Are you ready to mix it up?

We are all creatures of habit – we have ‘our way of doing things’, our ‘usuals’ – would you agree? How about food habits – what are yours?  ‘I always have a KitKat at break time‘, ‘I choose cheese and onion crisps every Wednesday’, ‘I like dried fruit snacks when I come home from school’, ‘I buy a Fruit Shoot drink after football’, ‘I normally have a Cheestring in my packed lunch’ …  Tackling climate change means we ALL need to make changes to how we live and the choices we make - we need to be willing to ‘mix it up’ and change some of our habits! 

Young Climate Warriors are challenged this week to be brave and adventurous – to create some ‘mix it up’ snacks that aren’t made in a factory and don’t need throwaway packaging … you might even find an apple to pick from a tree?! (Please ask your parent/carer to supervise your ‘snack making’.) How about some formidable fruit snacks – bananas with ‘cartoon faces’ drawn on them, sliced orange smiley mouths, fruit kebabs? Some cheesy champions – make your own cheese squares, or cream cheese nibbles on broken crackers? Delectable drinks - a flask of hot chocolate, fruit squash, or even homemade lemonade? Pop your own ‘corn’ in a saucepan – don’t forget the lid! Bake some chocolate cookies (with Fairtrade chocolate – see below!), or some shortbread stars … the possibilities are endless if you’re willing to ‘mix it up a bit’!

What about all those wrappers – how many have you ‘avoided’ this week? Every throwaway wrapper - whether it’s made from plastic, foil, paper or card – starts life in a factory. Raw materials have to be mined, cleaned and processed, then the wrapper is manufactured and transported. Each of these stages uses energy and produces carbon emissions that cause climate change. Do you think we can just swap one type of single-use packaging for another? Ideally, we need to use less packaging – full stop. But did you know you can now recycle ‘soft plastics’ - bread bags, frozen food bags, crisp packets, pet food pouches, chocolate wrappers … at over 4,000 supermarkets in the UK (just make sure they are clean and food-free first)? Find your nearest drop-off point at Recycle Now.

If you’re buying ingredients this week look out for the ‘Fairtrade’ logo. Fairtrade means paying farmers a fairer price for their produce, which in turn means they have more resources to help them invest in sustainable farming practices and adapt to our changing climate. To learn more about how Fairtrade can help farmers manage the impacts of climate change, enjoy this excellent 4 minute film – ‘Weathering the Storm with Fairtrade’.

Remember to email Kate – hello@youngclimatewarriors.org – when you have ‘mixed it up a bit’ – helping look after our planet.