Eco Friendly House And Garden

A Real Guide To Sustainable Living – they say, and they mean business. 

This isn’t a book that you can take lightly – it is full of maths and equations to justify their suggestions; and some things really need explaining as they turn common eco conceptions on their head!

Basically this book explains how we should be approaching our lives if we truly want to live an eco friendly lifestyle – or to live ecologically within our ‘allotted’ means.  By ‘allotted’ they mean if we are only to use our fair share of worldly resources rather than just putting a green angle onto everything we do.

And to prove it, they open up with a look at the widely held beliefs of the world without even considering the eco consequences to see what we are expecting the Earth to do for us as we are today.  From there, they try to whittle us down to what the Earth can actually do for us.

The Book Itself:
The book is something you need to read with a notepad and calculator on one side and some strong coffee on the other!

I have a basic grasp of ‘footprints’, ‘embodied energy’ and the worlds finite resources – but the maths part was a bit too much to keep on top of piled thick, as it was, in the body of the text.

They did have a huge number of very easy to understand charts and tables of everything they were talking about (which helped make up for skipping all the equations) and I didn’t loose the thread of their arguments by not reading all the numbers and MJ’s etc.

The Authors help to explain why some of the things that we assume would be eco friendly turn out not to be based on a bigger picture – for example walking isn’t that ecologically sensible if you are getting all your energy (ie eating) processed cheeseburgers from a store.  Basically, the energy chain of land use, transport, chemicals, packaging, heating, storing and selling the burgers in the first place is so huge that the ‘eco’ effort of walking fuelled by burgers wasn’t really ‘saving the planet’.

photo credit: Bob B. Brown

Similarly a 20 minute shower in an eco friendly low-water shower still uses nearly twice the amount of water than a 5 minute shower in an old-style water-intensive shower.  Further more, sharing a bath between 2 people uses around the same water per person as that same eco-friendly – but long – shower.

They use compelling reasoning to hold this all together as well as extensive research data from around the globe.  And even though a lot of their arguments offer very simple solutions to the World’s ecological problems – much is still recommending a somewhat ‘alternative’ lifestyle, where you use hemp for clothes, buy less things, stay ‘behind the times’, somewhat, live in smaller houses with the lights off and share things with other people rather than buying your own.

Now I know that this will all reduce our eco footprints and keep our emissions down and the world turning – but these aren’t the eco friendly living tips that people want to hear.  The people that do want to hear this are probably already aware of most of their discussions already.

I totally agree that our actions are sometimes more important that the eco technology that is on offer (like flushing the toilet less times will save more water than flushing more times with a low-flush mechanism, and choosing a small basic home will be better in terms of resources than living in an enormous eco friendly house) but I think that it is preaching to the converted.

Result: 3/5:
Even if my not-so-eco-friendly friends could have forced themselves to have read this entire book in the first place, I don’t think they would be heeding much of it’s advice.

I think it is a great text-book style book and can really help to compare ecological differences between common activities and products, but I don’t think it will change peoples attitudes in the style in which it is written. 

Although I really enjoyed several section of this book, I noticed a flaw.  They spend so long working out the embodied energy (EE) of a product (or the products and activities that went into making the parts for that oringinal product) that they sometimes considered slightly different things as important in each case.

For example, in the only section of the book that I had a really good knowledge of (pets) they managed to completely write off the transport angle for the tinned food in their comparison of dog and cat food (even though they went into shoe leather replacement in the walking vrs driving section).  They say that the eco effect of tinned packaging was negligible because we are encourage to recycle tins!  Well, how on earth do they intend to get these tins to those 76.5 million hungry cats worldwide without making an ecological impact?

And secondly their argument included showing that a cat food with less meat content made less of an impact (obvious when you consider the land used for beef and the land used to grow the winter food for beef as well) – however, cats that are fed on low amounts of meat will be more likely to become ill, get dry skin, loose hair, get gum disease etc (as not enough meat or too much vegetable matter isn’t good for a cat).  As a result – you will be using your vet more often or maybe adding shampoos and supplements to your cat to ‘cover up’ all these new problems.

Now I’m sure that these cosmetics and medicines (and trips to the vets) have just as much of an impact as adding the few extra percents of meat in their food in the first place.  High quality dried pet food are fed in smaller quantities as other foods, and are known to reduce these health (and aesthetic) problems – as well as coming in bulk paper packaging instead of heavy, bulky tins filled with 80% water!

They also said that a well handled hamster will be happy to live on it’s own – where infact the most common type of hamster (the Syrian hamster) will ONLY ever live on it’s own.  If you put 2 in the same cage, they will no doubt fight to the death within just a few days!

So now, can I really believe all the other comparisons they made in areas that I know little about?

ISBN: 978-0-500-28790-3

Could your local shops be suffering due to your bad parking?

If you think about it honestly – do you regularly visit shops that don’t have easy parking close by when you are driving home from work or when dropping off the kids at school?

Would you really say to me that you would be happy to park 15 minutes walk away from a shop to just grab some milk?  Or would you infact make sure you drove to a shop that you knew had spaces right outside – even if it was a bit further away.

Especially if it was raining…..

Or you were in a hurry……

So now, let’s look at this the other way around, and think about why you avoid certain stores due to bad parking and how this can be improved.

Parking Bays:
Many stores have head on parking bays drawn on the road outside the shopfront – mainly because they want all their customers to have a space without a fuss.

However, some people who are ‘in a hurry’ or just a bit lazy – park across more than 1 bay limiting the number of other customers who can visit the store.

Other people might see that space as a good place to park while they go visit their friends – and have no intention of using the store at all.  This is even worse than the first example – as at least they were only blocking 2 spaces while they were grabbing some bread or whatever – but these people could block up that space for hours!

Now if you were on your way home and this store rarely ever had a spaces outside – you aren’t going to shop there are you?  You will plan to visit another store, as no doubt will plenty of other commuters who that store depends on for trade.

photo credit: the spectre los

Your Local Stores:
Now this might not be a local store to you – but consider how you can prevent your local stores from suffering the same fate by planning your parking in advance!

For example – not parking in a busy spot outside stores to go visit your friends or go shopping elsewhere for hours would be a good start!

And if you live in the area – you will know when it’s busy – so avoid those times if you can.  Not only will it mean that you won’t get stuck in a crowd and have to queue for things – it also frees up that busy time for the commuters who don’t have much time to do their business.

It’s exactly the same principle as not going to the bank during other people’s lunch hour if you don’t work yourself!  They only have a hour to get things done – so the last thing they need in front of them are 5 people who could have come here at any time they wanted – but are now making them miss their entire lunch break standing in a queue!

And when parking in unmarked bays, make sure that you park up to the edges so that the most number of cars can fit in around you.  You must have seen cars parked about a metre away from the edge of the bay – wasting that space completely for other drivers!

There are a myriad of ways that your parking habits could prevent other people from doing their day to day activities – or their one-off trip to town.  And if they can never find a parking space when they come to visit your local area – they may well go find somewhere else to spend their money instead.

And your local stores will find it harder and harder to turn a profit.

Now that the Holidays are over – you will have plenty of things ‘left over’.

It’s not just the food that gets left over after all your family have finally gone home – there are all sorts of other things around the house that need to either be stored for the year, re-used, recycled or given away! 

However – the food is the easiest to sort out – so make that your priority!  No matter how much you plan to buy less this year – it doesn’t always work out like that – so sometimes you end up with much more than you wanted – but don’t worry – you can make it all go to good use if you think ahead!

photo credit: Dplanet::

So, get your pen and paper to hand, and start sorting everything out!

First Things First:
Before you can start making plans for your left-overs – you need a diary!  You ned to be able to plan not only the next 4 weeks – but also the whole next year.

Ideally you will have the next 4 weeks on a day to day diary – and then the rest in months – this way you can organise which days you need to have eaten certain foods by and which days you already have plans for, and then dot things off into the future for birthdays, holidays and next winter!

It’s amazing how quickly days can come around when you are working and visiting friends!

Food For Thought:
So, starting in the fridge you can start planning your food – as this food normally has the shortest dates!

Go through everything in the fridge and write it down on a sheet of paper with the latest date you could eat it by; then look at fruits, cakes and breads etc, working your way through absolutely everything you have in the freezer and cupboards – including those traditionally ‘long-dated’ items – just to be sure. 

I’ve noticed stores selling very short-dated items over the holidays as people are just buying everything!  So never assume that things have long use-by dates – check everything properly.

Once you have listed everything, you can start to put them in date order and plan your meals over the next few weeks.  That way, you can plan to eat everything before it goes out of date – wasting as little as possible!

By actually having a list of when you need to eat or drink things by infront of you – you will be able to see what you can’t use in time – and so could open up the opportunity to invite people over to yours to help finish it off – or take things over to someone else’s house when you visit them!

New Creations:
Don’t forget that food doesn’t need to be thrown away by it’s use-by date if it is made into something else; for example all those root vegetables could be made into a lovely soup and frozen for another month!

Once cooked – meats can be frozen, bakery and dairy can also be preserved ‘on chill’ for many weeks after they can be used in their refrigerated state.  So by using your kitchen skills and your left-overs – you could spread your food over the next month without really trying too hard!

I know your compost heap might miss out on a few things – but we all know that food is in short supply on a world-wide scale, so why not make better use of it all – even if it means buying a specialist book on it – and trying some new dishes with the family!

Future Gifts:
No doubt, on your list there are boxes of chocolates, biscuits, wine and other products that have another 6 months or a year or 2 still to go – so why not think about keeping them to hand for upcoming birthdays and as yet unplanned dinner parties with family and friends.

I have biscuits for cheese and bars of chocolate that has more than a year on it that I am planning to hold on to in my ‘spare’ kitchen cupboard for some get togethers!

Of course – you are more welcome to eat them all yourself!

Rather than settling for what you have – why not think about getting a new qualification!

Many people have a passion.  A passion that means that they are willing to spend endless hours learning about it regardless of the money or time it takes up of their lives.

Whether it’s a passion that means that they walk miles through the countryside watching out for wildlife, trek to the highest mountains, junp off the highest mountains or swim under the ocean.

We don’t get paid for these passions – we just do them.  But what if there was a way to make that passion pay the bills?

What Is Your Passion?
Regardless of what makes you tick – you can make a career of it.  I mean we all have skills and qualifications from a work perspective to make sure the bills are paid.  And if you work in a shoe shop, you will soon know everything there is to know about feet and insoles – whether you want to or not!

But, have you spent the time to take a course or get qualified in your passion? 

Like watching wildlife? Then think safari tour guide. Like diving?  Then think PADI instructor.  Like children?  Think skills mentor.

photo credit: ReneMT

But you can’t put ’20 years walking in a local woods’ down on your CV for that perfect job.  And ‘always loved kids’ or ‘been abroad before’ don’t count for much either.

So what are you going to do about it?

Think Of A Course!
There are endless amounts of courses out there to harness your passion and turn it into a selling point.  Whether you look online or at a local college, you can find a different course for everything these days.

Whether it is a simple certificate to prove what you already know, a vocational diploma to improve your existing skills or a degree level course to learn something new – it’s out there.

And, this way you will be helping not only yourself and your job prospects – but all the people who will benefit from your new skill.

An added bonus of the online courses is that you can do them whilst abroad.  That way, your days spent volunteering will be further enhanced by your studies at night, making your support twice as effective! 

All this could lead you in whole new direction – hopefully to follow your dreams!

Your choice of festive gift could mean the difference between survival or big changes!

But in this case – both choices can have huge effects down the line – I mean do you choose between losing local services or losing the fight against poverty, animal cruelty and climate change?

It needn’t be that huge a choice – but we already know that buying off the Internet can have a negative effect on the high street and local stores as they are losing customers – but what about shopping for ‘invisible gifts’ instead?

By this I mean the ‘keep giving’ gifts like a one-off donation to a child overseas, the gift of a farm animal to an African farmer, sponsorship of an endangered animal or annual membership to a conservation society.

The recipient of the gift doesn’t get the gift itself – they just get proof of this great donation from you.  They will know that the money you have spent on their behalf will be invested in the future and help whichever cause that was chosen.

photo credit: Effervescing Elephant

I have received and given many such gifts myself over the years: I was given sponsorship for Mr Crusty the donkey last year – (and he is doing fine!) and joined up my niece and nephews to the RSPB as well.

What About The High Street?
As you can imagine these types of gift don’t involve shops on the high street – you mainly buy them online or direct from the charity or organisation.

But then the gifts available in the stores could be said to be less eco friendly in the sense that they have an eco footprint.  They are manufactured somewhere and transported to your stores.

Yes, you can choose only those gifts made locally, out of sustainable materials or eco friendly related for the home or garden – but they are still gifts in the sense that they need to be made, used and then disposed of at some point.

However, the very act of going into Town can be locally supportive.  The carpark fee, train fares, bus tickets – they all go towards supporting local businesses as well as the fact that you might stop for a coffee while you are there – and hopefully buy things to boot!

Supportive Gifts:
When you sponsor a child or donkey – it’s all done online in a few seconds.  No need to travel anywhere.

You still use up paperwork and postage with these gifts for the confirmation letter, but no need to travel into town, or wrap things up with bows and labels!

I mean, these gifts really are the ethical and the more eco friendly when compared to games, ornaments and ‘silly’ presents that we seem to see in the stores – as these types of gifts are those most likely to need batteries, have excess packaging and be thrown away after a few months use.

But when you think about helping local business people or distant wildlife or habitats – the line isn’t quite as clear.

I must admit that I feel a bit better about myself when I support distant projects such as rainforests, tigers with WWF and cross river gorillas with FFI as they seem ‘more important’ in the sense that they are the last of their kind on the edge of extinction - whereas you can open a new shop in 2 years time.

However, if the stores aren’t there to sell me gifts – will they be there to sell me other things when I need them?  I’m getting a bit sick of giant out-of-town superstores these days – so I need the high street to stay competitive and still stock everything I need all year round.

I think this one is stil undecided!

Did you know that the money in your savings account could be destroying habitats?

When you invest your savings into a pension fund or other savings accounts – do you actually know what happens to it?

Do you think it just sits in the bank you are using earning interest?  No it certainly doesn’t!  Your bank or other company use it to fund other deals around the world to make your interest.

And they may be using it directly: through funding a company or buying that company’s products, or indirectly; by funding other companies who happen to fund that company or buy their products.

Now, what if that company were drilling for oil in the Amazon and had had a few serious leaks over the past 10 years?  What if that company were growing oil palm in Borneo after clearing hectares of prime rainforest?  

Do you know where your interest is coming from?  Has that extra £500 you earned last year cost the livelihoods of tribal warriers in Brazil, or the actual lives of the dwindling numbers of wild orangutans left in Borneo?

photo credit: BlatantWorld.com

Ask Questions:
So, next time you are thinking about what you can spend your savings on – think what they have cost the planet and the animals and people on it.

However, the way to feel good about your savings is to have invested in a suitable eco investment.  Such schemes may well fund replanting of woodlands for eco friendly timber; planting of rare plants and trees for niche industries like violin manufacture; or green oil production.

Find out where your bank is going to be investing your money before you hand it over.  All the while nobody is asking – they will just carry on as usual.  If the returns are calculated purely on financial gain – then your money will probably never be spent on green alternatives.

Make sure your bank is aware of your concerns for their spending – and you may well be part of the crowd that makes them change their funding.

It’s Your Money!
The irony of your investments could be ridiculous if you actually looked into it.  I mean you could be donating £10 a month to an eco friendly charity trying to halt the destruction of coral reefs – yet investing in shipping industries who regularly travel through these delicate waters damaging the coral.

Or you are making sure that you buy sustainable consumer products – while funding the farming companies who are blanketing the earth with monocultures and oil plantations at the loss of the very environments your ethical products are trying to save.

Basically you are funding both sides of the argument.  You are paying for the destruction in the first place and then funding the charity who is trying to ‘fix’ the problems afterwards!

And of course it also means that you are paying twice: once to break it, then again to fix it!

Do you wish you could grow oranges in your garden instead of apples?

Well, you will be happy to know that there is an easy answer: do nothing.  Just continue on with what you are doing today – and your garden will be transformed!

By carrying on as usual, everyone in the UK can make sure that they will never have a patchy lawn again, no dirty pond to clean out in the winter, no leaves to sweep off the drive in autumn and all round sunshine!

How On Earth?
Well, climate change will raise our global temperatures by 2-4 degrees and most of our native plants will die out (along with most of the wildlife) and be replaced by drought-resistant plants (which don’t shed their leaves).

photo credit: a.dombrowski

Higher temperatures will mean less water – and more hosepipe bans – so your lawn won’t be able to get enough water to survive.  You will then have to replace it for a gravel or stone surface, and watch those delightful ornamental lawns disappear and large grassland fields turn to dried mud.

There will be such a demand for drinking water that fountains, ponds and lakes will either dry up or be turned into reservoirs – so all the native wetland plants and animals will have to go – as we don’t want them to pollute our drinking water supplies, do we!

It’s all part of the Earths plan though – as due to the other effects of climate change, sea level rises will mean that there will less land available for farming, housing, leisure and agriculture – so we won’t have too much of a garden to worry about anyway.  We will all live in flats or terraced housing without plants or grassy parks – think of an Egyptian or Moroccan landscape to get the idea.

Make A Change:
I know we are still hearing the advice to ‘turn of your lights’ and ‘don’t leave your appliances on stand-by’ – but we still aren’t doing it!

Honestly: out of your 10 closest friends – how many haven’t even turned down their thermostat by 1 degree?  How many still leave the tap running while cleaning their teeth?  How many still wash a half empty load of clothes?  Or a 60 degree wash?

At the moment I can safely say that I do not do any of the 4 things listed – but I know plenty of people who still do all 4.  Ironically it is the people with kids who are the worst ‘because they are too busy’ – but they should be the most interested in the future of the planet as their kids are going to be living in it!

Welcome back – and I hope the first 2 eco bathroom tips made sense!

I’m still in this holiday cottage – and in just the bathroom alone I am still finding ways to reduce their impact on the environment by making simple changes to the design and function of their bathroom.  Obviously I haven’t mentioned everything – like having a smaller sink – but I hope to have covered the main areas that could easily benefit your home if you are planning an eco-upgrade!

Needless to say all the little things added together really can make a difference if you think of them in the long term and for the whole community too. I mean 1 extra squirt of sealant in your bathroom might not seem so bad this week – but if every household in your county all went to the store and brought a tube of sealant for the same thing in the next 12 months – then it becomes a serious eco issue!

3) Proper Sealing:
The floor is tiled in this cottage – but the skirting is wood – so there is no waterproofing on the floor for cleaning purposes.  I know that it isn’t a full wetroom, but when you mop these tiles, you are going to get the wooden panels wet and allow excess water to seep down behind them and into the floor – not such a good idea really.

photo credit: Ken Doerr

Why not use tiles as the skirting so that you can virtually waterproof the room by using the same grout as the floor and so protect the walls and ground beneath from absorbing moisture.

Same goes for the sink.  Why not get a sink with a raised protective back that reaches a little way up the wall.  So, rather than the white sealant between the wall and basin holding a layer of soap or toothpaste-filled water and eventually going yellow and rotten or becoming mildew – the sink itself is in one piece so feeds the excess water back into the plughole!

It will eliminate all of the above problems and reduce the amount of cleaning and maintenance needed to virtually nothing.

4) Protect The Walls:
I don’t know about you, but I always hit the wall with the swinging light pulls – the larger the handle the more banging seems to occur! As you can imagine, each bang is damaging the wall.

Also, people can’t always find the string in the dark, so end up touching the paintwork or – as I have done if the pull string is too near the wall (as it is here) – chipped off some paint and sometimes plaster under my fingernails!

As you can imagine, it doesn’t take long for the paint to become patchy or the wall to become a bit dirty – so protect the wall with a tile. If you put a large tile or 4 smaller ones in the area where the most contact and therefore damage will occur, you can save having to repaint the entire wall for just that dirty patch!

A few tiles or a whole tub of paint?

5) More Hanging Space:
There are only 2 of us here, but the hanging space in the bathroom is virtually non-existent – so what do we do with the wet towels?

Well, you have to hang them somewhere, don’t you – which will inevitably be the backs of wooden chairs or over other wooden furniture like the stair rail. (Don’t forget that we are in a little self-contained unit away from home and without a garden so a drying horse or washing line just aren’t an option unless supplied).

Needless to say, the moisture from the towels is now being absorbed by the furniture and the room so as a result this could all be reducing their workable lifespan. And seeing as this property is designed to be used almost continually by family after family it is going to get through furniture a lot quicker anyway.

The Answer?
Well, there is nothing much I can do here as it has already been installed by the owners, but it is certainly worth considering these things when redecorating or improving your own bathrooms.

The future is looking towards sustainability and the longevity of our resources – so why not help by reducing the amount of repair and replacement your bathroom needs!

PS – it’s not quite damage to the bathroom itself, but one other thing they did is certainly a big no no and was very uncomfortable too:

6) Toilet Roll Holder:
They have put it right behind the toilet, so you have to reach right round to pull off a few sheets – but inevitably you pull off way more sheets than you actually wanted as you are bent sideways. But now they are all unrolled and in your hand – you are going to use them all aren’t you.

I mean who but the most eco addicts would leave those extra few sheets to one side and use them later?

By swapping the toilet with the sink in this room, they could have had the toilet roll holder to the side of the toilet reducing the excessive use of this already over-used resource.

Eco design should be a part of your eco living – it’s not just about the individual products.

A chipped tile, damp carpet, loose bath panel: Can all those little things really add up?

If you are talking about continued use, accidental damage, and redecorating – then it’s a great big yes!  I am staying in a holiday cottage at the moment and they have made some big mistakes in the bathroom that could save them a lot of time, money and resources in the long run; and the planets resources!

Bearing in mind they are going to get different people with different lifestyles and ethics, they should make it almost ‘normal’ to be green.  But instead, they have made it quite acceptable to waste products and to allow damage to the fixtures and fittings – and the bathroom itself in general.

photo credit: Sitka Projects LLC

Here is a general summary of the worst offenders:
And by offenders, I mean things that are not being allowed to perform at their best or are being used in such a way that causes them more ‘wear and tear’ than is really necessary.

You might think that some of these might be a bit ‘picky’ for you to consider – like preventing a broken tile in your bathroom – but don’t forget that it isn’t just your bathroom that I am thinking of.  There are probably over 100 bathrooms in the streets around your house, and 100 communities just like yours close by.  Now tell me that saving 10,000 broken tiles isn’t worth the effort! 

1) No Handle In The Bath:
They have opted for the half-bath here to limit the amount of water used (as they could have fitted a full size one easily) – however, it has no side handles.

Now although I am still agile enough to get in and out of the bath without them – I am causing a bit of a moist mess in the process!  I have to hold the side of the bath to steady myself or to get out – and as a result - all the water from my hand and arm is sliding over the edge of the bath, down the front of the wooden bath panel and down behind the wooden skirting that encircles the entire bathroom.

Needless to say, this continued moistening is gradually going to cause damage and the misshaping of the panel front until it all needs replacing.  Unless, like me – everyone who stays here dries off while standing in the bath to avoid the drips!  Which isn’t going to happen…

2) No Window To Outside:
As always, no window from this moist room means that there needs to be an electric fan running all the time you are in there – wasting energy.

They are also very ineffective, I find, over time and so the whole room will be susceptible to damp and mould growth.  And to get the best results from the fan the door to the bathroom needs to be kept closed all the time – unfortunately, this only adds to the problem by sealing it in.

This windowless room also needs a light on all the time otherwise the fan won’t work (as they are seemingly always linked together).  This also means that when you are not having a bath or the room isn’t damp but you need to use the bathroom for anything else – you have to have the fan on as well!  What if you just need to nip in to clean your teeth, or grab your nail clippers from the shelf – on comes the fan for another 5 minutes!

Even a tiny window would eliminate this waste of energy and make the whole place lighter, dryer and fresher.  I mean what creates damage more than a damp, dark, small, sealed room?

Planning So Far:
These first 2 things are so easy to eliminate when planning your new bathroom, but some people only think about working with what is already there for ease – rather than thinking ahead over the lifetime of the room.

By thinking how it will be used for the next 5 years makes eco thinking so much easier.  Yes, its easy to just replace the damp panel ‘for now’, pint over the damp or to leave the fan on for longer – but when you add up the costs of just ‘covering up’ the problem each time rather than fixing it – you are paying more in resources.

I mean, imagine taking painkillers for the rest of your life rather than having a simple filling, or replacing the hallway carpet every winter due to muddy footprints rather than just buy a large doormat!

Take a look at Part 2 of this article for more bathroom money-wasters from this holiday cottage!

Not all natural products and alternative products should be praised for sustainability.

Take for example little known herbs, common ingredients and plant extracts that we love to think of as eco friendly because they are chemical free.

But they will never become mainstream eco friendly products because anything in excess becomes unsustainable and less eco friendly.

Take the humble lemon for example. Praised across frugal networks for its cleaning ability, loved by old-fashioned housewives for its versatility around the home and loved by eco friendly gurus for its chemical-free natural qualities.

photo credit: foodiesathome.com

But what if everyone used lemons for everything? What if we all used lemons for the 101 things lemons can do?

The Requirements:
So, lets say that you have 30 apartments in your block just as I currently do. And lets all assume that they are jumping onboard the eco band wagon and using lemons as the natural alternative to everything!

So, lets say we are using lemons for the following examples:

Sanitation: Lemon juice is great for killing bacteria on everything from chopping boards to kitchen counters, and oven tops to toilet seats!

Bleaching: Just squeeze the juice on to stained wooden or cloth surfaces for food or tea stains, rub in and leave for 20 minutes before rinsing – all clean!

Cleaning: Wash white clothes with a half cup of lemon juice, rub with salt into pans for a shine, or rub on the grater to get rid of cheese or sticky foods.

Health: Heat up a half lemon and mix with honey for a cold remedy, add to hot water to ease digestion or use for a nice aromatherapy session.

Beauty: Rub direct on fingernails for a whiter tip, brush into hair for a lighter colour, or rustle up with a few other ingredients as a hair loss remedy!

Treatments: Dilute the juice for a smelly aftersun lotion, rub the peel into painful joints for 2 hours for ‘instant’ relief, or use as a bleach on your freckles and age spots!

It can also be used for polishing funiture, cleaning microwaves, washing windows, keeping cut flowers fresh, reducing the irritation of insect bites and to get rid of strong smells in your fridge!

And of course you can cook with it!

The Practicality:
Needless to say if we used lemons for all these things to be green and healthy, chemical free and ‘natural’ then my apartment building would consume around a 1000 lemons a month as a minimum.

Multiplied up for the year = that’s nearly 11,000 lemons just for my block based on 1 lemon a day per flat. Which I would say was quite a low guess-timate – bearing in mind the cold remedy alone uses half a lemon per drink – and they don’t last for ever in the fridge so many would be thrown away or composted.

Multiplied up by my home city (assuming that there were half as many households as people) this would mean that we would need over 175 million lemons a year to be totally lemon-based eco friendly chemical-free conurbation!

Now – where do you suppose we would get our 175 million eco friendly lemons from – organic, fair trade and locally sourced of course!

Probably the same place we get our billion battery chickens from or our thousands of litres of palm oil from: i.e: not a nice place!

Where in the frost-free world could we grow the 4000 chemical free, non-intensively farmed outdoor organic lemon trees just for my towns lemons? Or the 20,000 trees for the neighbouring 5 towns as well?

The Results:
As you can probably work out – using lemons for all their natural purposes will result in lemon factory farming – and the use of acres of arable land for non-food crops.

Neither is very eco friendly.

Unfortunately, this is the case for most such natural products; like bicarbonate of soda and white vinegar. They sound great for the individual but wouldn’t be practical or sustainable for the world.

This also applies to lifestyles not just cleaning products. Living in an ‘off the grid’ commune with low energy demands and only eating high energy home grown foods and washing in a river with no telephone is fine for a group of friends in their own woodland – but this is no way to run a country!

It isn’t really suitable for running a business either! If everyone lived like this, there would be no information network, no technology, no power, no policing, no imports or exports (so no coffee, chocolate, foreign natural resources) no transport network or tourism, etc, etc.  I mean who would be working in the factories and offices to power these things? 

Sometimes, eco ideals are only ‘ideal’ because we live in a world where you have choices.  What we do need are large scale solutions that will work for our growing population, not just a few people in each community.