Wellies and the Church

Disaster! Younger child’s rubber wellies have sprung a leak. Annoying hole right on the ankle is beyond the power of patching up with either bicycle repair kit or other sticky tape variants. However, it should be noted that said hole was discovered just before a puddle-littered walk as we were getting our wellies on in the back of the car. To avoid theoretical child meltdown (“you said we could splash in the puddles! I want to splash in the puddles [assume here a stamping of dry-shod foot into imaginary puddle] You’re so mean to me! Its not fair, etc. etc.”), there was some emergency scrambling in the car breakdown kit to find some electrical tape that was wrapped around and around the heel of the boot to give a temporary seal. I was feeling quite smug until the end of the walk when we discovered the crack in the heal had managed to migrate past the sticky tape barrier. But the important thing is that lots of splashing in muddy puddles (and splashing of parents) was achieved.

So what to do about the wellies? As I said, the damage is a bit beyond a patch up (some good tips here if you do discover your wellies have holes in them) and the fact it’s in the heel may indicate someone is getting too big for their boots…

First important bit is child needs new wellies – they normally get the eldest’s cast-off boots, but owing to freak growth spurts on my youngest’s part, there is only a single shoe size difference between the two. Eldest is still using her size 11 wellies, so that’s not an option right now. Do we dive out to the shops and get a brand-new pair? It’s possible – but what about the plastic?!

Step 1 Replace the Wellies

So what are wellies made of? I’ve mentioned that the wellies that have died were rubber – so no plastic, right? Well, if you’ve bought something rubber and it doesn’t precede rubber with the term “natural”, we’re not talking about rubber that oozes from the rubber tree, but a synthetic rubber which comes from petroleum and various additives, and accounts for about 70% of rubber used in the world. And yes, it’s a plastic.

For a bumper list of synthetic rubber types, check out this website (Perfluoroelastomer is my favourite tongue twister).

Interestingly, a lot of synthetic rubber was first mass-produced during the Second World War when the West’s natural rubber sources in the Pacific were cut off due to Japanese occupation of 90% of the world’s rubber plantations, which also at the same time triggered a major rubber recycling movement. Quick article here about it here for you history buffs.

Apart from rubber, the other material of choice for wellies is PVC, which as we’ve worked out in previous posts is almost never recycled. Both synthetic rubber and PVC wellies (and natural rubber for that matter) go into our black bin and won’t be recycled. A lot of shoe recycling is focused on the textile part of the shoe, though soles can be turned in to other things.

As any choice of material for wellies looks like it’s going to end up in the landfill, which material to go for? Natural rubber will degrade quicker than a synthetic rubber or PVC, but its production is starting to raise its own set of environmental issues. The National Geographic has the following article on a rubber boom that is happening in China at the moment, which is having a knock-on effect on local biodiversity and water resource impacts, due to so many rubber trees taking up groundwater to produce latex.

Decisions, decisions… Well, what we did was hit eBay and tracked down a pair of second-hand ones. We had had a look on some local Facebook groups but none were currently available in the required size. We figured that reusing someone else’s wellies was probably the best thing to do to reduce our plastic waste. Oh and the bonus was when they arrived they had been made in the UK!.

We may start ensuring that when we get wellies for the eldest child these are natural rubber as, even though they will ultimately end up in a landfill, they may break down a bit better than synthetic rubber. Just need to do a bit more research to see if I can find natural, ecologically-friendly rubber boots!

Step 2 Dispose of existing Wellies

What to do with the dead wellies – a bit of Googling seems to indicate that really the THING to do with old wellies is to turn them into plant plots. Hence this weekend’s gardening project with the kids was welly boot flower pots. The fruits of our labours are below:

And what about the Church?

Ah yes, I did mention that didn’t I? One of the many churches in Wallingford (I think we’ve got about eight within the space of a mile) are doing a Lent Plastic Challenge – the idea is to try and reduce single-use plastic over lent by giving it up. We’re already ahead of the curve on this one, but if you are interested, they have a really good Lent calendar that gives tips of what to target each day, which is also flagged on their Twitter feed.

The church is linked in with the local school, so my eldest daughter has said she’s going to do it – not that she’s involved much with what gets brought into the house plastic-wise!