In the light of the two recent meat-heavy posts, I thought it would be fitting to have a post about reducing the amount of meat we eat ;)

We’ve both actually been vegetarian for extended periods over the last decade (frustratingly not always at the same time!) so personally have an assortment of meat-free meals in our repetoire – but I thought it might be interesting to hear what other people do/have done to cut down their meat consumption.

As I’m sure everyone who is green enough to read this site knows, meat production has a huge impact on the environment before you even start to think about animal welfare. As meat has got cheaper over the years, a generation or two has forgotten that most meat used to be a luxury item, not an at-every-meal basic for everyone. At every point along the meat’s journey from field/pen to plate, it has direct and indirect environmental costs – so whatever we can do to cut down is a good thing.

Do you have meat-free days? Or the other way around, only eat meat on certain days/at certain events?

Do you avoid one particular type of meat/only eat one type of meat? Why?

On a blog recently – I can’t find the precise post, Google Reader Search is failing me – someone mentioned using meat as flavouring in a meal instead of a core ingredient: for example, a little chorizo goes a long way in an otherwise veg/bean heavy dish. I thought that was a good idea.

I remember a friend of ours who went veggie a few years ago told us one of his biggest problems was finding variety for sandwich fillings – he didn’t want to eat tuna but he felt that was his own non-cheese option. He had an “of course!” moment when we mentioned hummus and egg mayo (not together, yick!), because they both had a similar mouthfeel to tuna — but any other suggestions for sandwich fillings/packed lunch ideas?

If you have cut down/are veggie, what were the hardest challenges for you? How did you overcome them? If you haven’t overcome then yet – tell us what they are to see if we can offer any suggestions!

So after the chicken killing on Friday night, we spent Saturday playing with pig guts. It was an unusual weekend.

We were playing with hog parts because we were on a sausage making course at Old Sleningford Farm in North Yorkshire. It was a very interesting and fun course in a lovely location – I’d heartily recommend it to any sausage fans or just people wanting to try a new skill. Rachel & Martin, who run the course, are lovely – keeping us delightfully fed and watered the whole time we were mincing meat then squishing it into “casings”.

Rachel & Martin recently moved to using “ready spooled” casings for their sausages – they cost a little more but save a whole lot of time because they come “spooled” on narrow plastic tubes rather than in loose hanks (imagine how knotted hanks of yarn can get, how awkward it is to unravel them sometimes; now imagine that with pig guts instead of yarn). At one point during our group making 25kg of sausages, there were a number of the spools on the table – and Martin wondered aloud how they could be reused or recycled. Like a pork spattered recycling superhero, I suggested that I might know a friendly internet community who could come up with some ideas… :)

They’re about 30cm (1ft) and the hog casing ones are just over 1cm (half an inch) in diameter. I realise, like with chicken feathers, these aren’t something everyone will have to reuse/recycle – but any suggestions?

I guess suggestions of particularly relevance to small scale sausage producers/smallholders/foodies would be best as they’re the ones most likely to have the tubes in the first place.

Not one of our usual “how can I recycle/reduce/make this?” type questions but I’m hoping some of you might be able to give me some advice.

About once a week, some ABSOLUTELY HILARIOUS jokers leave comments on the site, attempting to insult us all and bragging about how they’re more than delighted to send whatever item were discussing to landfill – and I just don’t know how to respond to them, other than assuming they’re trolls and pressing the delete key.

I personally have very clear opinions on the environment and climate change (and, well, everything to be frank ;) ) but by and large, I keep that off the site – as much as I want everyone to be a dirty hippy like me, it’s not what the site’s about. Everyone has their own motives for reducing, reusing and recycling, I just hope that the ideas on this site can help inspire people no matter why they’re doing it.

But these wacky commenters… Ok, sometimes our questions/ideas can be a bit crunchy but we’re not forcing them on people so I don’t know why they’re responding like that. Aside from it possibly being a manifestation of guilt or the like, I don’t understand how someone can get so venomous about someone else wanting to reuse a toilet roll tube to grow seedlings in.

Other recycling/green bloggers – do you get similar comments? How do you respond to them?

Does anyone come across these people in real life too, where it’s not as easy to just hit the delete button and ignore them?

On Friday night, we killed, plucked & butchered two chickens. As you do.

To be accurate, the wonderful John B and my John did the killing, then my John’s brother Chris and I joined them in plucking, then John B showed me how to dress the chicken, and then I showed Chris. Chris handreared the chickens from day old chicks but had to give them up a couple of months ago ahead of the arrival of his son, Zachary on Valentine’s Day/Chinese New Year. We weren’t ready to take them on yet so John B, who is wonderful as I’ve said, offered to foster them until we were up and running. Then this week, he discovered the two he thought were boys, were definitely boys, and randy boys at that – and his girls were getting upset/hurt from being constantly jumped on. The boys had to go. (I’ve written up the full story on my personal blog.)

It wasn’t fun, it wasn’t my favourite way to spend a Friday night, but it wasn’t as horrific as I thought it would be. And when we ate our chicken for dinner last night, there was far far less cognitive dissonance than we’d ever had before while eating meat: on Friday evening, the chicken was flapping around in John’s arms, then on Sunday, it was in a wonderfully spicy sauce. (We tried some by itself too and it had a good flavour – they were a laying rather than meat breed so it wasn’t mind-blowing but it was nice.)

Between one thing and another, we used up a lot of the birds – from their livers to their feet – but their feathers didn’t lend themselves so easily kitchen delights. On John B’s recommendation, we just dumped them all in the compost heap but you know me, my mind instantly went to reusing & recycling ideas. Composting is alright as a reuse, but I wonder if there are better things…

Apparently, there are a number of research ideas of things to do with the bajillions of feathers sent to waste by the mass chicken production industry – a diverse selection of things from making circuit boards & biodegradable plant pots to using them to store biofuel and hydrogen fuel – but that’s not exactly stuff we can do at home though.

So any suggestions?

I usually forget about Recycle This’s birthday and only remember in a rush of guilt a few weeks afterwards but for once I remembered – Recycle This is four year old today!

As I mention on the About page, we were inspired to make the site after eating a bowl of pistachio nuts and wondering what we could do with the shells. We came up with the idea one night and just about 12 hours later, the site was up and running!

In the last four years, we’ve covered nearly 800 items and had nearly inspiring 11,000 ideas in reply, been mentioned in the national & international press on numerous occasions, and I’ve had hundreds of interesting e-conversations with wonderful people from all over the world.

Thank you all so much for making these past four years so much fun!

(Photo by Joccay)