One Small Step Towards Eliminating Single-Use Plastic
Summer just turned into autumn, and we barely even noticed! We’ve been so busy filling pots with this year’s golden harvest. All our hives are back safely from the wilderness areas where they spent the summer, which means lots of activity in the big sheds! We’ll be sharing the story of how the honey gets from the hive to the honey pot in our next blog.
Autumn is such a busy and abundant time of the year in the Nelson region, with honey being just one of the summer bounties that we get to enjoy. Fridges everywhere are packed with harvest goodies, either from Nelson’s wonderful farmers’ markets or from people’s own gardens.
Sharing the harvest with friends and families is a real tradition — in fact, sometimes it becomes a bit of a competition to find homes for those multiplying zucchinis, cucumbers and buckets of plums.
This summer has brought an additional challenge — for the first time, many of our local outlets are no longer using plastic bags. This means people have had to find creative ways to do without plastic. We just love playing a small part in this shift in thinking, with our beeswax wraps providing one solution for eliminating harmful clingfilm, plastic bags and containers.
Our beeswax wraps are great in the fridge, converting glass or ceramic bowls of all shapes and sizes into useful storage containers. With a little bit of thought, dishes already in the cupboard can be used to create practical stacking solutions. How wonderful to avoid buying more Tupperware! And eliminating cling film is great too since research suggests it is not just bad for the environment, but for our health as well.
Maybe the choice to wrap up half an avocado in a beeswax wrap instead of cling film seems like a tiny thing, but we reckon it’s the little things that make a big difference in helping protect our beautiful planet — and ourselves.
We enjoy knowing that our colourful wraps are popping everywhere in school lunches too. Our own kids would have loved the playful designs — actually, they still do, even though they are all grown up! The pockets are such fun and can be used for all sorts of healthy treats. You can pack them full of berries or dried fruit — or wrap up a favourite cookie to make it even more special.
Veronica at Vbeewraps has designed a whole heap of sizes to suit any shaped treat. It doesn’t matter if your sandwiches are triangular or cut into tiny hearts.
And what a great message for the kids! Instead of throwing the packaging away, the wrapper gets washed in lukewarm soapy water — fresh and ready for the following day.
When we spot one of our colourful beeswax wraps in lunches or at picnics and barbecues, it gives us a real buzz. It’s not just that we are proud of the product, and its clever use of a brilliant natural material. We also like to think that replacing cling film with beeswax wraps is one small example of the many thoughtful changes that New Zealanders are making to help protect our environment.
Over the past months, world news has been pretty gloomy, with many stories about how our addiction to single-use plastics has created huge problems for our oceans and our planet.
t’s great to celebrate a small win and to feel as if we are just one small step as part of the solution.
