S1E9: 

Green Living 

with Nancy Birtwhistle

Dana Thomas:  This is Dana Thomas, and you're listening to The Green Dream, a podcast about how to green up your life.

Climate change is bearing down on us like a mighty hurricane. And it's scary as hell, but it doesn't have to be. I'm Dana Thomas, a leading voice in the sustainable fashion movement. On The Green Dream, I welcome global experts, creators and change makers from politics, business, and the arts for dynamic conversations on how you can green up your life. The Green Dream is the podcast of hope.

This episode is sponsored by Another Tomorrow, a women's fashion brand that redefines luxury with a commitment to ethics, sustainability, and transparency from farm to fabric to atelier. Find Another Tomorrow on its website, anothertomorrow.co, at its flagship boutique, 384 Bleecker Street in New York City, and at select stores.

If you like cakes, baking or English reality TV, then chances are you've seen my guest today, Nancy Birtwhistle. She won The Great British Bake Off in 2014, even despite having proved her fruit bread dough in a microwave, which resulted in a plum loaf so enormous, it looked like it had been pumped full of steroids. Nevertheless, Judge Mary Berry said, “I think it tastes absolutely scrumptious.” 

Nancy was born and raised at Hull, a city on the east coast of England. Her first memory of baking and cooking was with her grandmother, who taught her how to make a custard tart. For 36 years, she worked in the National Health Service as a medical administrator for a general practitioner. She always baked for her family. Once she retired from the NHS, it became a real passion. She applied for the fourth season of The Great British Bake Off and didn't make the cut. She reapplied for the fifth season with 16,000 other applicants, and not only was she chosen, she won! “It was the most difficult thing I have ever undertaken in my life, but equally the most enjoyable,” she said.

Since then, she has been writing books on cooking, household hints, and how to live a greener life. Sustainability has become a real passion for her. Her book, Clean and Green: 101 Hints and Tips For a More Eco-Friendly Home, came out in 2021. Now she has a new book: Green Living Made Easy, 101 Eco Tips, Hacks, and Recipes to Save Time and Money, published by Pan Macmillan. She calls it a massive lifestyle manual. She's not wrong. In the book are all sorts of tips about how to green up your life, which is also the mission of The Green Dream podcast. So it seemed right to have her here today.

Nancy Birtwhistle, welcome to The Green Dream. You're speaking to us from your home in Barton-Upon-Humber. Have you been baking today? And if so, what?

Nancy Birtwhistle: I have been baking today. Actually, I've been baking with my granddaughter, Dana. We made a cake. And we also made, oh gosh, like little biscuits. Cute little biscuits. Yes.

Dana Thomas: What kind of biscuits did you make? Meaning cookies, in American.

Nancy Birtwhistle: Yes, they were actually like little lemon biscuits. And we made brandy snap.

Dana Thomas: What is a brandy snap?

Nancy Birtwhistle: A brandy snap. It's a combination of the sugar, butter, and syrup, and you heat those in a pan, then add the flour, cool it down to a very firm dough, and then roll it into little balls and then bake it in the oven. And what you get is a sort of lacey finished biscuit that dries really, really crisp.

Dana Thomas: Nice. And what was the cake that you made?

Nancy Birtwhistle: Yes, just a very simple Victoria Sponge cake.

Dana Thomas: With a kind of icing?

Nancy Birtwhistle: With a filling. I don't like really sugary, over sweet fillings. So, I tend to make a Swiss meringue buttercream, which is super simple. You don't need thermometers or anything like that, but it's nice and smooth and not too sweet.

Dana Thomas: Fantastic. Now you say in the opening of your book that you aim to help readers have more time, less waste, and green living. What do you mean by that?

Nancy Birtwhistle: Absolutely. Well, I think the pressure nowadays is—everybody's busy, we're under enormous pressure with the planet and with the increasing cost of living pressures. I realize, and I accept that people with busy lives haven't necessarily got the time to be mindful of making green changes or doing things from scratch, because there's a perception that doing that takes much, much longer. And I think we've been brainwashed into thinking that going green and using natural products is in fact inferior to chemical, heavy alternatives, which just isn't the truth.

And the other thing is, I think going green and living a greener type lifestyle has been, up to now, fairly elitist. Because there are eco-friendly products. I started with cleaning, but there are other eco-friendly products on the market that are probably four times the price of supermarket-owned brands. And for young people especially, with a limited household budget, I know at that time in my life, I wasn't able or prepared to be able to spend four times the price on an eco-friendly product, even though I may have well been well-motivated to live a greener life for the sake of my children. But I couldn't have afforded it. Whereas I've tried to and succeeded, I believe, in making it achievable for everybody.

Dana Thomas: Absolutely. And you start in the kitchen, which seems very appropriate. In the book, your first chapter is, "Well, let's go to the kitchen." Because that is the busiest room in the house, and it is your passion. So to get to there, let's start by talking a bit about The Great British Bake Off, which you were on in 2014. You said it was one of the most stressful things you've ever done in your life, and difficult things. How so?

Nancy Birtwhistle: I'd never, ever been on television before, and so seeing how television worked was really quite different. Obviously, it was nerve wracking, because I was in a completely strange environment, trying to bake and cook in a tent, with cameras looking at me. And, of course, I was amongst a whole load of strangers. So the other bakers, I didn't know the environment. I didn't know where I was in the country, everything about it was very secret. And it was a competition. But even though it's been the most nerve-wracking thing I've ever done in my life, it was also the most enjoyable.

Dana Thomas: Really? How so?

Nancy Birtwhistle: Because it was a whole new experience, and it created lots and lots of opportunities afterwards. I mean, I wouldn't have been doing this podcast with you today, I'm sure, if I hadn't won the Bake Off.

Dana Thomas: But you've been baking your whole life. You started baking with your grandmother, didn't you?

Nancy Birtwhistle: Yes. And I love baking. I love cooking. I love growing my own food. I love to live that sort of sustainable life. But I'd never, ever entered a competition. I thought my food was probably tasty, and I do like attention to detail, so I do like cakes and pies. And anything that I make, I like it to look appealing as well as taste good. Because I think we eat with our eyes as well as what we taste. I think it has to look appealing as well. So I've always had a tendency to be fairly creative when it comes to my food, but I'd never, ever entered a competition before, ever. Not even on a small scale. So then to go straight into The Great British Bake Off, it was quite a challenge.

Dana Thomas: Now you write in the book that we can't relentlessly take from our planet. We also have to give back in order to try to reverse or at least halt some of the damage we have caused. Now, that's what you're doing with your sustainability movement and your books. When did you pivot to a more sustainable lifestyle? Was there a sort of a green light moment that happened? Was it something, you've always lived this way?

Nancy Birtwhistle: I've always lived a fairly, what's the word—maybe frugal is maybe too strong a word—I’ve never, ever been wasteful. I was always brought up to eat up every morsel on my plate and use everything that's in the cupboard and in the fridge and not throw food away. I think my generation was sort of brought up to be like that. But, for energy and things like that, I mean, back in the 1970s, things were fairly tough. And so my behavior was such that I've always been fairly prudent around the home, not being wasteful. Like lots and lots of people, I'd become reliant on a number of single-use items. So I was using single-use cling film, I was using bin liners, I was using single use wipes for various things.

 And I think the catalyst for change, for me, was sitting around the table on Christmas with all the grandchildren, and we were talking about some of the [David] Attenborough programs, the Blue Planet programs, and the state of the planet, and how things are going to have to change. And I can remember sitting and looking at the faces of my grandchildren and realizing that actually, it's not me that's going to suffer. It's them, if we don't start to make some changes. And that's what I started to do, but on a very small, individual scale.

Dana Thomas: Fantastic. How long ago was that?

Nancy Birtwhistle: Probably five, six years ago. And the decision I made there and then was, I don't need to be using single-use wipes. I didn't used to use them. So I don't need to buy those. I don't need to use cling film, because I can remember a time before cling film existed. So that's another piece of single-use plastic that often just ends up in the sea or in landfill. And so I just started with small changes like that. Stopped buying wipes, stopped buying single-use plastic. And then what I have found is it becomes very addictive in a feel-good way. 

 So you've made a few changes and then you want to make some more. That's how I felt. And then I started examining the reverse labels on cleaning products. And I was absolutely distraught when I read that, certainly in the UK, what is routinely printed on the reverse label of so many cleaning products, everyday cleaning products, is “harmful to aquatic life, with long lasting effects.” And I started to see this standard statement on so many products -- and obviously when you look at eco-friendly equivalents, they're four times the price. So I thought right, "Well, I can write recipes for food, so I'm going to start to write recipes for cleaning products." And that's what I started to do. And so my book, Clean & Green, which came out a year last January, became a UK Top 10 bestseller. And I had no idea. I had no idea that there was such an appetite for it. So clearly, I think people want to do it, but they want to do it in an affordable way.

Dana Thomas: So what do you do to replace using single-use plastic, like cling wrap?

Nancy Birtwhistle: Right. So cling wrap, or cling film as we tend to call it, there are various things you can use. One thing that I use a lot is the plastic liner that comes out of a packet of breakfast cereal. So where I used to wrap certain foods in plastic, I'll reuse that piece of food-grade plastic that was lining my box of breakfast cereal. And I'll use those as freezer bags, I'll use them to roll out pastry dough, use them to wrap food, sandwiches, and that sort of thing in the fridge. 

 Equally, I make beeswax wraps. They're a great alternative to cling film and eco-friendly. And when they've finally had their day, they can just go in the compost bin, and they'll biodegrade along with everything else. I store lots of things in glass screw-top jars that would maybe, beforehand, be wrapped in cling film. I'll cover a bowl with a plate rather than a sheet of cling film. 

Dana Thomas: Yeah, I do that too.

Nancy Birtwhistle: So if you stop using it, it's amazing how we come up with other ideas. 

 When I'm proving bread, I use a reusable shower cap to cover the dough rather than cling film. Because I need space for the dough to rise, and the shower cap is perfect for that. So there's lots and lots of ways to do it if you start thinking outside the box. I've bought reusable Tupperware-type boxes for the freezer and for wrapping food up in the fridge and that sort of thing, whereas before I would've used a sheet of cling film and then thrown it away.

Dana Thomas: Right, exactly. Now, all of this is important because as you point out in the book, in the UK alone, 6.6 million tons of food is thrown away each year. Waste is just enormous, right? And even we throw away food. What do you suggest as individuals that we do to cut down that figure? The food figure?

Nancy Birtwhistle: Yeah. And I mean, not only is it a waste of food that just simply lands up in landfill; it's a waste of money, too.

Dana Thomas: It really is.

Nancy Birtwhistle: And there is no need for it. And what I'm doing now is, I mean, I've got a really engaged social media audience. And what I'm sharing, and people share back as well, is how to look after the food that we bought. For example, I don't know how it is in the US, but here in the UK, if you buy supermarket-washed carrots, they're often in a plastic bag. And then you get them home and you'll open the plastic bag to let some air in and use a couple of your carrots. And then when you return to them maybe four or five days later, they've gone soft and soggy or moldy or just not edible, and you throw them away. 

 But what we've been doing is taking all veg out of the plastic packaging. The main thing is, supermarkets need to stop wrapping fruit and veg in plastic, because it shortens the life dramatically. And I mean, I took a bag of carrots on the 5th of February, took them out of the plastic, and wrapped them in a dampened tea towel or any piece of cotton cloth, wrapped them up after dampening it with cold water, put them in the salad compartment of the fridge and no word of a lie, this carrot is now nine weeks old.

Dana Thomas: Wow.

Nancy Birtwhistle: And it's absolutely fine. Lemons. I don't know how you buy them in the US, but here in the UK, a pack of lemons, you'll probably get four or five lemons in a yellow string bag, and you'll use a couple and then leave the others in the pantry, which is cool and nice. But then, after a couple of weeks, they've either gone really hard or they've gone moldy. Whereas if you put lemons or limes in water in the fridge, in a screw top jar or anything with a lid on, I'm now onto week seven with lemons.

Dana Thomas: Fantastic. This is great. I love this. Now, one of the things you've gotten rid of in the kitchen as well is plastic trash bags, or as you called them in the UK, bin liners. How did you do that? Can you explain? Because that's one place even where I'm careful with single use plastic, I haven't done that. So tell us how you do it.

Nancy Birtwhistle: Right. Well, again, I was examining my single use items around the house, and I've got little bins in bathrooms. I've got two bins under the sink. One is a compost bin and one is just a general refuse bin. And each one had a single-plastic liner in it. And I was probably using three or four liners a week. And when the bins were full, I would just throw them into a larger bin outside that the refuse men take away. Right. And that was also lined with a plastic bag. So just my house was probably using four or five single-use plastic bags every single week that were ending up in landfill.

Dana Thomas: Which doesn't biodegrade. It just sits there forever.

Nancy Birtwhistle: Exactly. So I decided to do away with them. I thought that the result would be something disgusting, because I thought my bins would be revolting every week, because there'd be all sorts of food spillages. But actually what it made me do was be much cleaner around the house. So rather than just throw food waste straight into a plastic lined bin, what I tend to do, I save all my paper packets. So my flower bags and sugar bags. And if I've got food waste like that, I pop it into a paper bag. So, I'm much tidier with my refuse, if that makes sense. I don't just sling things in a bin. I wrap them up in paper first.

Dana Thomas: Interesting, very interesting. These are great tips and very helpful for The Green Dream, where we strive for listeners to green up their lives. 

This episode is sponsored by Another Tomorrow, a women's fashion brand that redefines luxury with a commitment to ethics, sustainability, and transparency from farm to fabric to atelier. Find Another Tomorrow on its website, anothertomorrow.co, at its flagship boutique, 384 Bleecker Street in New York City, and at select stores. 

Dana Thomas:  Now, in another important part of the book, which you talked about a bit earlier, is about replacing store bought cleaning products with homemade ones. And you have a couple that you've made that have really great names too, such as Cream Cleaner and Pure Magic. Can you tell us what they are?

Nancy Birtwhistle: Well, Pure Magic is unbelievable. And it took me a long time to get the recipe so that it was just right. But, in my first book, I was looking for a chlorine bleach alternative, a green alternative, because, of course, chlorine bleach is so bad for the environment. It takes years to down. It's a terrible thing. Yet it's so cheap, and it works. And I wanted something that would kill germs. I want something that would destroy limescale, because it's a big problem here where I live. And I wanted something that would clean the toilet, kill germs, I wanted it to smell fresh.

Dana Thomas: In the toilet.

Nancy Birtwhistle: Yeah. And I came up with, at the time I called it Toilet Magic. And really, the active ingredient is citric acid, which is an unbelievable, fantastic natural product. Used lots in the food industry, but not so much in cleaning. And it's a really, really powerful tool. But what I had to understand is saturation point, and I'm not a chemist, I'm not a scientist. I was really starting from scratch, but in the end, to cut a very long story short, what I came up with was a cleaning product which not only clean the toilet but then, I found out, just so many of the things. So it'll clean the sink, it will whiten your whites, it will destroy mold, it will kill algae, it will get rid of slippery parts. It will clean glass. You know, I'm thinking of my greenhouse, and in the spring, the glass is all sort of green and full of algae after the winter. Just a spray of Pure Magic and the whole thing is clean and sparkling. It's unbelievable.

Dana Thomas: And you have the recipe for it in the book.

Nancy Birtwhistle: The recipe for it is in the book, and it's so good. I mean, only yesterday, I soaked some badly stained covers for the oven. And so they do get stained with food things, and I washed them, and some of the stains hadn't come out, and I thought, well, what do I do next with these? And so I just gave them a spray with Pure Magic and stood them out in the sunshine. And the sun bleached – with the Pure Magic, the citric acid – bleached the stains out of it just completely naturally. Absolutely wonderful. So I only discovered that one yesterday. So, we've got all the resources and we've got all the products. It's just understanding how everything fits together.

Dana Thomas: It surely is. And I love your tip about mold on fabrics, because that's the second thing I had to deal with during lockdown. I didn't wear many of my clothes during lockdown, so the closet stayed closed, and two things happened. The moths ate through most of my good sweaters, and a lot of clothes came out with a really musty, moldy smell. And with Pure Magic, you have the solution for that, don't you?

Nancy Birtwhistle: Yes. Yeah. For things like clothing, because it is a beast of a cleaner, it is so good. And I've had so many followers say to me, "I have lived with a stained toilet for years. I just thought it was something that was part and parcel. I've used Pure Magic and it's cleaned up in a way that it's never cleaned before." And in it's diluted form, it's great for whitening clothes. So one or two tablespoons in a bowl of cold water will whiten up whites and, like you say, get rid of any mold spores on clothing or what have you.

Dana Thomas: Fantastic. Now tell us about Cream Cleaner, because that's one of your other great gems, isn't it, in the book?

Nancy Birtwhistle: Yes. Now Cream Cleaner, I came up with that recipe, because knowing that bicarbonate of soda is a fantastic natural cleaning product.

Dana Thomas: For everything. Right?

Nancy Birtwhistle: For so many things, yes. But I was finding that I was using so much of it in powder form, I was wasting it. Because I would dab it onto a cloth and then I'd find I'd spilt it on the floor. And I thought I need bicarbonate of soda in a much easier way to use. I need it in a paste form or a cream form. So, I came up with a recipe where it's mixed with vegetable glycerine, which is a soap derivative anyway, so it has its own cleaning properties, as well as the bicarbonate of soda. And then just 10 mls of an eco-friendly dish soap, I think you'd call it in the US. We call it washing-up liquid. And what you get is a thick creamy paste, and that is such a fantastic cleaner for so many things. I've used it to dab onto stains before you put laundry in the washing machine. I've used it on paint work. I've used it to clean shoes. I've used it to clean my oven. It's a fantastic, fantastic cleaning product.

Dana Thomas: And you also had a solution for cleaning metal, like silver. Like your homemade silver polish.

Nancy Birtwhistle: Yes. Yeah, because again, when I looked at the reverse label on metal cleaners, all the ones I've looked at are extremely harmful and toxic to aquatic life. So I thought, I've got to come up with a metal cleaner that is going to be eco-friendly. And so, it's a spray. My brass cleaner, you just spray it on. And then I use an exfoliating glove to sort of rub it in, and then literally rinse it off. It's unbelievable.

Dana Thomas: Fantastic. Yes. Even when you just open the bottle or the jar of your polish, the smell burns your nose in a way you go, this is probably not good for me, it's probably not good for the planet. Even if it does make my great grandmother's teapot shine again. So we're going to try your new homemade method that's a lot less toxic. 

 Now, not everything is about cleaning things in the house. There's also laundry. And in my book, Fashionopolis, I talk about how we wash our clothes too much and that we kill them. We bake them in the oven, and we boil them in the washing machine, and it gives them a much shorter life. 

 And interestingly, Procter & Gamble's Vice President for Global Fabric Enhancing, a guy named Bert Wouters, I loved his name was Wouters and he is in the water business, he told me that we should always run, when we do our laundry, we should always run the fast cycle with cold water. The clothes will still get cleaner, and it lengthens the life of the clothes. 

 And he said, if we lengthen the life of just one in five garments in Europe--in Europe, he was talking about--by 10 percent, so your blue jeans are going to live one month longer than they would've or two months longer than they would've, we could cut a million tons of CO2, save 150 million liters of water, and divert 6.4 million tons of clothing from landfill. This is just 10 percent, one out of five garments. And by 10 percent, just by just washing them with cold water. We're also saving money by doing this, aren't we? So you also say short cycles and cold water, don't you?

Nancy Birtwhistle: No. Well, I moved over to cold washing about two years ago, and I got a message actually from someone in the US, linking me into a podcast. And he said, what are your views on cold washing? And I didn't have any views, because I didn't really know it was a thing. I knew that washing at cooler temperatures for certain delicate fabrics was recommended. But I'm talking things like towels and bedding and all those sorts of things. I'd always washed at a high temperature.

Dana Thomas: We boiled them, basically.

Nancy Birtwhistle: Yes. Absolutely.

Dana Thomas: With the idea that we were killing germs by boiling them, right?

Nancy Birtwhistle: Yeah. And so, I listened to this podcast – it went on for some time – about cold washing, and I thought, "Well, presumably what you need for it to make it work, you need to use chemical heavy detergents. Otherwise it's not going to work." And I don't want to use chemical heavy detergents. I've turned my back on chemical heavy detergents. And all I use is sodium carbonate, which is washing soda, and a plant-based detergent.

  So some of the time, I just use conkers. I just use Ivy Leaves or I buy a plant-based liquid soap. I don't buy biological detergents or fabric softeners, any of those things. So I thought, well, I wonder if cold washing is going to work if I'm just using natural detergent in my washing machine. So I started, I had never, ever used a 20-degree cycle on my machine. It had one, but I'd never, ever used it. The lowest I'd ever used was a very short 30-degree cycle, but my 20-degree cycle goes on for two hours, 19 minutes. But the time it takes, it's only to turning the water. What uses 95 percent of the energy in your cycle is heating the water.

Dana Thomas: Yes, it is.

Nancy Birtwhistle: So, cold washing is so fantastic. It's better for your fabrics, obviously better for your machine because it's not having to heat up the water, so it's not scaling up the appliance. It's better for your pocket, because it's using a fraction of the energy. My degree 20-cycle goes on for over two hours and uses 350 watts of electricity, compared to 1.44 kilowatts at a 60-degree cycle. So it uses a quarter of the energy. It goes on for nearly three times as long, but all it's doing is moving the clothes around it in a pool of water. It's not really using much energy at all. And it's completely transformed the way I wash. Cold washing is wonderful. And of course, it's washing at hot temperature that fixes stains. So your stain removal is much, much better.

Dana Thomas: Interesting. Interesting. Have you seen your bills go down?

Nancy Birtwhistle: Oh yeah. Yeah, yes. Tremendously. Tremendously. Well, I've been doing it now for two years, and I've never used a hot wash since. I do everything. And so people said to me, well, what if there'd been a diarrhea and vomiting type bug? What about that? Well, of course you can buy a green bleach. Oxygen bleach. And so I would do a pre-soak in green bleach and then do a 20-degree wash.

Dana Thomas: Yes. Now, let's talk about gardening. Let me do that again. Let's talk about gardening. Like me, you gardened with your grandfather. Where do you garden now? I heard you say something about a greenhouse. I'm very envious. What do you grow in your greenhouse, and why?

Nancy Birtwhistle: Well, I've got a fairly sizable garden, and I've enjoyed growing fruit and vegetables for most of my adult life, really. But I've become more and more involved in it really because the supermarket has lots of food. We seem to have lost the seasons that are attached to food. And what happens is you can more or less buy anything anytime in this country. I could go into the supermarket now and buy strawberries, I can buy any soft fruit. 

 And certainly people don't realize that fruit and vegetables have their season. And when it's the true season, they taste so much better. And I think the beauty of growing your own food is A. it tastes better, and B. it's not been treated. You know, potatoes, for example, are sprayed something like 28 times. Apples in the supermarket may be a year old. 

 I'm trying my best to be self-sufficient. I'm not far off. I grow all my own fruit and veg. It's very difficult to be self-sufficient with potatoes, because I haven't got the space to keep me in potatoes all the year round. But I've got freezers. I dry certain foods. I pickle certain foods. There's all sorts of ways of preserving your food. And now I just try to not buy any food that isn't in season.

Dana Thomas: Exactly. You don't have to have a lawn or a garden or a big patch of land in order to grow your own vegetables. I have a friend in New York who lives on Washington Square, and each summer she grows magnificent tomatoes in pots on her balcony. You talk about that in your book, don't you, that you can have a garden in pots just on your front doorstep?

Nancy Birtwhistle: Yes. In fact, last year, as an experiment, because I have a huge garden. But I realized that lots of my followers were really wanting to grow some food, but maybe just had a balcony or a very small garden, or a limited growing space. So I created a pot garden, and with very little space, but lots and lots of different pots. I didn't always go out and buy pots. I refashioned containers that I already had. So I'd maybe save some large plastic pots, or cardboard boxes or wooden boxes, all sorts of things. I grew certain foods in hanging baskets, just on window sills, and it was absolutely fantastic the range of food that you could grow in a very limited space.

Dana Thomas: Absolutely. Now, compost is essential to all this, which of course is another way to deal with food waste, isn't it?

Nancy Birtwhistle: It is. And composting, it's one of those things I've always done. So I think my readers and my followers are people that really want to get going, but want it simplifying. I mean, there are all kinds of compost makers you can buy for even the smallest space, but I have wooden bins really, and I have two or three, because then as one fills you move on to the next one and leave that first one to rot down. It's a fantastic way of recycling your household waste, because so many things go in that you don't think of. Things like cardboard, things like newspaper, the obvious things, like apple cores and vegetable waste and fruit waste, but then there's coffee grounds, tea leaves, the things that maybe not first think of as being compostable, but keep them out of landfill.

Dana Thomas: And it's interesting, because even if you live in an apartment, you can compost. I was reading about something we call in France, Lombi culture, and it's worm composting. The Japanese devised these because they all live--not they all, but--in Tokyo, they live in small apartments, and they wanted to be green. And it's a sort of stacking system, where you have these little bins that stack up on each other. They're not very big at all, like the size of a cake box. And, you can just put your green waste in that with the worms, and then they work through it and they work through it and they work through it. And then down at the bottom of this stack of basically like cake boxes, you have this kind of black gold of this compost, this fertilizer, this green fertilizer and green mulchy. And you can put that on your potted plants. You can put that on your potted vegetables. You can put it in anything and everything's thriving. It just all thrives. And you're not throwing all this into the bin, which is just great.

Nancy Birtwhistle: Yeah.

Dana Thomas: It really is. And so in short, why did you think this was all so important to put down in a book? Why did you want to write this book?

Nancy Birtwhistle: Why did I want to write this book? I think I realized that there was an appetite for it. My biggest audience is on social media, and I just started sharing a few ideas and growing a few bits in the garden, or looking at a more eco-friendly way of doing something or using energy more efficiently. And I realized there was an appetite for it. And it was then that actually a publisher approached me and said, "You know, this is really good what you're doing. We ought to have it in a book, because it's achievable, and it's doable, and it saves money, and we're saving the planet, and there's a real feel good about it." I think that's the main thing. There's something energizing and healthy about it all. And logical. Once you get your head around it, it's all so logical.

Dana Thomas: It is so logical. And that's why we have The Green Dream, so we can help more listeners get their head around it and really start greening up their lives. And really start greening up their lives in a very easy and simple manner. Thank you so much, Nancy Birtwhistle, for being with us. It's just been a delight to speak with you. And here's to living a greener life!

Nancy Birtwhistle: Thank you. Thank you!

Dana Thomas: Thank you so very much.

This episode is sponsored by Another Tomorrow, a women's fashion brand that redefines luxury with a commitment to ethics, sustainability, and transparency from farm to fabric to atelier. Find Another Tomorrow on its website, anothertomorrow.co, at its flagship boutique, 384 Bleecker Street in New York City, and at select stores.

New episodes of The Green Dream come out the first and third Tuesday of the month, so we’ll be back in two weeks with Lily Cole, the British model and environmentalist, to discuss her book Who Cares, Wins: How to Protect the Planet You Love. She’ll explain how she merged her fashion career with eco-activism. I hope you’ll join us!

This episode of The Green Dream was written by Dana Thomas. From Talkbox Productions with executive producer Tavia Gilbert, senior producer Katie Flood, with mix and master by Kayla Elrod. Music performed by Eric Brace of Red Beet Records in Nashville, Tennessee. The Green Dream is a production of Wondercast Studio. You can find us online at wondercast.studio. I’m Dana Thomas, the European Sustainability Editor for British Vogue. You can read my monthly column in the magazine or online at Vogue.co.uk. You can follow me on Instagram and on Twitter where my handle for both is @DanaThomasParis. Thank you for listening.