20 Pledges for 2020: Why 2021 will taste of sweetcorn - hopefully
It’s time to get back to the good life
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2020 was pretty rubbish in our house and Covid only played a bit part in it. But at least we’ve learned a lot.
We’ve worked out how committed we are to a zero waste life, how much we still have to learn if we really want to tread lightly on our little corner of the world, and above all, what kind of beans go on toast in a tomato sauce (Haricot) so we can bypass the bought tins.
At the beginning of 2020 we were quite happy to carry on as we were, living a suburban life with a zero waste angle. By the end of it we – and the rest of country - were mulling a full blown escape to the country.
Our shift up a gear from zero waste to also incorporate zero recycling, complete with our first serious attempts to grow our own food, haven’t really gone to plan.
The acres of home-frozen sweetcorn I was hoping to smugly extract from the freezer next April – preferably in front of an audience (Oh, these? Why yes, we grew them last summer, thanks for asking) didn’t quite pan out. At all, in fact. Not a single corn is gathering frost next to the ice cubes and a dubious loaf of bread right now.
It’s clearly going to take a while to get this right. Say, the rest of our lives. But I think we’re weirdly up for that.
2020 began with massive fires in Australia and warnings over a virus in Asia that had stemmed from our assault on the last desperate sanctuaries of the natural world. Long before the world learned the term Covid-19, there was already a sense of panic, of impotence, of fear for the future setting in.
But if there’s one thing that has helped us battle the creep of eco-anxiety it has been to be in control of our consumption. To grab it by the neck and make it clear that we’re done with being manipulated for a middle man’s profit margin with the world itself presented as inevitable collateral damage.
We won’t be furtively distanced from the reality of our consuming decisions any more. We won’t be told what to eat, what to buy or the life we should pursue.
After that annus horribilis that regularly felt - to all of us - like we had no control over anything anymore, we feel like life is both very short and yet once again full of possibilities. This year has been life-affirming in many ways.
We want to be the people who categorically know where their food, and clothes, and energy comes from and take full responsibility for it. We want to be the people who work hard to have the lightest possible impact on the environment.
We are eyeing 2021 slightly knackered but also galvanised and empowered. And we have this blog, in no small way, to thank for that. So thank you - very much indeed.
Right now though, I best go and dust off the propagator we cobbled together in one of many quiet weekends in lockdown #1. I have a feeling we’re going to need it on this long and bumpy ride.
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