Mar 27, 2020

Help me help them - Initiative # 1: Thank you for the music

If something good comes out of troubled times, in my opinion, is ta stronger sense of community arises. 

Since the enforced lockdown started, due to the current sanitary emergency, I have seen initiatives popping up everywhere to help people stay sane, pass the time, keep the kids busy, cheer everybody up, etc. 

One of the first initiatives I saw was by a friend of mine who is a Hungarian musician living here in the beautiful island of Lanzarote:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCedzSzLOjSwynv4nUvQVT7A


According to google it translates as something like:

"Hi everyone!

I'm going to try the "impossible".

 Although I have no videos yet, I plan to share a few things. (Note: since his post on the 24th of March, 2020 till today, he has already loaded 6 videos!). 

 YouTube is paying the channels' owner after reaching more than 1,000 subscribers. This is how if we subscribe to each other's channels, we help each other. Here is mine. (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCedzSzLOjSwynv4nUvQVT7A)

Sign up and copy yours in a comment so that I follow you and others can follow you.
Let's help each other with this too!
Take care of yourself and each other!
Kiss!"


 Musicians have been one of the first collectives to offer their concerts / gigs online for free to get us through the current times. I think it's a brilliant idea to show them our appreciation.

So, help me help them, please.

Support your favourite bands, local musicians, etc by:
1) looking up their YouTube channels
2) subscribing to them
3) watching their videos, making comments, sharing them...
4) encouraging other people to follow this initiative.

I guess it also works for anyone that has a YouTube channel, not only musicians but artists of all types: trainers, educators, speakers, crafters, make-up artists, gardeners, cooks... and a long, long etc.
And if you have a YouTube channel yourselves, don't forget to return the subscription to any one that subscribes to yours!

(Incidentally, I almost forgot I have channel myself - that how much I use it! LOL - in case anyone is interested here is the link.)

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Have you seen any other initiatives that use social media to help each other out?

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LIST OF YOUTUBE CHANNELS
Last upated: 03-Apr-2020

Here is a list of the music channels I suggest you check out:
Some are albeit quite outdated / not in use. Hey, why don't you take this opportunity to contact your favourite musician an encourage them to upload new stuff to their channels?

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Mar 15, 2020

3 less plastic things in my life

The amount of plastic that we use on our everyday life is astonishing. You only have to look at the news or read a paper and you see how much plastic is invading our seas and our waters.

Also, because I live in an island, the currents bring a lot of that plastic and other rubbish to our shores. I even started volunteering every now and then, with different volunteer groups in the island doing beach clean ups. 

 However the more I see, the more I'm convinced that while recycling is good and beach clean-ups are necessary, the answer to dramatically reduce the plastic invasion is by changing the way things are produced and preserved. 

 Over the last year I have been seriously thinking about how, as a simple consumer, I can contribute to that.

So I have been changing some of the things I use on a regular basis for others either without plastic, with biodegradable materials or more durable/easier to recycle materials. 

 Today I bring you three examples of plastic things that I used to buy that now are made of paper. 

-Shopping bags
I have longlife shopping bags which I try to use as much as possible. But we all foget them in the house or in the car, even easily foldable ones. But I'm lucky enough that the local supermarket that I use the most have introduced paper shopping bags. Afterwards,  I reuse these for carrying things or even to store paper and carboard to bring to the recycling bin.

 -Cotton buds
When I was looking for alternatives to the plastic ones I found silicone and bamboo reusable ones. In the end, I ended up using this ones that have the "stick" in the middle made of paper. Remember how lollypops used to have paper sticks too before? I used  to have fun trying to unroll it once I had eaten the sweet! How come it took so long to make cotton buds the same way?
As anybody who's clean a beach will know lollypop / cotton bud plastic sticks are one of the most common things to find.


-Deodorant
I had tried other types of more durable deodorants, the mineral rock type, but never really got used to it. I was missing some sort of nice scent that traditional spray, stick or roll-on ones have. And although I have to say I do miss the spray format I used to use, these paper wrapped stick ones are lovely, not so different from any of the old stick deodorants, but with the advantage that the packaging is less polutting than the plastic ones.  

My goal is to keep replacing or even eliminating altogether, bit by bit, as many plastic in my life as possible. 

 What plastic things have you replaced in your like with paper?
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