Bernard O'Shea: One Nutella jar, an Instagram reel, and five tiny ways to save the earth

Irish Examiner

15-05-2025

I didn't set out to become an environmentalist. I set out to clean a Nutella jar—or rather, to perform an exorcism on it. You think it's a simple task—rinse, recycle, done—until you're at the sink with a spoon, a butter knife, and a haunted look in your eye, scraping around the curved inside like you're trying to defuse a chocolatey bomb. I posted a reel about it on Instagram.
I thought it was a throwaway moment, me expressing that "My wife is right. I'm getting older and weirder.
I should just pick up golf." But the response to the comments differed.
What surprised me most was how genuinely on board everyone was with the whole reuse philosophy.
@brendaflynncox
"I have these exact jars cluttering up my press … and I can't throw them out plus the Nutella ones are unbreakable! I even have the lids ….. so handy. For something…."
@bernie.murphy.330
"As my dear Mother used to say they might be handy so keep collecting Bernard they have nice covers."
@terenk
"I no longer buy Nutella but when my children were small, they were their drinking glasses, still some here. I recycle my marmalade jars and give to friends who make marmalade."
Is there any point in trying to save the Earth one washed yoghurt pot at a time? Or is it all just guilt dressed in eco-green?
1. Wash before you recycle
Let's be honest — the emotional weight of scrubbing out a sticky Nutella jar feels disproportionate to its size. But here's the hard truth: unwashed recyclables can ruin an entire batch.
According to Repak and the World Wildlife Fund, contamination is one of the biggest reasons recycling ends in landfills.
It's like baking a gorgeous cake and then chucking a raw onion in at the last minute — suddenly, the whole thing's bin fodder.
And no, you don't need to scrub everything like you're prepping for a Bord Bia audit. Use your leftover dishwasher.
If it's stubborn, fill it with warm water, screw the lid on, and shake it like you're training for cocktail hour.
The difference is real: Recycling a clean glass jar saves enough energy to power a 100-watt lightbulb for 4 hours.
2. The Bag of Bags Has a Purpose
You know the drawer I mean. That stuffed-to-the-gills, slightly terrifying cavern of plastic bags under the sink. Some are vintage — pre-euro, maybe even pre-Celtic tiger. Some have knots in them you'll never undo. But here's the thing: every single one of those bags is a chance to not take a new one.
Producing one single-use plastic bag emits the same fossil fuel energy as driving a kilometre in a petrol car.
It doesn't sound like much until you realise we go through one million plastic bags globally every minute. That's a motorway of emissions, every 60 seconds.
Reusing just one of those bags ten times? You've cut its footprint in half. Twenty times? You're practically Greta with groceries.
3. Reuse tin foil, it's kitchen gold
Aluminium is a miracle material. Strong, light, endlessly recyclable. It's the MacGyver of the kitchen drawer. But here's the problem: we treat it like it's disposable, even though producing new foil takes a shocking amount of energy.
Recycling aluminium saves 95% of the energy needed to make it from raw materials. When you reuse or properly recycle foil, you save enough energy to run a laptop for hours.
And yes, I get it — it comes out of the oven looking like it's been through a war. But if it's not torn or soaked in fat, just rinse and flatten it out.
4. The planet doesn't need another stress ball
You walk into a bank, a seminar, or a pharmacy, and someone offers you a free pen, lanyard, or a branded tote bag so thin it'll rip before you hit the car park.
And what do you do? You say yes, because it's free. That word lights up our hunter-gatherer brain like a Lidl middle aisle. But here's the catch: it's not free if you don't need it.
Every disposable pen, novelty keyring, and stress ball shaped like a tooth ends up in a landfill.
5. Brick the toilet
Every flush, you use 6 to 9 litres of clean, treated water. Water that had to be processed, filtered, pumped, and paid for.
Most of that isn't needed — you could shave off a litre or two per flush and never notice. So here's the trick: take an old plastic bottle, fill it with water, seal it, and gently place it in your cistern. Boom.
Instant water savings. Over a year, that could save your household around 7,000 litres of water. That's enough to bathe a small elephant (not recommended, but I did it for this column.
I should have taken pictures for evidence. Ah, well.), or fuel a kettle for 2,300 cups of tea (very recommended).
So next time you're at the sink, wrestling a jam jar, muttering curses at the lid, remember: somewhere out there, a penguin might nod in appreciation.
(Or at least, not giving you the flipper.)
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