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social media has been flooded with heart felt tributes, saddness at the death of a celebrity, caroline flack, and a message of be kind. whilst i agree with the sentiment, i feel like we all have a part to play indirectly. not just with caroline, who i was sorry to read had died, because it’s horrible and i hope she is at peace and i send healing wishes to her loved ones. but with cancel culture, with trolls, with what we say and how we speak to others.

i have seen people sharing samaritans helplines and an offer to talk which always floods social media when someone well known takes their own life. as always this message dies down within a week and we all go back to our own lives often full of gossip, negative speech about people, critique of other people’s characters. we feed the trolls by telling them to leave us alone, by sharing that we’re a victim, by replying to them, by looking at rant abuse groups on facebook or forums like tattle.

we have our whatsapp group to share the latest gossip or issue or problem. i’m sure we all discussed the allegations bought against caroline last year, or at least anyone that knew about it and who she was did.

let me be clear – violence is never the answer in any circumstance no matter who is the victim or assailant. no one of any gender or sexuality should be a victim of any form of assualt, domestic violence, sexual harrasment or bullying. it happens, this blog post won’t stop that from happening but i want it to be known that regardless of gender; violence towards another person should never be tolerated.

however, nor should hounding by the media, troll forums, constant retweeting and belittlement, online bullies, keyboard warriors – all of this comes from a place or thought of violence. your words matter whether they’re typed or spoken.

i know this because i have said stupid things in my past. i have made sweeping statements, prejudice remarks and judgement when i have not had all the facts. i can only hope that with my growing maturity and respect for people different to me i can learn from my mistakes and do better. i will always try to do and be better.

this is the point though isn’t it? when we make a comment regardless of who it is about, unless we were there, we do not know. and even if we did know, we were there, we can only speak of our own experience rather than the other person’s. it doesn’t matter how empathetic you are to another, you are not in their mind. talking helps, but it’s a drop of insight to what that person was thinking, feeling or going through in the moment.

anyway, amongst all of the sadness there has been an underbelly of please don’t wait until someone is dead to tell them how loved they are. i’m guilty of forgetting to check in on those that might need it from time to time and i want to make a more concious effort to talk to my friends who have experienced hardship, hard times. not just when they first go through it but every week, month, anniversary, hard holiday and so on because the pain might not be so sharp, the wound might be closed but the scar might still be red, sore and swollen.

trolls are never going to go away whilst we create a supply and demand lifestyle of cancel culture, gossip forums, magazines and tabloids that thrive on clickbait. following particularly controversial people on social media for the sake of wanting some confrontation or to fuel a bit of hatred is cruel.

having free speech does not give us a right to be outwardly nasty about another person. being able to share an opinion should always be to gain insight and understanding of a situation not to be used to fan flames of abuse. being able to say what we want does not give us entitlement to laugh, mock, belittle and bully others.

activism and free speech can do so much good. it can get causes recognised, it can give more understanding, it can change laws but the attack must be on the action, the system, not the person. i’m predominantly left wing and against a conservative government because i don’t believe in what they stand for but i don’t hate every single person that votes tory. i don’t understand them and i don’t see the good but i don’t attack the person. i’ll attack tory policies that are damaging to the majority of society and i may have criticised previous leaders but the frustation and anger is at the policies and principles of something i don’t agree with.

basically don’t fuel it. don’t follow the people that deliberately thrive on controversy, hatred, enjoy putting their opinion across purely to create division. don’t buy tabloids, don’t click those papers click bait articles, don’t engage in the comments. if you truly want to ‘be kind’ then you can start by not engaging with press that is determined to keep you angry, divided and attacks a person’s character time and time again when they slip up, do something wrong.

the news is supposed to be impartial. it isn’t. it’s there to make money.

The aim of this blogger tag that has been created by Emma Reed is to get as many people involved as possible by answering the questions below, tagging your favourite bloggers (who you think will love to join in!) and sharing some fantastic tips on how to reduce waste, reduce household plastic and how to be more sustainable in your everyday life. And it doesn’t have to be anything big. The smaller changes are often the easiest for everybody to do and if more and more people did these they would have a bigger impact. So, onto the questions…

Have you already been making sustainable changes to your lifestyle?

Yes ive been trying to make a few swaps and changes here and there for the last couple of years. I do find it a bit tricky because we have other things we want to tackle first and some just aren’t feasible for us right now because of cost effectiveness however some swaps have saved us money. I know in the long term the swaps we make will balance the bank but right now we are just doing the best we can as a family, with the resources we have. I actually wrote a post about how being zero waste is hard if you’re poor and some of the attitudes around not being as eco friendly or zero waste as others can come across as poverty shaming.

What swaps have worked for you?

Swaps that have worked for us include cloth nappies, bubble bars, reusable wipes, reusable face pads and cloth sanitary protection. We have also switched to Oat milk.

What swaps have been the easiest?

Resuable washable baby wipes and cloth pads have been the absolute easiest swaps for the household. The wipes are easy to keep clean and have so far lasted us around eighteen months as we got them and started using them before my son was born. Ditching cows milk has been pretty easy too.

What swaps have been the hardest?

Cloth nappies have been the hardest for us. Again it is more about cost than anything and it’s taken us a while to figure out how to stop leaking which is just not practical during the day or when out and about. We have tried a variety of brands now and have a good set up so we are going full time with cloth but building up a decent leak free stash has been expensive. However, we can now replace some of the preloved ones that didn’t work for us, they do have an excellent resell value and we can keep them for the time being should we decide to have another baby.

What is your favourite eco-friendly swap so far and why?

Cloth pads have been my favourite. I love finding new designs and working out which materials work best for me. It certainly makes my period a little bit more enjoyable and they’re easy to clean thanks to using cloth wipes and nappies.

What are your sustainability aims for 2020?

I would like to focus on massively reducing our household waste as much as possible. We currently drink a lot of fizzy drinks which results in a lot of plastic waste and I really want to stop that. I also want to waste less food and cut down on our meat consumption. I would also like to buy more second hand in terms of toys and clothing although, again, this can be pretty tough because of my size.

Have you set up a plan in order to make these happen/achievable?

We are going to start planning our meals properly. I would also like to try and schedule in a visit to a refill shop thats not too far from us and potentially buying more from our local market for fresh fruit and veg. Failing that I would like to make use of a sustainable fruit and veg box delivery for seasonal produce. I know meal planning will help it just requires a bit of research in finding some meat free meals we will all eat and enjoy. Reducing our plastic use I will try and tackle one room at a time and gradually making more swaps over.

What are your top tips for anybody who is just starting to make eco-friendly changes?

Everything is a transition. Don’t try to change everything in one go because you will quickly burn out. Use whatever you currently have first and then start swapping things out gradually as you use them up. Start with thinking about where and how you shop and making changes there such as second hand, local market, farm shops etc because supporting small, local businesses is going to help reduce your carbon footprint really quickly as well as forcing big companies to follow market trends which will hopefully have a sustainability focus.

felix has some lovely, bright and colourful toys and as we are trying to be a bit more sustainable as a family i thought wooden ones would be more appropriate and it would help eliminate some of the plastic stuff we have in the home. melissa and doug toys are availalable through many retailers such as hello baby.

melissa and doug have a great range of wooden toys for babies and young children. i’m slowly starting to see more wooden toys in toy shops and online and melissa and doug are a brand i see very often. they’re always bright and colourful, have a range suitable for all ages and all types of play.

we selected a box of musical toys and a wooden pull along carousel for felix to play with. he’s still a little young, being almost sixteen months, but he has enjoyed playing with them – particularly making music! the music set came with a triangle, a wooden clapper, maracas, a set of sybols and a little tambourine. the maracas are his favourite and they’re a great set for evie to play with him too. they came in a nice little box making it easy to keep them all together.

the second toy was the wooden pull along carousel which rotates as you pull it along. i think it’s lovely and evie has often shown felix how to make it work which he likes to chase. mostly he likes to take all the wooden pieces off and pass them to me to build again, and repeat.

i am so happy to see a great range of innovative, fun, bright and colourful toys from the melissa and doug range which offer so much to children. it’s great to see things like the carosel which can be taken apart and put back together really easily. the horses are a good size for felix to hold himself and be able to put back together, he does like to give it a good go!