How to Make an Environmentally Friendly Wallet - step by step instructions

A few days ago, I posted on Facebook and here in our blog the wallet that was made from used Tetra Pak packages.  We have had a lot of interest and questions on how to make them.  Here you find a step by step instruction.   This one was made using a UHT Milk package.  We'd love to see your wallets or any other useful item you make from used carton packages.  

• Take a 1 liter empty Tetra Pak package with a screw top closure.  
• Lift the flaps and flatten the package. 

• Cut off the top and bottom sealed sections of the package.  The package should now form a tube and can be rinsed and dried.

• Flatten the package, this time so the screw top is in the centre of the package.

• Fold the top part 1/3rd of the way down, pressing to make a sharp fold on all edges.

• Cut the side edges from the bottom of the package, 1/3rd of the way up - just far enough to meet where the edge of the top package has been folded down.

• Now that both sides of been cut, fold it up and sharpen the fold by pressing your finger along it.  

• Now take the folded piece and tuck it into the top 1/3rd with the screw top facing out.  This will give your wallet two sections.  The other piece will be used as the front flap of the wallet.

• To make the wallet close, using the screw cap, take off the cap and fold the front flap over the neck to mark where your hole will need to be cut.

• Cut out the hole.  Don't make it too big - it should be just a little snug.

• Trim the edges of the front flap.

•  Fold down and put on the screw cap.  and Voila!!  You have a wallet.

Wallets Made From Cartons

On our trek through the Sierra Nevada mountains in Colombia, one of our fellow trekkers pulled out his wallet when we said we both had worked for Tetra Pak.  He proudly showed us the "Protects Whats Good" logo on his home made wallet.  Well, what do you know.  A wallet made from a 1L TBA package that used to contain soup.   Max is from France and has been trekking the Americas for a few months.  Unfortunately his backpack got stolen along with his wallet.  Being on a backpacker's budget, a friend of his offered to make him a new wallet and grabbed an empty package.  He cut and folded and voila.  No tape or glue required.  What a clever way to reuse a package.  I think I'd like mine to be made out of a used wine package.  :-)

The wallet cleverly closes with the screw cap

It has two compartments.

Max with his environmentally friendly wallet made from  a used 1L TBA package.

How many shoes in the pile?

The number of flip flops and other shoes we collected was 346 which makes 173 mismatched pairs.

They say the average number of shoes owned by women in the US is 27 pairs. All my girlfriends out there who own 30 or 40 pairs of shoes, which, I know you do because we are not 'average', do you ever think about what happens to them when you grow tired of them? What a lot of waste we create just to stay "in fashion". I am also guilty of owning too many pairs of shoes. I have taken a lot of ribbing from Jens when we travel somewhere and about a third of my luggage space is taken up by shoes. Yup, we need running shoes for the gym, walking shoes for outings, flip flops for poolside, dress shoes for office (at least two pairs to match our clothes) and of course a pair of heels or two for the dinner dates.

My running shoes did double duty as hiking shoes on our trek. They cane back a little muddy, but cleaned up just fine.

Onboard SEGWUN, I counted 10 pairs of shoes. Jens has 4 and I have 6. Not too bad even though we spend a great deal of our time barefoot.

Anyone missing a shoe?

Thanks to those who participated in our little contest. No one guessed the correct answer so we try again with another question (see below). I'm not sure what it says about our friends when condoms was one of the most frequent of guesses. Other guesses were: styrofoam, plastic bags, tires, cigarette packaging, rubber duckie, and carton packages. We saw some styrofoam of course, mostly take out food trays. There were also a few plastic toys, but I don't recall any rubber ducks. Oh, and yes, we did see some Tetra Pak packages, but thankfully only a handful or so.

The correct answer is footwear with the large majority of it being flip flops. If you ever wondered where your old flip flops ended up, you might just find them in this pile.

Jens and I spent two hours going around the island collecting all the flip flops and footwear that had washed up on shore. By our calculations, we believe footwear comes in a distant second to plastic containers and their lids. I couldn't begin to imagine how long it would have taken us if we had also collected the plastic containers for water, juice, food products, oil, toiletries such as deodorant, and the tons of plastic caps that had made it to the island. Probably third on the list in terms of quantity were glass bottles, mostly liquor bottles, all of them empty unfortunately.

Can you guess how many there are in this pile? The Segwun t-shirt goes to the person with the closest guess without going over.

Our struggle with footprints (see end of article for contest*)

As we cruise to the less popular tourist destinations and also the less developed areas, we become increasingly aware of the garbage we create. This is due to the fact that we have fewer places where we can dispose of our garbage, which means storing it on board for a week or so at a time. Also, we have to provision the boat for a longer period knowing we won't have access to a good supermarket for some time. Whatever is brought on the boat in the form of packaging will have to get off the boat somehow. We try to favor products with a minimum of packaging such as cereal in bags without the outer box, large bottles of dish and hand soap to refill our small containers, juice in plastic pouches instead of jugs or cartons, etc. We also don't buy ready meals, preferring to cook and bake ourselves. But we don't have an answer to everything. The products in PET and aluminum cans which make up a large amount of our packaging waste for which we have not found a better alternative other than eliminating from our consumption altogether is beer and diet soda. Hmmmm.

Some cruisers dispose of cans, glass and plastic overboard. They seem to think it's ok after all, the sea is wide and deep, right? They advise to remove the tops and bottoms from cans, break the glass so it will sink and fill the plastic bottles with something so they too will sink. I can't bring myself to throw anything overboard other than green waste. Even that we do only when we are not near an island because who wants orange peels washing up on their shore and even then I am uneasy about it as it takes forever to degrade food waste in salt water (see table below)

This bottle floating by our boat was not going to sink any time soon, even though it was full.

By law in the US it is illegal to dump anything overboard within 3 miles from shore. Within 3-12 miles you can dump food, cloth, glass, metal and crockery as long as it is in pieces smaller than 1 inch. Any type of plastic is illegal to dump at any time. However, with the length of time it takes for things to degrade in sea water, I think it's wise to keep our garbage out of the water and look for places that recycle. So far on this journey which has taken us to 12 countries, we have not found a single marina outside of the USA that provides bins for recyclables.

Garbage in Salt Water Degradability Rates (taken from Dozier's Waterway Guide)

• 2-4 weeks: paper towel
• 8 weeks: apple core
• 50 years: tin can
• 200 years: aluminum can
• 450 years: plastic bottle
• 600 years: glass bottle

This looks like an idyllic island of coconut trees. Take a closer look...

....and see all the plastic that has washed up on shore.

Along the coast of Colombia and through the waters of Kuna Yala (San Blas), we are seeing more and more waste floating in the sea and washed up on shore. The majority of this waste is plastic. Plastic bags and plastic containers of all sorts and sizes. Some is aluminum cans and glass bottles. The rest is logs, branches and coconuts.

It is really a shame to see a beautiful island shoreline littered with plastic. I don't know what the answer is, but I think the responsibility of the manufacturer has to come into play. How can these large multinationals be so eager to export their products to these islands and make their profits without thinking about what the locals should do with the packaging once the product is consumed. Should they not also be responsible for the waste they are creating? They should be embarrassed to see what they contribute to the landscape of our planet. This is not only an issue of littering. The islands don't have the resources for recycling and their solution to too much garbage is to burn it along with other debris. Low heat and high smoke fires make for a lot of toxins in the air.

Having seen all the plastic debris, I was curious as to how much packaging we actually had on board SEGWUN which prompted me to do a quick audit to see what do we contribute in the form of carbon footprint. Plastic is definitely number one on the list. Everything from food to cleaning products to cosmetics and medicines is wrapped or bottled in plastic these days. In Colombia we noticed a huge shift in the grocery industry from PET bottles to plastic pouches for milk, juice and water. There were also a large number of products in stand up pouches with screw tops for things such as sour cream, mayonnaise, sauces, jams, tomato products, and many other condiments. While this form of packaging is still plastic based and doesn't get rid of the waste entirely it certainly reduces it. The next step is making sure there is a proper collection and disposal system in place.

We have to be aware of the consequences of our decisions and purchases and be ready to think a little differently about what impact we have on the world around us if we are serious about making a difference. I honestly can say I have a far different view of the role of the packaging industry now that I no longer have a vested interest in it.

"THE SECOND MOST FREQUENTLY OBSERVED MAN-MADE ITEM SEEN WASHED UP ON SHORE ON A SAN BLAS ISLAND WAS : ___________________"

So now for a little contest*. I mentioned that we were dismayed with the amount of plastic containers of all shapes and sizes we saw washed up on shore on the islands in San Blas. There is a prize of a Segwun t-shirt to the first person that correctly completes the above statement. Send your guess to sy.segwun@gmail.com.

*not an official contest. This is just for a bit of fun.

Reducing our Carbon Footprint and Living on a Budget

When we decided to live on our boat for the next three years, we also thought it would be a good time to make a real effort to reduce our carbon footprint. We were dismayed when we saw the news about the 'plastic island' in the middle of the Pacific. We talked about what changes we needed to make to ensure that we didn't continue to contribute to the mess we are making of our environment.

The obvious thing is to stop buying products in plastic bottles and products that are over packaged. We stopped buying bottled water and bought a Dupont water filter for our tap. Every morning I fill two half liter reusable bottles with the filtered water. This usually lasts us for the day. We still buy our milk in 2 liter plastic. We had planned to buy UHT milk in Tetra Pak packages, but the price is often triple that of pasteurized milk. Here, the fact that we are living on a budget has overruled. I don't understand why they have to sell long life milk at such a premium.

We also started buying green cleaning products such as biodegradable soaps, shampoo and cleaning products. These products are also often more expensive but the price difference is more around the 20% range which we think is more acceptable.

Our boat didn't come equipped with solar panels or wind generation. We have seen a lot of our fellow sailors using wind and sun as energy sources. Something for us to look in to, but it is also a cost that we had not built into our budget. We have to calculate the ROI before we make the decision.

We are looking for any other ideas on how we can reduce our carbon footprint while living on a budget. The two don't always go hand in hand.