Clean + Conscious Podcast

Emily: Welcome to Clean and Conscious. We’re Emily, Emma and Dom from the Clean and Conscious Awards. Together we blend our expertise in science, mental health and parenting to explore conscious and low tox living, sustainability and wellbeing. Join us as we dive deep into the true power of conscious choices.

Who doesn’t get swept up in the glow of twinkling lights, the warmth, the family huddled together, and the sheer joy that Christmas air brings? It’s magical! Yet we know it’s also the season of just a little bit more. More gifts, more decorations, more food, more, well, everything. Today, we, as the Clean and Conscious team, are on a mission to find balance.

Yes, we all love a little bit of sparkle and merriment, but we’re also yearning to infuse our festivities with mindful choices and [00:01:00] sustainable practices. Imagine a holiday where less waste and just as much joy coexist, where eco friendly gift wraps steal the show, and where decorations bring light to your home without burdening the planet.

So join us as we journey through creating a conscious Christmas that’s as magical as it is mindful. I’m Emily and I’m here today with Dom and Emma. Emma, is there a particular challenge you find difficult to navigate in the lead up to Christmas?

Emma: For me personally, Christmas is deeply sentimental. So I always strive to recreate the magic of my own childhood through Christmas with my kids.

The countdown to Christmas always was played a big role in my childhood. I remember counting how many days there were to Christmas from like June. So I’d have like crossing off the days over six months. So my mother bought, used to buy these advent calendars with Christmas scenery. [00:02:00] So these advent calendars, you know, we’d open up the doors and there’d be a beautiful illustration such as a Robin in the snow or a Christmas pudding or a bobsled.

But Advent calendars have evolved considerably since then over the years they’ve been hijacked by the big chocolate brands. And I’ve often found myself buying many of them over the years. It’s hard and they’re as cheap as like 4 at the supermarket, they’re just there next to the aisle and you’re like, the kids are like, please, can I have like a Paw Patrol one?

And you’re like, Oh, okay. It’s a no brainer, right? So. The issue is instead of bringing that magic into my home, I’ve got this piece of plastic covered in paper filled with chocolate and instead of, you know, my children magically counting down the days to Christmas with it, they’re actually waking up looking for their next sugar hit because they want to open it up and eat that chocolate.

There’s still magic involved. I mean, you’re still counting down the days and I’m not discounting that that’s not [00:03:00] there, but I think my biggest concern really lies with where this chocolate is coming from. Yeah, over 60 percent of the world’s cocoa comes from Ghana and the Ivory Coast in West Africa, children make up almost half of the workers in these cocoa farms.

Some working in slave like conditions away from their families and some performing dangerous labor on their own parents farms. Child labor is also a big problem on Brazilian cocoa farms. The world’s largest chocolate companies, such as Cadbury, have continued to postpone commitments to end child labor, despite people pushing for it over the past 20 years.

So it’s still a huge problem and this is because they still cannot properly identify the farms where all their cocoa is coming from. They also pay cocoa farmers so dismally that the cocoa farmers themselves are earning less than 1 a day. It leaves them no choice, but to search out the cheapest forms of labor, i. e. children. So [00:04:00] the biggest. Even now, the biggest chocolate companies can only trace about 50 percent of their global cocoa supply apply to certified sources and then are unsure whether the certification supplied truly represents an ethical source. So with chocolate advent calendars now a staple Aussie Christmas tradition, what can we do about this?

What’s the alternative for the past few years? We’ve been sourcing sugar free ethical chocolate advent calendars online, which do exist and they are becoming more readily available, but they do come with a price tag. And I often find myself forgetting to order them in time and then having to pay for express shipping and you know, what would have been 8 for two advent calendars is now 50.

So You know, they’re not in the supermarkets. They’re not everywhere. Anyway, to find out more about ethical chocolate, we do actually have a blog post, which is currently listed on our homepage. If you’re interested in trying to find out how to source ethical chocolate we’ve got lots of great tips in there.

We also [00:05:00] have an ethical chocolate category. Which is in our directory at the moment with all the winners of the clean conscious awards in the chocolate factory. How about advent calendars for you guys? How do you go about navigating the whole advent calendar? Trick at the aisles, especially when you’re at the supermarket aisle with.

Dom: Well, this is true, and they, everything’s positioned so well in those supermarket aisles. I, with us, we’ve, we’ve always had to be very careful how we source our advent calendars for other reasons as well, because we’ve got so many allergies in our household. There’s very few advent calendars we could have.

There’s no dairy, there’s no gluten, there’s no animal products. So it makes it very challenging. But for the kids, I think. It was just never a thing that I really introduced to them from when they were little and And for many [00:06:00] reasons, I think the whole month is a very long time to be counting down, isn’t it?

But, but as they get older, they get more savvy. They know what everyone else is doing. They know what they want to do. And they become firmer in their opinions. So I think now I am so relieved that this shift has come at a time where my children are the age that they are. And the shift being that now there are these eco conscious.

Allergy friendly advent calendar alternatives, which as you say, I, they’re not always as easy to source or not always as affordable, but they there. And I feel like that is the hope that is the hope they there. And I think that can only become more popular and more easily sourced and then there’ll be become more affordable, which is, I think what we, that’s what we need to be aiming for.

Emily: Yeah.

Emma: Yes. And what about taking chocolate out of the mix

Emily: altogether? Well, that’s what we do being married to a dentist. The [00:07:00] idea of having what he’d call a sugar attack every day with the advent calendar just didn’t get the vote. I, it would have been too much of an argument, even with the ethical chocolate, although I’m a huge chocolate lover myself the awards chocolate on purpose, dark chocolate with Rosella and mountain pepper berry is an absolute favorite of mine.

But with what we do actually for advent calendars we use these wonderful acts of kidness cards by camp quality, which is a charity supporting kids impacted by cancer. And there’s a card. Each day in the lead up to Christmas with a kind act or activity to make someone smile, for example, writing a gratitude note to someone or creating an artwork with nature or having a family water fight the water fight date.

I don’t know what it is. It’s always on like the coldest day of December. And so sometimes I have to like sneakily just kind of swap the cards around, but it always just. It’s just fun and kind of creates the Christmas spirit [00:08:00] without actually having any chocolate or plastic or anything else. But the children look forward to something new on the day.

But I’ve got a friend who wrote her own. So you don’t need to buy anything. You can just collect a whole bunch of really fun, nice little activities to do and pop them in an envelope. It doesn’t have to be tricky either.

Emma: Yeah, I love that idea. We actually, I’ve actually been doing a bit of research lately and because I really wanted to remove.

Chocolate from the equation so that my children weren’t just waking up, you know, looking for that hit. And so I found some advent calendars and there’s actually a Scandinavian one, which I’m really excited about. And it’s, it’s, it’s that old, older style that my mother brought into our household. And there’s actually also, I think each one comes with like reusable stickers as well that you can then put on like a scene.

So I feel like that’s bringing. back in that original sentiment that I felt I’ve been searching for through these advent [00:09:00] calendars that’s been lost. So that we can bring in that

Dom: similar concept, the ones with the books, they have, I’ve seen. That’s

Emma: great. I don’t know about the books. What, what are the books?

Emily: Yeah, some of them you can get like a, a big pack of 24 little books. I know Disney does them and you can read a story each night. Oh, that’s nice. Yeah, we actually have those too. I forgot. Thanks, Dom. I’ll get them out of the attic. That’s it.

Dom: They’re reusable. You don’t even have to refill them each year.

They’re classic stories.

Emily: When I think of Christmas. I think of Christmas trees, but obviously there are lots of different types of trees to choose from. Fresh cut trees, artificial trees. I’ve even seen tree shapes made from like stacked books or decorated ladders and even once a pineapple. They all have subsequently different impacts on the planet.

In our house [00:10:00] we use a, like a wooden Christmas tree that I picked up from Facebook marketplace about eight years ago. And I love it. It’s. It sits flat and then I like unspiral it and every December it’s, it’s just ready to go. Emeryn, Dom, what do you do for your Christmas trees?

Emma: Well, since we moved up to the Northern rivers the gardener at my son’s school, he actually, he has a farm on the pocket and he has a lot of weeds on that farm, which just happened to be Norfolk pines.

And they need to be weeded every Christmas. We go and we travel up to his farm, which is about 10 minutes away. And we hop on his tractor with his dog chasing behind his name, Ziggy, not the dog, the farmer, who’s also the father of both school and and he takes us up the hill and we. There’s a whole selection of all these weeds growing everywhere, which are basically Christmas trees.

And we choose one, or the kids choose one, get [00:11:00] to choose which one they like best. And he chops it down for us with his chainsaw. We pop it back on the back of the tractor, on the back of the tractor. And then we Head back to his farmhouse and put it on the top of our car and go home, put it up. The first one we got was really tall.

It was like about three meters tall. Yeah, it’s it’s it’s a really nice way and I feel like it’s teaching the kids that You know, this is actually good. We’re actually taking a weed off a farm. This is actually, you know, detriment to the ecosystem on that farm and putting it in our house for Christmas.

And then we will put it back out and there’s no, there’s no harm done in that. It’s actually helping the environment.

Dom: Anything that involves the children being involved and sourcing something, I think is really important. Yeah, yeah. Knowing where things come from and how, how they get to where they end up.

I think it’s essential for kids to know.

Emma: I think so. And there’s just so much joy, you know, again, this is the sentimental Christmas [00:12:00] person in me, but if you watch all those Christmas movies where the American Christmas movies, where they all get in the car and they go and choose their Christmas tree from the Christmas tree farm.

We don’t really have that in Australia. You buy it from the server, right? So I, I feel like there’s that joy in doing that as well. And having absolutely moment of choosing your own Christmas tree.

Dom: Yeah, yeah, for sure. I love that. We, we sort of our story is not so glamorous. I feel like yours is a beautifully glamorous story.

Ours is pre kids. My husband and I were living in a very small apartment and let’s put it this way. We had to search for coins to, to pay for dinner at certain weeks, you know because we were just not, we were not doing very well at that point. He was doing an apprenticeship. I was studying so you can imagine, but we ended up by chance finding a Christmas tree haphazardly.

On the side of the road one day um, and we [00:13:00] did do a look around to make sure that it wasn’t someone just dusting their Christmas tree out, but it was particularly damaged and small. And so I don’t think anyone was putting it out there to sort of clean and reuse later. So we took it home and we used that for many years.

And then as our children, as we had children and they sort of got to about, I think senior, my eldest was about two or three, we were living in a house and our neighbors. Again, same story. They threw out this incredibly large tree. So we have made it in the world of trees. This tree is beautiful and it looks real, but again, it was just something that someone was going to.

Someone was no longer going to use, it was thrown out and probably would have ended up in landfill. So I’m, I’m glad that we have that.

Emily: Oh, that’s amazing. I mean,

Emma: yeah. Reusing. Yeah. Yeah. There are a lot of Christmas trees out there that could have gone to a different home, you know, rather than. [00:14:00] Absolutely.

Reusable ones.

Dom: Yeah. Absolutely. You see people change trees once a year. Yeah. Yeah.

Emily: And with artificial trees. The part of the sustainability is only if we keep them for a long enough time, a group called Ellipsis actually crunched the numbers, taking into consideration production, transport and disposal.

And they found that an artificial Christmas tree needs to be used for at least 20 years to be more sustainable than a fresh cut Christmas tree. And then obviously it won’t decompose in landfill for hundreds more years. Being able to reuse something like that Dom, is, is hugely important to it’s overall sustainability as something that has been made and is existing in the world to, to then be able to use it is, is really, really valuable.

Dom: And it doesn’t seem unachievable. 20 years using a Christmas tree, again, it could be something sentimental that you pass down. There’s no reason [00:15:00] why you can’t, they, they, they’re not disintegrating on us.

Emily: No, well that’s true. It’s just that people get into that idea of newness and swapping and moving on, but I, I love that about Christmas of reusing and taking something where you’ve got all those memories attached to it and finding it again.

With Christmas fresh trees some people think, Oh, well, we’re cutting it down. So it can’t be that sustainable, but apparently it takes seven years to grow a two meter tall tree. And throughout that time, it’s absorbing carbon dioxide. So it’s, it’s actually, if you’re on a Purchasing from a sustainable Christmas tree farm that will then plant again the next year, once it’s cut down, it isn’t too poor in that sustainability, as long as you choose a local option so that you’re reducing the impact of the transportation as well.

I’ve always loved the idea of, which I think is probably like the, the most sustainable is, is buying a living tree in a pot [00:16:00] and being able to use that and then plant it in the garden. But I haven’t quite got to that. Who has actually

Emma: been able to do that? I wonder. I would like to meet that person if anybody is listening to that story.

Podcast and has managed to have a Christmas tree in a pot and use it year on year without killing it. I want, I want to know, I want to congratulate you because I haven’t met that person yet as well.

Dom: Footage evidence, something.

Emily: And Emma, with your Christmas tree though, the live one how do you dispose of it at the end?

Because that also is something that, that comes up in the sustainability process. We don’t

Emma: have a Christmas tree collection here where we are, cause we’re living rurally or regionally. So we actually chop it up and put it in our green bin.

Emily: Well, that’s, that’s great. Cause I think they all, that, that gets used as, as commercial.

Yeah, we have

Emma: commercial, yeah, we have commercial [00:17:00] composting here, so I’m not sure if you have that in Sydney or in the Margaret River, but we are very lucky to have it here and it’s, it’s great because, yeah, we just, we just do what we do. Pack it all up and put it in

Dom: there.

Emily: Yeah. Our council locally does a Christmas tree collection because apparently otherwise if it ends up in a landfill, then because it’s breaking down in the absence of air, it actually releases methane, which is a greenhouse gas and so it really is best if you can find a way for it to be chipped and turned into compost or mulch.

Dom: Yeah. Yeah. It’s good

Emily: to know. And do you have any particular decorations you like to use? Tree is a mix of childhood decorations and more and more DIY decorations as well. Like we’ve, we’ve actually had a lot of success with the DIY ones. Although we did have like some salt dough decorations that molded so that wasn’t a goer.

But but we did once make a wreath. By like bending a wire [00:18:00] clothes hanger in a circle and then weaving in eucalyptus leaves and the children collected cicada shells off the trunks of some trees and painted them gold. Oh, I love that. We just had these gold cicadas just everywhere, which it’s not for everyone, but it was, it’s, it’s pretty fun.

Any, any inspiration or idea?

Emma: So good. Although we don’t get many cicada shells here. Cicadas aren’t a big deal. I miss the cicadas, actually, of Sydney.

Emily: Yeah. Well, I think there are some seasons where, like, some Christmases there’s just, it’s dominant and it’s just deafening and, and others, I don’t know, it just, the, the, Environment’s not right and we don’t get as many, but fingers crossed for a, a loud Christmas then.

Emma: I want one. I miss it. Yeah. It’s what Christmas is, the sound of Christmas, there’s that meaning sentimental again. It’s

Dom: true. We used to collect pine cones as well, which was handy. You know, and you can, [00:19:00] again, you can paint them and the kids can decorate them and you know, you use them on the tables, it’s lovely.

Yeah. I like pine

Emma: cones. We are still managing to use some of the Christmas decorations from my childhood, so we have quite a few still going, a lot of them were these beautiful glass ornaments, and I remember over time, I’d say that they were probably Swedish, actually, and over time, every time one smashed, it was like, Every year we probably lose one and I think there’s like maybe two left, but I like placed really high up in the hope that they’re not going to smash.

I think they’re still going and then I’ve got some other little ones and ones that I made at school as well that we still put on our tree and then all the ones that the kids make at school are all going up there. Yeah,

Dom: absolutely. The kids craft seems to be a common theme amongst parents the kids craft decorations, definitely something cool thing as well.

Absolutely. Yeah, we’ve, we’ve in terms of craft, we have the kids craft on our tree, but we also [00:20:00] have, which I find really special coming from Africa when we were there one year, we ended up buying these and we’re also gifted some from family and friends from Africa. They are. little ornaments, African animal ornaments that are hand painted by individuals in really terrible circumstances.

And you, you buy these ornaments and it funds the survival essentially. And they are so beautiful. The skill is there. They are absolutely stunning and just special, you know, because they mean something. Yeah.

Emma: I love that. I think that you can actually buy decorations like that from Oxfam shops. Oh, lovely.

Yeah. They have them from all around the world, I think, and you can, they all kind of have cultural significance as well as obviously the connection to Christmas, which is great. Socially responsible

Emily: Christmas decorations. Yeah, that’s

Dom: right. [00:21:00] Yeah. And I just like, I love how we keep coming back to the sentiment of it all.

Not just within our families, but you’re just thinking about everybody, you know, the greater good, how can we give back, how can we help all the time, even with things like decorations, you know, which you might not always. And then

Emma: hopefully those decorations have a story, which, you know, and sometimes I know when you buy the ones from Oxfam, they do come with a story and like you find out sometimes who made it, where they are, what their life is like, and you know, if you buy that decoration and you tell your children that story each year at Christmas time, and then perhaps they’ll be telling their children that story each year at Christmas time, bringing that kind of like level of consciousness into that sentiment as well.

Dom: Absolutely. Yeah. You’re right. A lot of these decorations came with actual images of the person who had made the decoration, which I thought was spectacular because then you can put a face to the story, you know, cause that may, I feel like that really makes a difference. Putting a face to the story at[00:22:00] yeah, just knowing that this is an actual human being.

And quite often you can, this, I’ve, I mean, you can see the suffering in their eyes in these images. It’s, it’s really confronting. And, and a nice thing is that way you can actually have them hanging on the tree too, their images. Why not? You know, it’s part of, with the decoration. Yeah.

Emily: I love the idea of, yeah, giving back at Christmas and seeing, yeah, I mean, it’s the spirit of giving and it’s the true spirit of giving, it’s yeah, it’s powerful.

Dom: Yeah. Well, this is, I mean, Christmas, I think the thing is, is that we’re spending so much We’re doing so much purchasing at Christmas, you know, you’re talking about, we’re buying decorations or, you know, for those of us who are buying new trees every year, we’re expected to then buy gifts on top of that, you know, for, for work colleagues, for family, for friends.

And then on top of that, not only do you have to have a gift for everybody, you know, The gift needs to be [00:23:00] wrapped in appropriately themed wrapping paper. Because, you know, God forbid you give someone a Christmas gift with happy birthday wrapping on it, . And, and then on top of that, you expected to provide a appropriately themed Christmas card that goes with the wrapping paper.

And, and I mean, not only is this stressful, but it’s expensive and wasteful, you know? Yeah. I mean, Care Australia actually conducted a survey of a thousand Australians and found that Australians are estimated to use 150, 000 kilometers of wrapping paper this Christmas. And that’s the same distance as nearly four times around the world.

Emily: So how do we, this

Emma: is just Australia, right? Just Australia. So imagine that times, you know, all of the countries in the world that are using wrapping paper. It’s a huge amount. And God knows how much [00:24:00] of that actually is being reused or recycled or, you know, just going into a

Dom: landfill. Exactly. And, and I mean, sadly, I think when, when things become the norm, we very rarely question them because it’s just what’s always been done.

So we just continue to do. Year and year, year and year again, we do the same thing over and over without sort of stopping and, and thinking to ourselves, how can we do things differently? Years ago, I stopped and I thought to myself, I can’t do this anymore. I can’t be in this vicious cycle anymore, but how do you break out of it?

And that’s often I find the issue, you know, you want to change, you know, you want to do things differently, but how. You know, in what capacity can you, can you do things differently when you’re seemingly, your only options are to keep buying that same wrapping paper, buying those same cards. And so I’ve for years found that very distressing, but again, you know, we see the [00:25:00] shift happening.

And in fact, It was perfectly highlighted in the awards this year with the celebrations and stationary category we had. How amazing were those

Emily: products? Oh, incredible. Gosh. I love them. I wasn’t a judge on

Emma: those products. I’m

Emily: feeling a bit jealous now. Oh my goodness. It was such a good category. Oh, honestly.

Oh, Em, you, I wish you were my crew. I’ll

Emma: make sure that I’m on that category next year. Yeah. Can’t judge everything.

Although you want to be able to, I know you want to multiply yourself, you know, by 10 so that you can, you can judge every single category a bit like Hermione in Harry Potter. She’s like, yeah, so she can do all the

Emily: 10. I think, you know, it’s, you know, it’s a good product when you’re like, I actually can’t imagine living without it now.

Since the. The judging of the awards I’ve used the gift me again bags. These are exquisite fabric bags. It’s just [00:26:00] got the most beautiful prints and they come in different sizes and I use them for a couple of family birthdays. And not only do they look spectacular, but it’s so easy. It’s so quick.

I’ve never had such quick wrapping. I just like pop all the presents in there. And, and then Bella has like a little sack to open on her birthday or, and it was It works so well and Christmas, I’m really looking forward to it because it’ll be so quick. The night before it won’t be this crazy, laborious wrapping.

I, I can just pop them into those bags and I’m ready. It’s, it’s amazing. How

Emma: many bags does it come

Emily: with? The, the, I think it’s five. But they come in all different sizes, so I could put a few presents in, in the bigger bag. Yeah.

Dom: Yeah, you could absolutely. Like a Santa sack if you’re using it for Christmas.

Which

Emily: is. And for the birthday, I tended to open it myself and then give her presents [00:27:00] from the bag rather than her suddenly getting a stack just to keep it all special and one by one. It didn’t change the specialness of it because the bags just look so beautiful. They’ve got. Just a gorgeous variety of, of different patterns and the

Dom: drawstring, they had drawstrings at the top, so you close them.

It’s, they really, they were, and that, so this, that replaces the, the need for wrapping paper. There you have it. We

Emma: have a, we have a couple like that, but I’m not going to say where they came from because it’s not a very conscious brand, but they did do provide gifts now in these, and I think that’s a good thing.

step in the right direction that someone like this retailer is sending gifts to people in these reusable drawstring gift bags, which is, is comforting to not, you know, so we choose it as the option because we have to buy gifts for people in the UK and sometimes we use them and, and I’m trying not to anymore, but [00:28:00] there is an option to use a reusable drawstring bag.

And so we bring them out every Christmas and birthday too. Yeah. How do we go about. So if we want to keep on using the reusable bags, what about gifting friends?

Emily: Yeah, that’s when we want to keep

Emma: the bag, what can be a solution around that? Or, you know, something that I have just discovered and I actually have been wanting to use do it for years was, oh, I can’t remember how to say it, but this is Japanese.

Way of wrapping gifts. And it’s, you basically just get a piece of fabric and you put the gift in the middle and you just bring up each side of square and just tie them all together and it’s so easy. Like, it’s like. For Ashiki, the way of wrapping, so yeah, and it’s so easy. I was kind of not doing it because I was like, Oh, that looks really hard.

And I’m not very good at origami, but

it’s actually not origami. Like it’s like serious wrapping for [00:29:00] dummies. It’s like, it’s so much easier than wrapping presents. And so I’ve just got all these old little bits. Pieces of fabrics. My mom’s a sewer, so she’s got loads of just bits of fabric lying around. And I’ve just been, I’m going to do that this year because I only started doing it for someone’s birthday.

And I did use a really nice piece of fabric that I would like to have kept for myself. It looks so good.

Dom: Yeah. I mean, with family as well, extended family, you could always have an understanding that these bags go round and round, you know. Yeah, when it’s your birthday, then you swap when it’s the other person’s birthday and you, it just keeps going backwards and forwards.

Yeah.

Emily: My mom’s decided to like DIY a whole lot of fabric bags. She was inspired, but I do that whole roll of recycled brown paper and brown paper packages tied up with strings, anything like that. Where it’s a. present for teachers or anything like that. That’s, that’s tends to be how our our presents come with just some paper, sticky tape so that it can [00:30:00] all be recycled.

Cause that’s the thing with, with all those Christmas wrapping papers. So much of it has a little bit of plastic in it. Apparently the way to tell if it’s even recyclable is you scrunch it. And if it stays scrunched, it’s paper and it’s recyclable. But otherwise, if it’s not, if it’s kind of. Unwrapping in front of your eyes, then it’s not even recyclable at the end of the day.

That’s

Emma: a really good tip.

Dom: Yeah, that is a good tip. I mean, talking about paper, we also, we, we also would source a recyclable or you know, post consumer paper that has just been, it’s, it’s very sort of raw in its form, but you can wrap it around a gift and then the kids draw on it. Yeah. Personalize.

You don’t need a card then. You’ve got, you’ve got your writing. You could write directly on the gift or draw a picture if you didn’t want to have to get a card. Although I must say on that note, we did have two very exciting alternatives [00:31:00] for cards this year in the same celebrations and stationary category.

We had the one entry was Paper and Bloom who do the most beautiful. cards that you can write on still, but they made from seed paper. So instead of once you’ve read the card, throwing it out, you just plant the card and flowers grow. It’s incredible. And then sort of on the same note, we had. Be kind Australia who have these gorgeous, very earthy looking envelopes that come with seeds and the envelopes have sort of different themed images printed on them.

They are exceptional. I encourage you to check them out. And what’s, what’s great about this is that these, these cards, these. That are also a gift as a card and a gift in one are saving the bees,

Emily: which can’t go wrong. That’s

Emma: [00:32:00] awesome. And to discover all of these gifts, you can just go to www.

cleaningconscious. com. au forward slash directory and search for our celebrations and stationary category. That’s where you find all of the products that Dom is talking about right now.

Dom: And the Christmas crackers. Can we not go, we cannot forget to mention

Emily: the Christmas crackers. Oh my goodness, because they were like

Dom: nothing I’ve ever seen before.

So tell

Emily: me about

Emma: these Christmas crackers. I saw them and I’m intrigued. Oh, that’s

Emily: so cute. They have like fabric hats with Velcro and you can reuse again and again. I don’t know how many times I’ve had like a paper hat and I don’t know, it’s got a bit weird, it’s breaking, it’s only going to last a day, whereas these are like beautifully sewn.

They’ll just, yeah, it’s, the crack is [00:33:00] incredible. That’s

Dom: amazing. What

Emily: is the brand called? That’s the Waste Free Celebration Christmas Re crackers, and so they’re reusable crackers. Can you believe it? And they even have extra snaps so you can make them crack again, and yeah. Oh, that’s

Emma: awesome! Okay, I’m getting some of those for

Dom: sure.

Yeah, honestly, Em, you have to. Yeah, I’m gonna get them. crackers are made from recycled water bottles.

Emma: Oh, amazing. That’s great. Last year, my mother she ordered this game. So it was Christmas crackers. And inside was this mystery game and you each got a different piece of this mystery to solve. So, and it was all made with recycled materials.

I can’t remember what the brand was called. But yeah, it, you had to solve the mystery of this missing pirate ship by putting together all the mysteries, like to, I can’t remember, [00:34:00] it’s something to do with a, with a missing bottle or something, a bottle that went to the bottom of the sea, and we had to solve the mystery.

It was really

Emily: fun. It was really fun. Oh, I love that. I love how it turns into like a full activity where everyone’s participating around the table. And there were lots of arguments

Emma: as well, like it wasn’t all pretty, but. eSpecially after, you know, some people have had a few, few drinks, or Christmas drinks, but it was, it was really fun.

The kids loved it and I still got it. So we’re going to, I, you know, I might even bring it out again this Christmas and because we’ll have forgotten how to solve this mystery by then. So yeah, it’s, it was really lovely. And then, and then of course the, like all the little trinkets and stuff with just the missing.

Pieces of this mystery. So it was

Emily: really fun. Yeah, we the other

Dom: talking about the Christmas crackers, the other crackers that came that were in the awards this year and absolutely blew me away. Were. [00:35:00] By the conscious cracker

Emily: company. Yeah,

Emma: two Christmas crackers. They were two. Wow. That’s

Dom: great.

Yeah. And and these crackers were made a hundred percent from, from a hundred percent post consumer paper, which was wonderful. And they came with the most gorgeous eco friendly gifts and it’s. And they would not go astray on a Christmas table. They were beautiful. Both were, both companies, both brands had beautiful, beautiful

Emily: crackers.

Yeah, really special. You know what, I’m

Emma: voting for a Christmas category next year.

Emily: Ooh, I like it.

Emma: Yeah, that would be awesome. Advent calendars, Christmas crackers, reusable gift paper. Yeah, I love it. Yeah,

Emily: and on the, like, the topic of cards though I love the idea of, of planting seed cards, but In our house I really value spending time on [00:36:00] cards and I have them as like, just as special as presents for me.

I, I’m more special than presents. I, I usually, we, we print out some photo and I, I write lots on my cards and we have a special box that we keep them in. And I’m a really cardy person. So but I do think for all those other cards, I mean, teachers must get so many and there are some special ones, sure, but I’m sure a lot of the cards uh, some people in different jobs receive are just so.

So numerous that, that being able to plant them in a garden is just so, such a lovely way of, of saying goodbye to them rather than them ending up in landfill because so many other ones are kind of, they’re covered in a plastic cover and they’re shiny and, and they’re not going to be recyclable anyway.

So I think it’s a, another area of that Christmas waste that otherwise we can just end up. Yeah, [00:37:00] in excess.

Emma: Yeah. I agree. What about presents for you guys, the actual gifts that go inside the wrapping? I don’t know about you, but there’s been a few Christmases for us where I’ve looked at the presents at the bottom of the tree and just gone Oh my God.

This is like literally an ocean of presents under the tree. How are we going to get out? You spend half the day unwrapping them and we’re the kind of house that we don’t like just all jump in and start opening our presents like everybody has to watch the other person open their present. And it could, it is, it’s the best way to do it right.

And there’s a Christmas elf that hands the presents out and I love all

Emily: of that. Just wait, who’s the Christmas elf? Christmas elf. Oh, it’s

Emma: often me because I’ve always been the Christmas elf. Do you dress up or? I just assumed you had a

Dom: legitimate elf coming to do it for you. I mean, that’s the logical thing.

Emily: How do you do that? We don’t get an elf.

Emma: [00:38:00] What’s going on? I might have worn an elf hat. On the occasion when I wasn’t, I was always liked being the Christmas elf in our house and like my, like my parents completely spoiled us as kids, you know, not only did we have like all of the Santa presents, but we get to the Christmas tree after having Christmas morning breakfast and, or probably before when we were kids and like.

It would go for hours, like hours and hours of owning presence. It was, it wasn’t as if my parents were at all wasteful. They just didn’t buy us anything else for the rest of the year. That was just when we disabled. I find, you know, we can go overboard in my household, especially because I, I’m quite mindful about, the gifts that we buy our kids, because I spend all year kind of just we do the same thing. We don’t really buy them anything throughout the year, except for their Christmas and their birthdays. And so I spend the year kind of taking note when they ask for something, or when I can identify there’s something that they need, but you know, my husband works [00:39:00] really hard from like.

Pretty much through it from October through to Christmas time. And he doesn’t, he’s not really involved in any of that present buying. And I think he suddenly always has this like moment just before Christmas where he’s like, I’ve got to go out and buy presents. And he said, he just buys. Loads more presents for the kids so that we end up with just too many.

And then there’s with grandparents and then there’s, and then they’re just going into that phase where they’re opening up presents, just like next, next, you know, and they don’t even the lot, the excitement over receiving. A gift that’s come from your heart to them sometimes just gets lost because there are just so many, especially as my older son is born on the 22nd of December.

So he’s already had all his birthday presents. And I just, it just becomes too much. And according, I mean, according to a recent survey by very prominent. Australian Bank, Australians spend up to 11 billion on Christmas gifts per year, which is great for our economy, right? We can’t [00:40:00] say that that’s not great for our economy, especially at a time right now where spending is limited.

So I’m not at all saying that people shouldn’t be spending at Christmas time. However, unfortunately, according to the ABC, 50 percent of Christmas waste goes straight to landfill. So, that includes gifts and that’s half of Christmas rates going to landfills. So, um, now Care Australia found that a quarter of people thought that Krisking and Little Gifts were rubbish, and there was no value.

It means there’s no value in giving it really if somebody’s receiving something and they’re just saying, well, this is going straight.

Dom: Yeah. Yeah.

Emma: And meanwhile, McRindle conducted a survey of over 1000 Australians. This is back in 2019, which asked Aussies about their opinions around Christmas presents and attitudes towards donating money to charity instead of giving gifts.

Now this is encouraging 48. percent of [00:41:00] Australians say they would be genuinely happy to receive a card saying that a charitable donation has been made instead of receiving a Christmas present. Now, I was quite surprised by that. I didn’t realize that we were that generous. And I think given how helpless a lot of people are feeling right now with certain things that are happening in the world that they feel they have no control over and that they can’t help people that are in need right now.

That’s probably a good Christmas to be doing that. Yeah. Yeah. Making a donation in the name of someone else. And I certainly would be grateful, very grateful for.

Emily: I’d be so grateful for that, yeah,

Emma: absolutely. I’m just wondering how do we start putting these kind of intentions that we vocalize into action when it comes to Christmas?

How do we, instead of getting, you know, so caught up in the frenzy of buying and giving and consuming, how do we make this Like shift, you know, why is it [00:42:00] that we get, I mean, Dom, you might be able to help answer this, but how do we not go into that kind of buying mentality around that frenzy of just going out and just spending and not really thinking about the purchases that we’re

Dom: making?

It’s hard. It’s hard to, in any, in any topic, it’s hard to go against the norm, you know, if everybody else is doing X, Y, and Z, it’s incredibly hard to do things differently. And I think it becomes harder when you have children who. Who are desperate to fit in and by and fitting in, you know, social creatures.

It’s generally doing what other people are doing, you know, to, to be, to be, to be like everybody else. I think the one thing I would say is that if you, if you strongly know your beliefs behind why you do things, they become easier to. Yeah. So rather than just doing things, but not really understanding [00:43:00] exactly why and what motivates you, it’s, it’s harder to stick to those decisions and it’s easier to be influenced and swayed, but if you have a really solid belief behind why you’re doing it and you instill that belief.

Within your children, and then they too believe it, then that’s when the shift happens, I think.

Emma: Yeah. Yeah. It’s hard though, isn’t it? I mean, I say this every year, but I do just get into this stage where I’m just like popping out to get something else that is needed for Christmas lunch. And I suddenly am in the supermarket and I’m coming home with something that I didn’t mean to buy, but I’m just, there’s something in the air, isn’t there?

It’s just like, it’s just like, I’m like, how did I come home with this? Extra if for somebody that really isn’t gonna, it doesn’t need it, you know, but I just suddenly Start doing it. It’s, yeah, it’s subliminal messages and supermarket music

Emily: or something. I challenge myself each year to see how many [00:44:00] secondhand things present that I can get my own children, because that’s kind of, I guess the majority of, of really like present accumulating that I do.

And I see just how much I can get at car boot sales and Facebook marketplace, and my children are very used to opening secondhand presents and. They know why, they know, it’s so much better to save things from landfill and, and it’s better for the resources of the planet. And we talk about that a lot.

And so and I mean, Charlie, Charlie wanted like a crystal collection. And one, it’s, it’s so much cheaper to buy a crystal collection on Facebook marketplace, but those crystals have been around for thousands of years. I don’t need to necessarily buy them in a shop. So there were, there were a lot of good things that are, are great to buy second hand.

And then it does mean that. I [00:45:00] can, when I buy something new, I can really make sure it’s something that they need. And I’m really like intentionally doing it in a conscious way. So, so I’ll lend you something really conscious with that extra money so that the, the bulk of it though, and like kind of the fun, like knickknacks that I actually wouldn’t normally want to buy because they’re not necessarily.

They’re just going to end up in landfill anyway. I know that I’ve saved them already from landfill and we’re giving them a new life before. And so I don’t feel as guilty about adding to it, but the children are just as happy to open those. So, so that’s kind of one way I, I kind of meet that balance.

Emma: Yeah. I don’t think when I give secondhand gifts to my kids, they usually don’t even notice. To be honest, like, yeah, like, you know,

Dom: cause we’ve always been doing it. It would be nice. I mean, do you know, do you ever take the kids off shopping?

Emma: Oh, [00:46:00] love it. They

Dom: are aware, you know, some of those things they pick up.

They need it clean. But they

Emily: don’t care. No. I usually actually, because they have started wanting to give family presents as well. I take them to the op shop and they get a 5 limit for the family members and they choose their own present and they’ve got so much out of the treasure that they’ve found.

Yeah. I don’t take them into supermarkets if I can avoid it. So they don’t ever have a list of consumerist. things that they actually, they don’t have this list. They, it doesn’t exist because they’ve just never really been exposed to like any of those shopping catalogs or anything. Which makes it

Emma: easier.

We do live in a time where it’s so much easier to get away from that. I remember those catalogs coming into the post as a kid, you know, the Target ones and the Kmart ones. And just, they were just like what I was referring to for like months leading up to Christmas. Like, yeah, because we don’t seem to get that in the post anymore.[00:47:00]

Unless they’re looking for it online, which is, I’m glad that we’ve kind of moved away from that, that kind of catalogue shopping. Yeah, it’s, it’s hard

Dom: and I think, I think, I try to remind myself that when children are presented with Too many things, too many gifts, you alluded to this before Em, you know, you, they’re overstimulated, you know, so now it becomes a task.

I’m just going to open this and I’m going to open this and I’m going to open the next one. And it could, it actually can be quite stressful for them. Yeah. They just don’t have the name to put to the emotion, but they get hyperactive, they get worked up, they behave badly, they seem ungrateful, but they just over stimulated.

Yeah. It’s just

Emma: a dopamine hit, isn’t it? They get addicted to the dopamine hit of opening the present. Don’t we all? Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah,

Dom: absolutely. We’re going to be in Bali, actually. [00:48:00] Oh,

Emily: yeah. That’s going to be

Dom: interesting. Yeah. That’s going to be

Emma: really interesting. I’d love, I’m looking forward to hearing how, you know, Christmas is celebrated in Bali.

Emily: Exactly. Yeah.

Dom: I’m really excited as well. Yeah. Got family who are meeting us there all the way from Africa as well. Organize for us to go and visit a orphanage and an animal shelter while we’re there. And I would ideally actually like to do it on Christmas day, but we’ll have to see how that works out.

And I’ll keep you posted.

Emily: Good luck fitting everything into some suitcases. Cause that is tricky.

Emma: Yeah. How are you going to like navigate? Christmas gift giving, are you going to keep it at a minimal?

Dom: I think I’m going, this is going to be the year of change for us. And I’m going, I’m going in hard. I’m, I’m, we’re going extremely minimal.

And I feel as though it’ll be a good transition [00:49:00] for the kids being somewhere else, because I don’t think the stark contrast won’t be as obvious to them because we’re in a different place. Well, this is my plan. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Emily: But also the other thing you

Emma: have to think about. Is bringing gifts back with you to Australia, like you might need to have a little chat to your family and say, can you keep that weight down?

Cause otherwise you might end up having to pay excess on your suitcases coming back, right?

Dom: I just, I suppose in my head, I have this. I have this vision of going over with lots of useful gifts for the, for the children at the orphanage.

Emma: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I love that. Yeah. And

Dom: whatever we can bring for the animal shelter I’ll have to chat with them and see what they need.

But sometimes they need towels and blankets and, you know, all of those things. But my idea is to go over with all of this stuff and, and come back with just good memories. Do you think that’s [00:50:00] feasible? That’s what

Emily: I’m aiming for. It’s a good challenge. It’s a very

Emma: good challenge. How are you? How is your family with gift giving?

Are they going to over give or?

Dom: I I receive no. So personally, I I, I asked that no one gives me gifts and I haven’t received gifts for Christmas from my family since they were born. The only thing I ask for from them is a drawing and that’s all I ask. Oh, that’s nice. And how about giving

Emma: gifts to your kids?

Are they going to get overexcited and bring?

Dom: Yeah, it’s hard. It’s hard because that’s the thing, you know, I can sit here now and say, we’re going to go minimalistic. But as we just discussed, as the time creeps closer, it’s harder, isn’t it? You know, find yourself dashing off to the shops the day before to get one more thing.

It’s, I don’t know. I guess

Emma: time will tell. Grandparents. Grandparents, especially how do you manage family giving? I know that we all go to this great extent to give mindfully [00:51:00] and to reduce our own Christmas waste. But when it comes to like family coming over on Christmas day and bringing gifts and, and sometimes I know it can.

Some grandparents go so overboard. My parents are pretty good, but I know some of my friends really struggle with the amount of just constant presents and plastic that are being showered on them by their own families, and I wonder how, Em, you go about that with your parents. I,

Emily: I, my mom knows how I feel about like.

All the excess plastic and consumption. And she kind of balances that cause she now realizes that if she sources it secondhand or on Facebook marketplace, that’s like my loophole. And so she can like, she can still get the colorful, whatever it is. And as long as, as long as it was saving. Kind of its journey into landfill I’ll still accept it.

So she she still goes like bumper big bags full of things, but they’re [00:52:00] now like fabric bags that she’s sewn herself and they’re things that she’s sourced at a car boot sale or something conscious or clothing that she’s, she knows the children need or something like that. Oh, that’s great. So, so she’s, she’s had to learn along the way but they live close by.

So I’ve. I’ve been able to probably have a little bit more input and presence in there than say grandparents who were living further away.

Dom: Yeah, that’s, I was just going to say, your mum ever starts taking orders for the bags she’s making? Absolutely.

Emily: It’s the first run of that. But she’s, yeah, she’s, she, she got busy in the DIY.

She’s really inspired. So yeah. I also think like, you know, with those t shirts that are like have a hole in them or something like that, but there’s still good fabric. I’m not very handy with a sewing machine, but but so many good fabrics that we do wear that when, if we [00:53:00] can’t stitch up and, and fix it up anymore, I mean, they, they can still turn into a patchwork bag or something like that.

Oh, definitely. Yeah. Yeah.

Dom: Or just a rag you use to clean things

Emily: to fix the right material. Yeah.

Dom: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Couldn’t agree more. Not a bag of wraps.

Emma: Yeah.

That’s what I’ll be getting for Christmas. A bag of wrap. In a wrap. I

Dom: love the feeling of getting it though, and your reactions, you know. Yeah, and I think, you know, with gifts, we tend to, as it gets close to Christmas, the pressure’s on, we end up purchasing more than we planned. And you know, food’s no different.

It’s the same concept. Christmas is a perfect holiday. To, that demonstrates the overpurchasing of food and the intentions behind it are good. You know, people want to entertain their family members. They want to, they want to provide a wonderful dish. They want to, you know, [00:54:00] sit around a table and, and create memories.

So the, the idea behind it is. Wonderful. But if you’ve actually been in a supermarket and seen people gathering around the seasonal ham section, it’s actually confronting to witness. People get stressed, they get worked up and, and I actually, and I kid you not, this is going to sound like it’s not, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a fake story.

I. Experience this firsthand. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t experienced it myself. We, if there’s the only thing that’s in higher demand than a seasonal ham for Christmas is a seasonal vegan ham because they only make small amounts, right? So I mean, get this, they put them with the other hams. So this has been in certain supermarkets, they put them amongst the other hams.

So there you are, you know, in the ham section, but you’re aiming for the vegan ham, which is [00:55:00] about one tenth of the size of a real ham because no one wants to eat that much vegan ham. I don’t know what the reason

Emma: is, but I have no idea about this, but

Dom: you have to be on it. Because as I said, Yeah. Thank you.

One year, I saw, I casually, I thought I was being very casual about the whole thing, casually strolled past this section, saw there was a vegan ham, and I had been cruising the aisles once a week to see when the vegan hams were coming, I won’t lie, saw there was a vegan ham, I reached out to grab the vegan ham, And this woman put her hand over my hand that was holding the vegan ham and tried to intimidate me through, you know, eye contact.

God, this is like Christmas

Emily: holiday movie stuff. Oh

Dom: my goodness. Honestly, I felt like I was in one of those bad Santa movies, you know, where

Emma: everyone’s like… Who got the ham,

Emily: Dom? Well, I… [00:56:00] You know,

Dom: I was torn at that moment in time because that whole concept of Christmas is the time to be kind and Christmas is the time to, you know, But

Emma: you also want that ham that you’ve been cruising the isles for every day looking for.

I had no idea that there was this whole vegan ham world going on at Christmas time. This is

Dom: like, Oh, there it’s harder when you need a vegan ham. That’s also gluten free. So trust me, I think this is

Emma: a whole other.

Dom: At the end of the day, I got the ham, and the reason being is that I just didn’t let go.

Emma: Did your hand get there first?

Absolutely,

Dom: she held onto

Emma: my hand that was on the vegan ham.

Dom: At first I thought it was a friend saying hello, but then when I looked up I saw that there was nothing friendly about the face looking

Emma: at me. It was just a hungry vegan.

Dom: Anyway, I actually haven’t bought a vegan

Emma: ham since then.

Emily: Oh because you were so traumatized.

It just wasn’t worth [00:57:00] it.

Dom: I think the thing is, I walked out and whether it was instantaneously or the day after, I kind of realized there was something really problematic with that interaction and and it was, it was a state of frenzy. That’s, that’s how it felt. And then when you look into the facts about food consumption over Christmas, so they say that December and Christmas time is a peak time for food waste.

anD like we said, it’s mainly due to these big get togethers we have around Christmas day. But the National Food Waste Strategy Feasibility Study reported that each year Australians waste 7. 6 million tonnes of food across the food supply chain. And this equals around 312 kgs per person. And can cost up to 2, 500 per household per year.

So 2, 500 per household. And they also found, yeah, [00:58:00] it is. They also found that the amount of land. So this is part of it that some of us, many of us don’t consider the amount of land used to grow this wasted food in Australia covers more than 2. 25 Million hectares. So this is a land mass that’s larger than the state of Victoria, for example.

Emily: Oh my goodness.

Emma: And that’s

Dom: per year? So per year. Okay. Oh my goodness.

Emily: And I

Emma: wonder how much of that is attributed to Christmas. Like, you know, the food that we waste

Emily: over the Christmas period. Well, we definitely have more gatherings and, and I guess all those picnics and barbecues and, and even Christmas day.

I mean, everyone brings a plate, but once it’s been left out a few hours, the less people feel like bringing it home again, don’t they? I know.

Emma: Yeah, in the heat. Yeah, that’s it. We’re not eating as much as the Northern Hemisphere. I mean, this whole like [00:59:00] feasting. You know, it was birthed in the Northern Hemisphere where people are cold and they are hibernating essentially and they want to eat more, whereas we are in the hottest part of our year.

And this is why obviously the Christmas menu has kind of evolved into something a little bit different, but like, you know, it’s not natural for us to be eating this much. Yeah. At this time of the year, right?

Dom: And people don’t feel good after it, you know, from a nutrition standpoint, you have people feeling really terrible about how, and I hear the words a lot, how I’ve let myself go in the sense that they’ve just over consumed, they don’t feel, they feel sluggish, they don’t feel, they feel foggy, they just don’t feel well, healthy, fit and strong, you know?

And then they’ve got

Emma: all these boxes of chocolate sitting. They’re still uneaten because they were given all these boxes of chocolate for Christmas at a time. I would prefer it if I received my ethical Christmas

Emily: chocolate in [01:00:00] the winter. That’s true. You know, that’s when you

Emma: need it. Christmas in July chocolate.

Yeah, yeah.

Emily: Yeah, yeah. So mind you, that said, I do love like a food Christmas gift. I, I’ve got some friends and they’re actually good at cooking and they like give chutneys or panfort or biscotti and I love that whole kind of, then at the end, the Christmas gift’s gone, there’s, it’s, it’s zero waste, it just, and it’s special a friend of mine also, actually Dom your sister in law Kim, she gives me honey, and from her bees, and it’s just so special, it’s a present I’ll never tire of receiving yeah, yeah, so there can be like ways to do Christmas food, right Yeah, I don’t know.

I love leftovers from Christmas leftovers. Yeah.

Emma: And my mom is really good at cooking up leftovers. Like she’s like, and this is a Swedish in her. And this is, I [01:01:00] think, coming from like a really, you know, the northern Christmas where it’s. Dark all the time. And all they do is eat, but she’s really good at just getting together the Christmas ham, Christmas turkey, and all the vegetables and the potato roast yeah, she, she fries that up for days and she’ll fry it and then refry it and then refry it.

And like, I think a lot of people these days are afraid of leftovers. They think that they’re going old and you know, they don’t taste as good and they might have some sort of bacteria in them, but if you’re like heating them up in a frying pan on high heat. There’s nothing wrong with that, you know, you’re saving it from going into food waste yeah.

Emily: Our turkey goes into like a big pot and becomes turkey soup and I, I think at least I know that it’s like boiled and boiled and boiled for hours and I’m like anything that could have been there is.

Emma: Yeah, exactly. It’s a great

Dom: one. Especially, I mean, even veg that looks like it’s starting to take a turn, perfect in soups.

You

Emily: know, you don’t know any better. [01:02:00]

Dom: Yeah. But I think going back to what you were saying about reusing food and people being scared to use leftovers, I feel like, again, coming back to that concept of there being too much choice in our lives at the moment you get this food, this… Food fatigue effect whereby, and it is a legitimate concept where if you keep eating the same thing over and over and over, you can get this food fatigue and you’ll see it in kids where they decide they’re no longer going to eat something because they’ve had it a bit too frequently.

But now we’re getting food fatigue from having, you know, you have pasta. For dinner, can’t have it tomorrow, food fatigue.

Emily: It’s so

Emma: spoiled. Absolutely,

Dom: but I think, I like to reinvent, so, so for example, if you had rice leftover, because you had it with a curry and it’s just plain rice, why not turn it into a rice pudding the next day?

Or, you know, so [01:03:00] to your family, they think it’s a whole new meal. Yeah,

Emma: I love that. I think that there’s like, you know. A lot of creativity that goes into repurposing food and repurposing recipes, but it’s actually sometimes just a matter of just, just like chucking stuff together without any real understanding of how it’s going to taste at the end and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.

Dom: Sorry? Why don’t we use the vegan Christmas ham, because it’s only the size of your palm to start with, so

Emily: it’s all gone. That’s

Emma: good, no waste! Oh, we have like all the pickled fish as well, and we have gravlax, because that’s Swedish. But yeah, I love all the Christmas food, and I love eating it for the week afterwards.

You know, it’s, it’s a good time.

Emily: I also try and buy local, and with, with our meat, I, I try and buy kind of meat from a regenerative farm. It always costs a lot [01:04:00] more, but they are trying to like rebuild organic matter in the soil and restore soil biodiversity and, and I do think, I mean. It’s a bit easier in our house because we actually, we’ve got two vegans and a vegetarian and then we’ve got a few meat eaters.

So, to be honest the, the amount of turkey that we actually eat is quite small. So, so we can invest a little bit more in, in the turkey that we are eating. And we do try and buy from our local farmer’s market for for our fruit and vegetable ingredients, just in order to, to reduce the, the, The carbon footprint and, and support the local farmers as well.

Do you, I think

Dom: that’s what we’re saying

Emma: do you buy the, the meat that you buy from the regenerative farm? How do you source that? Is it online

Emily: or? Yeah, it’s online and then delivered. Yeah, okay.

Emma: Yeah, we have like, we have a, I think we’re lucky because again, I live regionally and we have so many farms [01:05:00] around us.

So we do buy from the local butcher that sources farms and obviously being here. That’s uh, there’s a lot of regenerative farming and organic farming going on around us. So I feel lucky. I think it is a challenge for a lot of people to find ethical meat, like how, as somebody living in a city. You know, where can they go to buy that kind of meat?

Maybe it’s a good idea to start going into your local butcher and your local supermarket asking for it, I guess. Do you have an organic turkey or do you have, you know, maybe if we start pushing for this, then we don’t have to spend extortionate amounts. It’s on shipping and sourcing things online if, if, if our supermarkets and local butchers actually start providing it and sourcing it for us.

Dom: Absolutely. And in

Emily: our family, so we. I, I just wanted to touch on like intentional Christmas traditions and, and if you had [01:06:00] any ideas, so, so I, I love traditions and I think that, that it can just create special sentimental moments and, and times of connection. And so I’m always looking, looking for the next one to, to add in to our family, but one intentional Christmas tradition I introduced.

few years was to give focus on, on reconnecting with nature and we choose a gift to give our garden. So yeah, so it’s really fun with the, with the children. We added a little like kind of woven house for a bird. It was only like 25. Centimeters high with a little kind of doorway. And it was so rewarding to find that this year a bird had actually nested in it and there’s like now a little nest in the branches of the tree.

So it’s kind of waiting for another, yeah. And this Christmas we’ve got like a little native bee hotel to install.

Emma: And it’s that a gift that you, that you wrap up for. Under the tree for [01:07:00] the kids, or is it something that you all think of together?

Emily: It’s more something we will do in December in the honor of like gifting to the garden.

It won’t necessarily happen on Christmas day. It’ll just happen whenever the time is right. But yeah, it’s something we, we do do. And it’s just, I don’t know, I mean, one year you could make seed balls for the birds or put together a nesting box, but they’re all the things in the future. I love the seed ball idea.

That’s, that’s

Dom: wonderful. One, I would, as making seed balls in this family, I feel like we’d make one for the garden, one for us, one for the garden.

Emma: What is a seed ball? I don’t know what a seed ball

Emily: is. Can you explain to me? It’s just, it’s just basically you create a mix of, of bird seeds with a mixture that can stick it together and you dry it so that it’s just like a solid ball that then you can you could stick a little bit of wire in and like hang it from.

A tree branch or a [01:08:00] clothesline or whatever.

Dom: Okay. Okay. But then also a yummy treat for us to have. Yeah. Yeah.

Emily: Which is

Emma: lovely. I love the idea of the native bee home. I’m looking forward, cause we have a native bee home at, I think my son’s preschool. As ones and and yeah, the, those bees are so different to the bees that we know the European bees that we introduced.

They’re completely different. Like I had no idea. They look different and they can like, they take so long to make honey and, and they’re so precious and so important to our ecosystem. And I’m looking forward to hearing how that one goes.

Emily: Yeah, so we’ll, we’ll place it in the garden and hopefully it gets populated.

I’m pretty sure it will, I’ve seen some little native bees around, so but it’ll be maybe a bit like the, the, the little bird house we’ll have to, have to watch [01:09:00] it throughout the year rather than an instant gratification, but it’s. But it’s exciting. It’s, it’s fun. I love Christmas. I Actually wrote a blog post about how to have a sustainable Christmas, which you’ll be able to find everything that we discussed today and loads more such as Christmas lights and which use up to 80 percent less energy and inspiring suggestions of planet friendly, zero waste gifts.

And that’s all at clean and conscious. com. au forward slash blog, but it’s been. Lovely to chat today. I’m really looking forward to Christmas even more now. Yeah,

Emma: and it’s been such a great So am I.

Dom: I totally I just wish we could all see each other on Christmas, but other than that Oh,

Emily: I know. Spread across Australia.

Thank you for journeying with Clean and Conscious today. If our conversation resonated with you, please take a moment to review, rate, or share our podcast with a friend. We’re Emily, Emma and Dom. [01:10:00] We appreciate you and cannot wait to share our next episode with you. Remember, every conscious step you take leaves an imprint.

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