Edukacja Ekologiczna

Grandma always says:

• Don’t throw away food!

Our grandmothers are role models when it comes to zero waste principles. To this day, they can conjure up delicacies from a few basic ingredients. In the past, not a single slice of bread or the smallest potato could be wasted. This partly resulted from the difficult access to various products, but also it was due to respect for their own and others' productive work. How to follow our grandmothers? We should plan our purchases in advance so as not to buy unnecessary products. This is especially important for the environment. By wasting food, other resources such as land, water, energy and labour are also wasted. According to the data of the European Commission, up to 90 million tons of food, or 180 kg per person, is wasted each year in the EU. Much of it is still suitable for consumption. So, let's not throw away food. Maybe it is possible to prepare something else from it.

From leftover vegetables from a soup, we can prepare an aromatic sauce, a home-made salad or a delicious pasta casserole. Brown bananas, which are no longer fit for eating, are a perfect ingredient of banana bread. If we have stale bread, it is suitable for toasts or British bread pudding. Finding recipes online will take us literally a few minutes.

• Food from your own garden tastes best!

Industrial animal husbandry per unit mass of the product obtained consumes much more resources (i.e., water, surface, fertilizers) than the cultivation of plants. Our grandparents used to eat much less meat than we do. Eating vegetables and fruit from their own garden or orchard was a part of their everyday life. Even those who lived in the city often had an allotment garden or at least several pots in which they could grow lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes or parsley. Taking care of these plants was often one of our grandmothers' favourite leisure activities. Today, a lot of people decide to grow vegetables on their own (in Western Europe, urban agriculture keeps developing very dynamically). We can easily grow our own herbs in pots on the windowsill or on the balcony. Community gardens are also becoming increasingly popular. In addition to the enormous satisfaction with the harvested crops, we can also gain a delicious, aromatic, healthy and organic addition to our favourite dishes.

What else is worth learning from our grandmothers? We should definitely try to prepare some preserves. And our own garden or pots can be particularly useful. We can turn strawberries or blueberries grown in the summer into a jam which will be a tasteful addition to pancakes. We should also remember that we can freeze the fruit. However, making preserves and purees of cucumbers, tomatoes, zucchini or pumpkins will make us have real vitamin bombs in our pantries in the wintertime.

• A little hole is not a problem!

Ingenuity and creativity are the qualities that were especially appreciated in the times of our grandmothers' youth. They used to sew their clothes themselves or remake what they found in the back of their closets. Throwing clothes away because of a little hole? It was almost unthinkable! Our grandmothers used to darn their socks and use completely worn clothes for something else, for example, as cleaning clothes.

So, before throwing away another T-shirt with a small hole, let's try to sew it up. Patches on clothes came back into fashion. If some clothes are already worn out, we can cut them into pieces and, for example, sew shopping bags from them.

• Everything is washable!

Disposable diapers? Unbelievable! Our grandmothers used to wash cloth diapers in soap flakes and boil them every day to use them again the next day. When the fabric was worn out, they were used as cleaning cloths for years. Today, modern mothers do not have to devote so much effort because besides non-ecological disposable diapers and washable cloth diapers, there is another interesting ecological solution, i.e., reusable diapers. Unlike disposables diapers, we can wash and dry them, and then put them on again. And they protect baby’s skin more effectively and are healthier than the traditional cloth diapers. It is worth remembering that a used disposable diaper takes up at least 100 years to decompose, and a whole glass of crude oil is used for its production!

Grandpa always says:

• Repair or use in a different way instead of throwing away!

In their spare time, our grandfathers used to tinker. As a result, a broken radio or a damaged bike never had to wait long for repair.

So, when we break a smartphone touchscreen, there is no need to dispose of the entire phone. We can just replace the broken component. What if it is too expensive? Perhaps individual parts will be useful to revive other long-unused device.

• Tap water tastes best and reusable shopping bags are the most durable!

Our grandparents used to drink tap water. Nobody even thought that it would be possible to buy it in plastic bottles. Durable bags made of jute or cotton cords, which are getting popular today, were a natural choice for them. Everyone had their own shopping bag and would not go to the shop without it. Fresh bread was packed in a linen bag instead of a plastic one.

• Live in harmony with nature!

A pro-ecological attitude is shaped by spending time actively in the open air. Our grandparents often relaxed surrounded by nature. They used to take a bike ride or a walk in the forest or park. Daily contact with nature was a key factor which helped them build a positive attitude towards our planet. This is especially important for shaping the right posture in the youngest people. Therefore, let’s try to make our children have contact with nature as often as possible and let us also take advantage of every opportunity for this.