A couple of Eco hacks

Eco hacks are basically environmentally friendly solutions to problems or environmental alternatives to standard ways of doing things. Here are two of mine:

1. I love reading Focus magazine in Italian, the articles are consistently interesting, the Italian is the perfect level for me (challenging enough to feel I'm learning some Italian but easy enough to be able to read comfortably). Once I've finished reading it, I cut out some of the photos to use as visual prompts in writing classes and then the rest I shred to make packaging material for my Etsy shop!

2. My tea ball broke! This is a big thing as I try to use loose tea all the time now and a tea ball is vital for all those mugs of tea I make (I've found that I can re-se the same green tea in a tea ball a few times, but my favourite black tea, the low caffeine Keemun tea only really tastes good the first time and I don't tend to reuse that). I tried to repair my tea ball using jewellery findings and my jewellery pliers but the repair only lasted for two cups of tea. Then I thought of this solution, using a clothes peg as a handle, one half of the tea ball becomes a tea strainer. I'm not sure how effective this will be in the long run to be honest.....

The mug features a chaffinch and is the one I won in an RSPB competition several years ago (see this blog post).