Eco Friendly House And Garden

I recently read the book The World Without Us - and it wasn’t all as happy and nature-friendly as it seems!

Yes, it covered how all our impact in most areas would cease for the better immediately - zero carbon emissions, no more deforestation or over fishing etc, but it also highlighted what would happen to the things that we need to manage - like nuclear power plants, dams, exotic species, farm animals and pets!

If we don’t keep working with these - they will go astray, and can’t work or survive on their own!

I was gripped throughout the book (although it’s not a read cover to cover in one go type of book), not just by it’s attention to detail regarding individual people and actions - but by the wealth of natural forests and habitats that I never knew existed and now want to learn more about!

First Shock Of The Book:
We have created so many things that are durable that they won’t be going anywhere fast!  And infact some could threaten the very planet after we are gone!

The book assumes that humans literally vanish in a second and leave the world right as it is in that instant., so factories still running, shops still open, communities still farming - then we go.

The author - Alan Weisman doesn’t even entertain for a minute that there will be any surviving humans, and even if there were - it wouldn’t be anything like the BBC drama Survivors.

There are things out there that just can’t be controlled without the skilled people who work with them now.  Yes, the electricity and water stopped and the stores closed - but what about that nuclear reactor still burning away?  What about oil pumps sucking out millions of gallons or flammable and toxic oil above the surface?

And all the plastic we have ever made is still out there - it never goes away - it’s just getting smaller and smaller. So if it’s a bag for example floating in the sea, it get eaten by a turtle (aling with other plastics and so the turtle dies; however when the turtle has decomposed or been eaten, the bag becomes released again. Then the bag is in smaller bits floating on the sea so it gets eaten by and kills an albatros, who then dies - and then when they get eaten, the bag bits come out again, and gets smaller. Then it gets eaten again and again and again through the food chain - forever it would seem!

Secondly:
He told me that there are patches of woodland dotted around the world that are so old that they defies everything we now know about woodland management. 

One on the Polish-Belarus border hasn’t been affected by humans since the dawn of time - literally.  It is called the Bialowieza Puszcza and means ‘forest primeval’.  There are a whole host of ancient - and giant - species of trees a whole host of rare and unusual native European mammals including the lynx, wolf, bear and even the wisent - a European bison!

There is also an ancient forest right in the heart of the Bronx, New York.  There is a patch of historic woodland that was there when the first Europeans came over to the state - and there is stays!  The rest of New York has been deforested and flattened while this pocket of history goes on!

And Finally:
It’s a really good place to start if you are trying to think of a reason to reduce your waste (big section on plastics), change your habits (farming and food waste) and cut your energy uses (power sources).

Basically, it can make you think hard and fast about what we are doing to the very planet we depend on, whether we are here or not!

After reading this book, you need to look at the trail of every item you hold in your hand that day, whether it’s food, an electrical item or clothing and ask yourself the following questions:

• Where was it from, and what did it take to make it and get it here?
• What does it actually do to improve your life (if at all) and why do I need this exact thing over the alternatives?
• And, where does it go after it leaves my hand?  And is that a good place????????

So, go out to the book store or library at read this book!

Trying alternative remedies to cure a medical problem can be better for you - and the environment!

If you regularly get pain, either as headaches, leg pain or whatever else, you can find that you need to constantly keep a supply of painkillers in your home and sometimes even carry them with you all the time - just in case!

Well, it is possible that an alternative remedy could get rid of your dependency on traditional tablets, caplets and dis-solvable potions - and save all those chemicals from being made, transported, packaged and disposed of.

Why Alternative?
Not everyone believes that alternative remedies such as acupuncture, hypnotherapy and homoeopathy will help them with their issues - but they never really give them a chance.

Mainly, people assume that these alternative treatment will be too expensive  - but many do not really compare this one-off cost with the amount they spend on tablets over a period of months and how much time they lose from work or play while being in pain in the first place!

There are also those people who listen to their friends without getting all the best information or not thinking properly. 

For example, person A may well be able to get rid of headaches with just paracetamol, where as their friend, person B, needs something stronger.  So if person B gets a headache and person A gives them a paracetamol - it ‘won’t work’.

Then when person C gets a headache and wants to buy paracetamol - their friend - person B - will tell them not to buy them as they ‘don’t work’ and the ‘myth’ moves on through the population.

It’s the same with alternative remedies.  One person didn’t get the result they wanted, or didn’t follow the practitioners advice and so pass on the opinion that it ‘doesn’t work’ - possibly preventing them and their friends and colleagues from ending their own  pain or discomfort naturally, and so leaving them dependant on medication.

Other Benefits:
Not only could it leave you pain free and a lot happier, curing illnesses with alternative remedies has many other benefits to the person involved and the environment too!

Firstly, this type of treatment usually involves a holistic approach, which means that everything about the patient is treated rather than just the actual pain.  This means that other lifestyle and dietary issues are addressed to get to the cause of the pain.

Imagine if your headaches were caused by too much cheese but you didn’t know this.  And the directions on a packet of Anadin certainly won’t consider the cause of the headache, so you will just keep taking tablets.

But, cut out the cheese and cut out the pain completely!  No tablets needed!

And, if the tablets aren’t needed, then you won’t be needing all their packaging either.  So not need to throw away the plastic, and recycle the cardboard everytime.  And if you don’t need them then the store needs to order less and all the way back to the raw ingredients there will be less - total impact reduction!

And one more And - if people are less reliant on curing common ailments with tablets, maybe pharmaceutical companies can start spending their research money on more important illness and diseases rather than just tablets for headaches and cream for itchy skin!

It’s Monday and you haven’t started cooking dinner yet - so make it the start of your ‘Meat Free Mondays’ campaign!

If you are not already a vegetarian, vegan or a meat-free Monday participant - then maybe you could try it for a few weeks and see if it really makes that much difference to your lives.

There are many celebrities who have given up meat altogether including Brad Pitt and Clint Eastwood, but it can be a difficult life to continue of your diet revolves around processed foods and take-aways.

So, if you can manage to eat at home on the rather sensible day of Monday, you could easily make it a meat-free one.  For example sausage and mash with gravy; pie, chips and peas and even a roast dinner could be made using meat-free ingredients - and I have had them all and they were yummy!

And if you are eating meat on up to 6 other days of the week, I’m sure you won’t really think anything of it - however, you could be making a huge difference to people, wildlife and habitats across the globe!

Benefits In A Nutshell:
There are many good things that can come out of cutting out meat from your diet - even if it’s only for 1 day. As don’t forget that it won’t be just you - so multiply the meat your don’t eat by 1000’s of other people in your neighbourhood, and we are stopping hundreds of cattle from traipsing through the Amazon……

Meat Uses More Land To Grow - By using a field to ‘grow’ cows or sheep, we need to use another piece of land to ‘grow’ the food to feed the cows and sheep.  So meat uses more land to grow than the tasty vegetables we love.

Meat Uses More Energy To Grow - More energy goes into growing a cow than into a cauliflower - so if we ate the cauliflower instead we could save all that waiting around for the cow to be ready for slaughter.

Meat Uses New Land To Grow- More meat in our diet means more land is always needed for farming them - and in South America, we have heard that the rainforests are being cleared to feed more cattle - or more correctly, rainforests are being cleared to make us hamburgers and cheap steaks.

Meat Gives Of Methane - Cows fart!  A lot…….

Meat Cannot Be Composted - Uneaten meat cannot be composted in your garden like leftover vegetables and fruit - and may well attract vermin anyway, so the disposal of meat can become a problem for businesses - and the environment.

Vegetables Are Good For You - By taking the focus off the meat part of your dinner you may well find that you eat more vegetables in your meal instead - all good news for your health.

Your Choices:
Just as with new products and new fashions - if people don’t buy it, people won’t make it. 

So if everyone could just take 1 day a week of meat, you will see a great reduction in the meat in stores, and therefore the amount of land being used to farm them.

I’m not saying that this will be an instant reaction from the farming industry, but it will certainly make a difference over the next few years.  And from current environmental thinking we may well need to start doing this anyway.

So, why not take a stroll up the vegetarian aisle next time you are in a store and try some of the alternatives - you might quite surprise yourself with what is available, and how much you like it.

And to be honest - dinner guests will eat whatever you cook them as long as it’s tasty - and if you don’t tell the kids or the partner when you serve up a fantastic vegetarian meal - they probably won’t even know the difference and so you can easily convert dozens of people you know without any fuss!

Planning to lose weight and give up smoking - 2 perfect eco friendly resolutions!

Every New Year there are thousands of people vowing to give up smoking and lose weight for the new year - so why not do it for real this time rather than just putting in a little bit of effort in front of the friends!

We know the reason we manage to eat a bit healthier in January is because we have eaten so much junk over the winter that we would rather not face another strawberry trifle or fried leftovers! 

And the symbolic start of the new year makes us decide that it’s a good time to be a bit healthier - but when you go back to work and the month end bills start to come through after the longest month of the year - it virtually always has 5 Fridays - you are stressed enough to just keep on smoking!

So why not make these 2 count seriously towards your new eco friendly lifestyle for 2010.

Losing Weight:
This has 2 sides to it’s eco benefit; eating less and exercising more, so lets look at these in detail.

Eating Less - we all know that we buy, cook and eat much more food than we need - and much of the food isn’t nutritious enough to make a difference.  So by restricting your meal size and number of meals, you can reduce the pressure on farmers and local stores to grow so much in the first place.

The food has to be grown and transported to the stores too which uses valuable energy and petrol or gas as well.  In a larger scale example the advantages become clear: if the average person buys 20 sprouts from the store, and a lorry from the farm can only fit in 1000 sprouts in it’s hopper - that means one journey feeds 50 families. 

But what if each of your 3 dinner guests only really eats 5 sprouts each and you throw the leftover 5 away?  That means that that lorry carried 250 sprouts for nothing.  And if people only brought what they actually ate - that original lorry could have fed nearly 67 families (17 more than before).

And who says we should be eating until we are stuffed anyway?  Buy less, eat less, waste less.

Exercising More- Clearly, if you are exercising more then you may well be walking or cycling a lot more than before - both of which have massive eco benefits.

By spending more time out of your car, you are saving on fuel and emissions - but you are also making your local area richer.  If you visit local parks and other amenities you are making them worth keeping and maintaining - and you could become involved in local projects.

And by taking a bit longer to get somewhere or exploring somewhere in closer detail you could become a bit more knowledgeable of local species and habitats - and even see places, buildings or wildlife that you haven’t seen before (as you fly at 50 mph down the link road!).

Also, more exercise will make you a healthier person, delaying the signs of aging and reducing your need for routine medications and treatments - all saving you and the community money and energy.  Which leads us on to the other resolution….

Stop Smoking:
Not only is smoking bad for your health on it’s own, it is also bad for your health in terms of the reduction in exercise your may well be having due to being so out of breath.  It has been scientifically proved that smoking causes lung damage - and your lungs are what helps you to be active and exercise more.

However, buying you cigarettes is a never-ending job.  Unless you are a very light smoker or stretch out your roll-ups beyond the meanest student - you will be having to visit a store several times a week.  Smokers never seem to buy them in bulk, they go back and forth all the time, just buying another 20. and I bet the don’t always walk there?

The packaging, the transport, the ingredients - all bad for the environment and your body.  So make an appointment with a hypnotist and get over it!

There are many other ways to help improve your eco friendly lifestyle - so maybe instead of New Year resolutions - have New Month resolutions where you can improve your lifestyle throughout the year!

With the recent bad weather across most of the northern hemisphere - should we stay home?

I haven’t left my place apart from to go for a great walk through the woods and a walk to the local store - so what did you do - and could it have caused problems for others?

There is an argument for both sides really, but which is more eco friendly?

The Case For Staying Home:
For a start, you will be one less car on the road in the way of other important people or vehicles that need to use the roads.  Many people like doctors, vets, firemen, police, grit lorry drivers, petrol tankers, grocery vans and ambulances that need to use the roads all day and at any time. 

So what would you do if you had got stuck on ice on a slip road and were now holding up one or more of the above people?  Stopping valuable staff from doing their job when you were only off out to do a bit of shopping or to visit a friend?

You would also be one more person that local services would have to worry about.  For example on 1 road in the UK earlier this week, there was a reported 25 mile tailback in the snow.  All those people were stranded in the freezing cold and the emergency services, local hotels and recovery drivers were now having to work overtime and through the night to help them all - and I bet all 25 miles wasn’t filled with doctors and food supplies?

And talking of medical care - if you went out and injured yourself on ice or through a car accident - you are adding to the pressures that emergency services are already facing.  If you can’t get to town in the bad conditions - what makes you think that nurses can either?  So more injuries and less nurses is really only going to mean longer waits and over-worked staff. 

The same goes for any other business as well.  Just because you managed to get yourself to a store, it doesn’t mean they will be able to offer you their best service, as they may also be short-staffed or have deliveries that cannot make it to the store due to accidents etc.

The Case For Going Out:
If you are one of the services that keep everyone else going then yes, you should try to get to work.  Hopefully all the non-essential journeys have ceased and so the roads should be clearer and safer for people like yourself to get through.

Also, many small businesses couldn’t function without their staff, and so struggling in to work could be the only option for some people. 

Imagine if everyone stopped going to work on the same day - countries would come to a standstill as no energy would be available, no need food would arrive in stores - and if it did, there would be noone there to sell it.  No gas, no gritters, no ambulances……….

People need to go to work in these terrible conditions - but think about who you are before deciding, as it’s not about how important you think your journey is, it’s about how important you know your job is.

Many eco friendly people will live near to where they work anyway - so a walk to work in the cold is going to be a million times better than a drive anywhere - and less of a drain on society during these hard times!

The Answer:
Stretched resources or reduced services? Neither is better than the other if you have to get to work - but there is a clear winner if you are not needed anywhere.

People not working, on a day off or who can work from home are the ones that can make a real difference in this whole thing.  By limiting their impact on the outside world during this stressful and very cold time, they can make all the difference to those who don’t have a choice.

So wrap up warm and go visit your elderly neighbours today - or snuggle up in front of the TV and watch a good movie instead.

Seriously, just taking your kids to a toy store could make presents more expensive next year!

I don’t mean the normal cost of demand or an increase in the cost of material - I mean that prices have to go up to account for the behaviour or your kids - or more importantly - You.

How A Toy Store Works:
Like all businesses it runs on a balance or 3 main things: the cost of buying in the toys in the first place, the cost of staff and the cost of the rent and bills on the shop.  These 3 must be less than the total money that goes into the till - leaving a profit (hopefully).

If any of these 3 things costs too much - the store isn’t worth opening every day so something has to give - and it’s normally the price you pay.

So, based on the short time I worked in a toy store, here are the 2 ways you can help to keep these costs down - and therefore, the cost of your toys!

The Products Themselves:
When you buy a toy, the store make a profit on the difference between what they paid for it in the first place and what you paid for it to take it home.  So, if they buy a wooden toy for £1 and you buy it for £3, they make £2, right?

Well, not always.  You see, they may well buy 100 wooden toys (costing them £100) to sell for a total of £300 - but if 10 of those are accidently broken by children playing with them roughly - the store has lost £20 profit plus the £10 to buy them, so each remaining toy will only be worth £2.70 each.

Imagine this multiplied up by all their products on display (my store had over 1000 different products) and on the more expensive items.  That’s a lot of money being lost by the store because your child accidentally tore the packaging of something, or burst something else when you weren’t looking.

So, the answer is only let your children play with the display models (those that the store has singled out for everyone to play with) - therefore limiting the number of manhandled products to one of each.

Don’t let your children eat food while visiting a toy store as a chocolaty finger on a furry puppet is not what the store were hoping for - as you aren’t going to buy it and neither will anyone else!

And also - don’t leave your kids in a toy store while you stay outside talking to friends or are on your cell - as they can do a lot of damage in just a few short minutes alone!!!!

Too Many Staff:
As a result of the number of people who do leave their kids alone in toy stores - the store manager needs to employ a larger number of staff to keep an eye on them all to limit the damage they cause!

Most toys in our store were for 3+ but of course children under 3 can’t read that so they pick them up and snap bits off - off more commonly lick or bite them.  And quite a lot of ours were filled with liquid!

If the store is having to employ more staff than say a shoe store would need, then their overheads become higher, and higher overheads means less profit.

And stores want more profit, but they can’t have less staff - so they raise their prices!

Less Rent:
The only real way to lower your rent is going to be bad for business.  It is either going to be moving to a smaller store (so they will have less products), moving to a less busy street or smaller mall (so less customers will visit) or going totally online (so you have to advertise your site).

None of these are good for you as a customer either.  If they have a smaller store - you have less choice for your children’s toys and gifts; if they move to a less popular street or mall - you have further to walk to find them, if at all; and if they move online - your kids won’t be able to play with the toys at all until you buy them!

Less Waste:
Don’t forget that all the toys that can’t be sold - whether they are broken or not - will be thrown away.  What a total waste! 

Even if it is just the packaging that’s torn - the product can’t be sold on the shelf.  Some stores would use it as display model, but not all of them.

And, the more that get broken before making it to a home - the more that need to be made in the first place!

So, next time you visit a toy store - hold on to your kids and save money - and you will also be saving those resources!