We must all make changes to save planet

T. CLARKSON (Viewpoints, March

9) offers sensible and simple advice we can all follow at no expense to lessen our environmental impact: wrap up and cool it.

I’ve another tip which I learned years ago when we lived in South Africa and which was promoted to help poor people whose cooking was often done on a primus stove.

It’s a fact that too many people never learned that when you get something to boiling you can’t get it hotter to cook faster (unless you are using a pressure cooker). Pump as much heat in as you can? All you do is boil off the water and burn the food.

You can avoid this with a pair of Wonderbags. We’ve used one for 30 years.

These are insulated cotton ‘bean bags’ which you can fill with the broken up expanded polystyrene detritus that many goods are packed in (thereby helping cut harmful waste).

Your cooking pot, pan or casserole, once brought to the boil is put inside and covered up. It’s like the old war-time ‘hay box’– in effect it is a slow cooker without the electricity. It loses a little heat and so takes marginally longer, but it doesn’t burn the porridge, stew or rice. Be it bean or mutton stew, the taste is great.

You can also make yogurt in it, or use it too keep the ice cream tub cold when eating in the garden or keep food warm when someone is late home.

You can find glossy commercial Wonderbags online, but searching for ‘Wonderbag pattern’ gives information and videos. They also make great presents for the person with everything as well as those of limited means.

However we need communal action as well as domestic. Once again the elephant in the room – or rather in Wythenshawe (i.e. the airport) is ignored. So is the rampant consumerism that leads indirectly to so much environmental degradation.

We need to change our lifestyles, both in how we cook and what toxic luxuries we take for granted.

B. Echtgenoot, M4