It’s a sad reflection that reverse Advent calendars are even a “thing” in this day and age, but as the rich get richer, so too it seems do food banks thrive. For anybody who has been living totally disconnected from the world for the past few years, making a reverse Advent calendar involves getting a box and putting something in it every day of Advent before donating to a charity – or in our case two things every day up to the 15th so it can be delivered to our local food bank in time for Christmas.This is something we really want to do this year, but my dreams of making it virtually plastic-free are not so easy to achieve. Food banks will only accept non-perishable, nutritionally-balanced food.This basically means wrapped to death in plastic. Also, no home-made stuff.
I’ve had to compromise, but even trying to fill a box with non-perishables in recyclable packaging is proving a challenge. If you buy a tin of biscuits, the contents are generally contained in a further layer of plastic: most sweet treats the same. I can’t include pasta or rice, because I only buy it loose, not prepacked. And whatever happened to foil-wrapped chocolate?
What ‘s in my reverse Advent calendar?
So far, the box contains
- Long-life fruit juices – tetra packs can now be recycled locally so that’s fine
- Two bars of posh chocolate, which I BELIEVE is foil-wrapped
- Who Gives a Crap toilet paper
- Bamboo toothbrushes in cellophane (properly biodegradable packaging – I checked it out on Wikipedia so it must be true)
- A 1l plastic bottle of shampoo (yes I know, but it will last a good long time and it’s recyclable)
- Jars of
- Pickles
- Preserves
- Cranberry sauce
- A stick of Bournemouth rock, which somebody gave my son and nobody here will eat, so at least it won’t be wasted!
- Tinned fruit
- Tinned steamed pudding
Added to this soon will be
- Porridge oats (Did you know you can recycle the plastic inner at the shopping bag recycling facility at larger supermarkets? If you can find it that is.)
- Bottle of passata
- Other rather dull tinned things
I want the box to be useful, but I don’t want to compromise any more than I already have. I’m currently agonising over whether to include and tea and coffee: tea almost certainly not, since all tea bags contain hidden plastic (and few people these days have the where-with-all to make and sieve loose leaf tea) and I can’t find jars of coffee without plastic lids. Suggestions for other contents are gratefully received.
The people we care about, and definitely don’t want to poison this Christmas, will be receiving much higher-quality, hand-made, home-made, totally plastic-free sweet treats. But I can’t provide any of this and it’s so frustrating.
Julie On Life 