salad cream?

Also I want to share that when I searched online for Palestinian NGOs, I got hundreds of results from an organisation called ‘NGO Monitor’ who claim to give unbiased information on NGOs. A lot of the information on their pages seemed quite emotive and unbaly, and did some digging. In reality they are a right wing Israeli organisation that just focuses on listing allegations of terrorism funding / sympathies against charities and NGOs that works in Palestine, they don’t back up allegations with good sources and they don’t give any other information on what the organisation does. So be mindful of that if you do any online research, they seem to have made sure searches for certain topics throw up loads of their pages, and they have a definite bias and reason for existence.

Medical Aid for Palestinians seem to be one of the few UK registered charities who are managing to get work done on the ground. Israel and Egypt are still (afaik) blocking a lot of aid getting through.

I was brought up before showers were something that most people had installed, and we just washed at the sink with a flannel cloth. We washed face, pits, bum, and feet twice a day, and only had a bath once or twice a week. I still just do a wash of the important bits at the sink with a cloth if I’m feeling very apathetic.

That doesn’t stop an absolute fuck ton of people believing in it. One of my friends is quite deeply into it, she’s in FB groups about it, and decides what everyone’s type is upon meeting them. According to her I only think it’s nonsense because I’ve only done the free online tests, not the proper one. She wouldn’t listen the other day when I tried to put her right about flouride in the water, either.

Myers Briggs is posh astrology.

Testosterone

I’d tried a few different combinations of HRT (for menopause), and was doing ok ish on oestrogen patches and micronised progesterone capsules. But I still felt like a shadow of myself, a barely functioning husk.

I ended up paying privately to see a menopause specialist (after finding out the waiting time for the NHS clinic I was referred to was at least a year and a half - just for my referral to get looked at), and she prescribed me testosterone. Within 48 hours I noticed a huge difference, I felt like I’d recovered a huge chunk of my energy and my personality.

It makes me furious that it’s so hard to get. I’m not sure what state my mental health would be in if I hadn’t been able to get it. I was definitely looking at having to cut hours in work to be able to cope, and that would have had a big financial impact on me.

And so many people I speak to - including women - are confused about why testosterone would help, there’s so much misunderstanding about hormones, they don’t know that women have testosterone and men have oestrogen. My aunt asked me whether it would reverse the menopause and I was just like er what… How would that even work?

I had a duck egg containing a baby duck in HCM. It was ok. I stopped when it got crunchy.

I love tulsi / holy basil, but there seems to only be a couple of brands that do it here (UK) and they’re usually a bit pricey.