Hankies

Wow really? Yep even more nostalgic than a milk bottle a good old fashioned handkerchief. These are not new ideas I am spouting here just sensible ones that were common place before the convenience of products such as paper, one use, tissues.

Now my memory of a hankie was getting them for Christmas off a relative. They were usually white with a pink trim and my initials embroidered in the corner. I hated them. However for the benefit of the environment I decided to give them another go.

Now you might think a paper tissue isn’t that big a deal in comparison to a plastic bottle and you would possibly be right. But it is still a wasteful, one use product that can be easily replaced with an eco version. You also need to think of the environmental impact of their production, making anything requires energy and getting it to the shops requires transportation and they can’t be recycled once used. The cardboard carton can be recycled and you can buy tissues made from recycled paper but those are end solutions dealing with a waste product. We need to think about reducing demand  What can be even more annoying is if you bulk buy your tissues they often come in a plastic wrapper keeping all the boxes together.

I use a lot of tissues so I knew this might be a challenge for me. I have a hearing and pressure problem which seems to also mean a frequent runny nose. Now before this turns into WebMD, yes I have had it checked out by my Doctor and no it isn’t allergies or hay fever.

The solution? Hankies. So I took to my favourite app Pinterest, I live on this app. It is so easy to create boards about anything and pin pictures, web pages, blogs articles etc and save them for later. I find it both practical and inspirational. There are a lot of clever people out there and Pinterest helps me keep their ideas organised.

Now the results were extensive, I saved around 10 and had a good read. And this is what I learned. There are many ways to make a hankie both for show and actual use, they can be very fancy or very plain. They are easy to make yourself but also easy to buy. Prices vary wildly.

The hard part here is material. If you really want to start getting your head around eco choices or eco alternatives you need to look at what it is made from, where it comes from and how it is packaged.

If you regularly buy from the internet you will know that many cheap items come from China. And if you are willing to wait a while and often receive your product with a customs checked tag then you probably order from there a lot. I used to.

But if you are trying to replace something for eco reasons then don’t counter act your effort with emissions caused by transport. Look closer to home, help out the UK economy and believe in the good old Royal Mail.

Most of you probably know some one who can sew, it might be worth asking if it is something they could make for you.  However be kind and bear in mind the time it will take them and the cost of the materials, re-pay the favor or pay a fair price.  It would probably be best for you to source the material then you get to choose what it is made of and the print.  You never know you may inspire them to start a cottage industry such as Hilda’s Hankies.

Another reason to make them yourself or buy local is the packaging.  A while ago I ordered some 100% organic cotton face clothes off the internet and was really annoyed to receive them wrapped in a plastic envelope.  If you do order them see if the seller provides packaging information, if not, contact them and ask if you could receive your order in something kinder to the environment such as brown paper which can at least be re-cycled.  Also they are quite often the kind of thing you would find at a local craft fair.

It was a no brainer for me to try to make them myself, although my sewing skills are limited I figured a hankie is about my level.  I also keep a stash of material in the house that I have picked up over the years.  Unfortunately most of it is without labels so I am guessing at the make up of the material itself.  But I was in luck with a couple of sets of fat quarters I bought from Aldi because I liked the prints, they had the label attached and said 100% cotton.

In an ideal world I would have chosen 100% organic, fair trade cotton and looking into the eco cost of printing the pretty patterns onto my material, my mind was blown regarding how complicated and harmful that side can be.  So I think plain not dyed would also be the most eco option.  Getting the ideal eco material is most likely going to cost more, but like anything you pay for quality.

When I started this journey I set myself some criteria, I am not aiming to be zero waste, I am aiming to be low impact.  Make changes where I can and be in it for the long game.  I knew a sudden and expensive culture shock was not going to make this easy and like a diet I would be much less likely to stick to it.  My journey needs to be sustainable too.

So my criteria is set out like the table I used for my milk bottles blog.  I look at the cost, convenience, eco impact and other benefits.  I also decided that if making something and I already have the materials/ingredients available then I don’t see the point in wasting them to buy new eco versions.  Throwing out all of my material doesn’t make sense, the production has already happened, binning it doesn’t reduce the demand and I won’t send something to landfill until it has been thoroughly used.

You can’t use any material however, for the practical purpose that it needs to be kind to your nose, easy to wash and durable.  Cotton is a natural product, totally biodegradable and can also be put into your home compost system.  I have a home compost bin but when I had a good think I realized the thread I have in is most likely acrylic (a type of plastic), the thought of having to pull the thread out of one every time I wanted to bin/compost was not appealing.  The solution came when researching wax wraps (separate blog to follow).  I noticed some people were not sewing there’s but using pinking shears to cut out the material.  Now for those of you who don’t sew your material would fray at the edges if not sewed or edged.

Pinking shears are a type of scissors that instead of a straight edge they have crocodile teeth and create a zig zag pattern, which prevents fraying.  Light bulb moment.  This would be perfect for my hankies, I picked up a pair whilst at Hobby Craft buying my milk crate, this is the product link. They cost £6 but I know they are going to be great for a lot of projects.

Before you start you need to wash and iron your material, this makes it a lot easier to work with. I wanted to waste as little material as possible so looking at my fat quarters I decided one of them split into 4 would be about the right size.  I used tailors chalk and a ruler to measure and mark where to cut.  I then cut round all the edges to stop them from fraying. And that was it, job done and I actually think they look very simple and pretty.

I made a smaller version for my daughter out of some left over material I had from my wax wraps.  Left over material from other projects would make great hankies.

I put my scraps straight into my compost bin.  They will take 5-6 months to break down.

Now as it happens whilst in the process of making these I got a stinker of a cold (obviously psychological) and it became quickly apparent that these hankies were great for keeping in my bag for every day use but were not fit for purpose for a full-blown case of the sniffles.

I remember as a kid my Mam cutting up old sheets to make super soft hankies for when your cold had your nose looking like Rudolph, so I dug around my supplies and found an old jersey cotton sheet from my daughters cot bed.  Jersey cotton is basically cotton with elastic in it and most elastic is made from rubber which is a natural product but again I don’t know if that is the case with the sheet so I wouldn’t risk it in my compost.  I brushed it against my face, it was so soft and I knew straight away it would do the job.

I didn’t have the patience to measure it and cut it up pretty and due to the elastic in it there is no risk of fraying.  So I took my fabric scissors to it and roughly chopped up the sheet into tissues sized pieces.  I ended up with a nice pile.  I used these a lot over the next few days, and all I did was chuck them in with my normal washing and as they were small they didn’t take long to dry.  The best bit is my nose didn’t get sore like it normally would with paper tissue.

They are now washed and put away ready for the next unfortunate family member who gets the serious sniffles.  These are now affectionately referred to in our house as snot rags, I felt the need to differentiate between the two types and my daughter thought it hilarious when I referred to them as snot rags so the name has stuck.

So in conclusion have I stopped using paper tissues? In a word no.  I feel like this is a bad habit I need to shake.  They are convenient and sometimes it feels easier and less yacky to use it and bin it.  However I have definitely reduced the amount I use, quite significantly.  Especially for out and about because I keep the cotton hankies in my bag.  I didn’t need to buy any extra tissues when I had my cold and they no longer need to be added to the shop every week.

Now for my first give away!  I obviously want people to adopt these ideas but I think that often requires people getting the chance to try it out for themselves without too much commitment or cost.  So to the first person to like and comment on this post, I will send them a set of four cotton hankies.  UK addresses only I am afraid.  And you even get to choose your print from the two pics below. So comment with your choice. I will contact seperately for your address.

 

 

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