Apologies in advance if this post puts an end to this glorious sunshine.
It has been HOT! And sunny. And generally more like Summer than I remember a Summer being for a little while.
Hurray!
We have however, been eating a reasonable number of ice lollies, and I am sure that we have seen a resultant rise in the volume of our landfill rubbish (being an avid Waste Watcher makes you twitchy about these kind of things…)
So I have been looking for alternatives that are either Zero Waste, OR plastic free, OR both (is this possible?)
I posed the question during last week’s #makedoandmendhour on Twitter, and had some great suggestions:
- Re-usable moulds-most of these are plastic, but you can get silicone ones, or even metal ones (Rachelle from My Zero Waste, who tweeted me the link to these described the price as “a bit ouchy”!)
Here is a round up of the 10 best ice lolly moulds from The Independent last year! - Poke lolly sticks into half bananas, roll them in sugar and wrap in greaseproof paper (greaseproof can be used again, or composted). Sprinkles/chopped nuts optional
- Mix yoghurt, bananas, strawberries and a dash of vanilla extract, and pour into re-usable moulds
- Use a deep muffin tin-pour in fruit juice/smoothie, cover with foil, and poke a lolly stick through into each cup
- Freezing chunks of watermelon on a fork
- Using plastic beakers and a fork
We have got some re-usable plastic moulds that I found in a charity shop last summer.
They are however, a bit rubbish. The poky stick/handle bit is too short, and so when you try and pull the lolly out of the mould, the stick invariably comes out and leaves the lolly behind. Quite frustrating. Even more so if you are 3, and hot and NEED an ice lolly.
Undeterred, hubby decided to have another go.
We picked up some innocent fruit juice on offer (plastic bottle, but recyclable!), and poured this into the moulds. The moulds went into the freezer for about an hour, and then we (hubby) poked some ‘pre-loved’ lolly sticks into them and popped it all back into freezer overnight.
The result?
Delicious, healthy(ish), zero waste ice lollies!
And we’ve even saved the sticks to use again (and again, and again…!)
Anyone else got any fabulous zero waste lolly ideas/recipes?
My Make Do and Mend Year 
Remembering to put the stick in after an hour is my problem. I haven’t tried this but could you make a hole in the lid of the smoothie bottle and put the stick through that. Put the lid loosely into the bottle DON’T fasten it properly, and freeze it like that.
That would make one GIANT ice lolly Mary-the bottle we have are about 1-2 litres!
Sorry, I’ve seen only individual ones but having looked in the supermarket I see what you mean!
Thinking about it some more it would be difficult to use smoothie bottles because they have a narrower neck. You could use “disposable” cups with covers though
And then re-use them? Do you mean like coffee cups with plastic lids?
That’s the ones!
Reblogged this on Linda's wildlife garden and commented:
THANKS FOR SHARING JEN HAVE A BLESSED DAY
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