Bird Feeder For Sale - Is It Sustainable?

As many of you know I make and sell a few items on Etsy.

This has been great for me so far, a great to supplement my income and keep me working from home making items I enjoy making. 

The latest item I've added to my list has been wooden bird feeders. 

If I'm honest it's not something I've ever aspired to make but I want everything in my workshop to be as zero waste as possible and these are a solution to that. 

When making my harvest baskets there is a strip of galvanised mesh left that I wanted to use for something, rather than put it in a metal recycling skip.

These little bird feeders seem the perfect answer. 

I tend to make little batches at a time when I have some orders in. Each side gets branded with my branding iron and all the wood gets treated with boiled linseed oil. 

I think they look pretty cute. We've got one up here on my shed an there is a pair of woodpeckers that won't leave it alone! 

My only regret is currently I'm still using standard parcel tape when shipping. I'm struggling to find a plastic free alternative that is good and affordable, I buy a roll of tape for 30p whereas the paper based ones are more like £3-£4 and most won't stick on themselves and as my packaging is recycled it is hard to make secure. I've spent hours looking for an alternative so if anyone knows a good plastic free tape I can use please let me know. 

Other than that I'm happy with the eco-credentials of these products.  

These will last far longer than ones with a plastic top and bottom that go brittle after a season and be far more environmentally friendly, at the end of their long life the wood can be burnt and the metal melted down and recycled. the string will probably need to be replaced every few years though but I thought it was better than using wire. 

Reducing our waste as a family is really hard but I do find that my workshop produces very little except when buying in tools or fixings. Wood scraps are used as kindling through the winter to keep us warm, sawdust is used in my composting toilet and the compost area year round and any metal waste is either reused or recycled. 

A link to the wooden bird feeders can be found here.

Let me know what you think! 

And if anyone has a good solution to a plastic free tape then please let me know!