Hey, it is Pille, introducing you to a one of a kind day, World Kindness Day and one of the kindest individuals towards the planet. Everyone understands “kindness” differently. Often it is considered as only something kind you do to others. We need not only be kind to other people but also to the planet and to ourselves! The World Kindness Day was first introduced by the World Kindness Movement in 1998, a coalition of nation’s kindness NGOs. The objective of that day is to promote the acts of kindness and to highlight the importance of being kind. It’s about focusing on positive things. I have met many people who are kind to others, but not many of them are consciously kind to our planet, to The World We Have. I met Anaïs thanks to the ESC voluntary service, and she has inspired me since the beginning. Because of that I decided to make my kindness post about her. We visited the local market together to buy some goodies. I was kind of surprised and happy to see that she had brought her own hand-sewn little fabric bags for fruits and vegetables with her instead of using the plastic bags everyone normally uses at the shops. I bought my vegetable bag in a store in Estonia, but how much better it is to the world, to give some of your old clothes a “new useful life” and sew one!! So much better for the world and reducing our footprint on the Earth. Of course these little bags full of produce fit nicely into a big reusable shopping bag. I had never heard about beeswax wraps before she showed me that she had taken these with her to Lecce. Beeswax wraps are fabric coated with beeswax that are a reusable replacement for plastic cling wrap and/or tin foil. They can be used to cover food, containers, literally anything you want to keep fresh. With proper care and regular usage they normally last for up to a year. You can only wash them with cold water, and after they dry you are good to use them again. To make them you need 100% cotton fabric. By the way, she is planning to organize a workshop on how to make these! I am already so excited to learn how to make them, and help my family and friends become more sustainable and kinder to the planet! I have been using glass straws for some time myself, but I had never thought about taking them with me when I go out. I got the idea from Anaïs to take my glass straws with me when I am planning to have lunch out on the town. Another great example of being kind to the planet is to use second-hand stores rather than fast fashion chains. The amount of water consumption, energy, pollution and textile waste used to produce fast fashion is enormous! Millions of barrels of crude oil have been used just for producing synthetic materials (polyester, nylon, spandex, etc). Also many countries where these clothes are produced don’t pay workers a living wage and the working conditions are terrible. To get an idea of how she got so conscious with sustainability I decided to have a short interview with Anaïs. She discovered a Youtube Channel of an American girl who does videos about zero waste and she has a zero waste store in NYC. Anaïs became aware of this friendly lifestyle, but it took her some time to actually be more sustainable herself. She lived right next to a local market when she did her Erasmus exchange studies in the North of Italy. She realized that she can also live a zero-waste lifestyle. She sewed her own grocery bags to take to that market, instead of using the bags there. She shared the bags with her friends and family as well. Her family has always recycled trash, but they have taken to a more sustainable lifestyle now as well. Since then, she has been spreading the idea but has never forced it on anyone. During her master’s degree she volunteered for a Green Office of Utrecht University where she got more information about sustainability; how to minimize plastic use and cause less waste. Anaïs has done both of her theses on plastic consumption, while doing so she realized over and over again that only 9% of plastic actually gets recycled. So in the grocery stores when it is possible to find the product in glass containers, she always prefers them, because it is far easier to recycle glass and it actually gets recycled. It was shocking for her to see that in the cafes in Lecce, coffee comes with plastic water cups. Hopefully this article inspired you to make better choices and be kind to our planet. And it’s not hard, you can start by simply choosing glass over the plastic, using your own reusable fruit/shopping bags. If you want to know more about how you can be kind to the planet and also to yourself and others, then stay tuned and follow us on our Instagram, because Kindness Day is coming.
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Hey, it’s Pille, coming to you with an amazing Italian adventure! Perfect Sunday.. It is an indescribable feeling when something planned turns out to be such an unexpected, perfect, idyllic Italian day. Unplanned visit to Bed & Breakfast Masseria Ospitale left unforgettable feelings and memories in my heart. Anaïs, Ilenia and I planned to have a beach day, which already sounded too unbelievable for October! In the middle of our bike tour Ilenia offered to have a break somewhere, because it is a pretty and interesting place. As soon as we biked towards the Ospitale I was already amazed by the beauty of it. When we got off the bikes I saw a tree with fruits. I had no idea what the fruit was or if it was edible. Ilenia said it was a quince (Cydonia oblonga). I was surprised that the fruits were so big and growing on a tree. This moment took me back to my childhood when we had quince growing in my grandmother’s garden. But the fruits there were much smaller and the “tree” itself looked more like a bush. I immediately tasted my mother’s syrup in my mouth from when I was a kid and got inspired to make my own. We went inside the Masseria Ospidale and Ilenia was talking with the people there, one of them turned out to be the owner, Oronzo . After their talk, Ilenia said that they have a garden with vegetables there and that we are allowed to pick the quince and whatever else we find! In that conversation in Italian Anaïs heard a familiar word - melanzana (eggplant) - and we headed to look for those purple treasures. When I heard that there were eggplants growing out back, my excitement shot up another level. I have never ever seen eggplants growing, let alone picked them myself! When we got to the garden I was so surprised by the amount of quince trees and all the other vegetables growing directly under the sun. We have to use greenhouses in Estonia to grow all these peppers and beautiful vegetables. We picked them all! I was like a little kid in a candy store!! We were exploring around and during that we found a blackberry bush. I have never seen them growing like this. How good they were! We saw fig and olive trees as well. I tried a fresh fig for the first time under that tree. After my bags were full of all the goodies, already very happy, we met with Bronwyn, who is currently living there. She explained to us more about the Masseria Ospitale. As the main harvest of tomatoes, peppers and eggplants is over, everyone can pick those three things, as what is left will just go to waste. So we ended up there at the perfect time. She also mentioned that they are making the famous Italian tomato sauce "passata" there. By the way she is organizing yoga lessons there every Wednesday at 08:30 and also different events with another yoga teacher. It looks like the perfect place for yoga and mindfulness. Bronwyn asked us if we’d picked any of the arugula yet and we walked towards them. It looked just like grass growing there before, I didn’t even recognize the arugula. And the taste of that arugula was much stronger, better than the ones we grow in our greenhouse in Estonia or what you can buy from a grocery store. I found out that the fruits growing on cactuses are the same fruits I have bought from the grocery stores here for the first time in my life, they are called prickly pears. The whole day made me so overwhelmed, it was filled with so many positive emotions. I was so happy to see that Ilenia and Anaïs felt exactly the same way as I did. We biked back home in golden hour and saw an old man picking something on our way back. It turned out that there was arugula growing just there on the fields. This perfect day taught me so much about Italian hospitality, cuisine, culture and agriculture. Letting people pick the leftover harvest is a good example of sustainability in using local produce rather than buying things from big stores. P.S. I actually used the quinces to make the jam. Even though it was my first time making the jam, it turned out really good and got a lot of positive feedback. Anaïs and I also used the eggplants and tomatoes to make parmigiana. Since it was cooked by two foreigners - a Belgian and an Estonian - it didn’t look as good, but the taste was still amazing!! ~Pille |
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