Eco Friendly House And Garden

Female Dogs are still being forced to have litter, after litter, after litter, after litter, after litter……..

The only way they can get to stop this repeated assault and to be freed from their small and very dirty cage or crate is to die - then they get thrown outside into a bin or hole in the ground!

And this is no lie or just some horror story made up by rescue centres - type in ‘puppy farm’ or ‘puppy mill’ in an ‘images’ Internet search - and you will see the evidence!

Basically puppy farms only exist because people are STILL buying the puppies - even after years and years of advertising and petitioning by rescue centres and animal welfare bodies!  People just can’t see sense.

So, what can you do to stop this trade in endless puppy farming without spending an extra penny?  Well if you want to buy a puppy - read through the advice below:

1) Check Out A Rescue Centre:
There are always pedigree and first cross puppies filling up rescue centres all the time.  Only this week there are 18 puppies at a local RSPCA centre; 8 mastiff cross, 6 lurchers and 4 spaniels - all cute and all looking for homes!  And there are hundreds more waiting in other centres too!

These are usually unwanted litters - basically the owner did not neuter their female dog and a free-roaming neighbouring male dog got to her when she was in season.  Hey presto - a litter of first cross puppies are born! 

By getting your puppy from a centre like this is a great way to stop puppy farm breeders - as the less puppies they sell, the less likely they are to breed more.   

2) Being Really Picky With Your Breeder:
Well the first thing you can do is not ever buy a puppy from a breeder advertising in a local newspaper in the first place.  Yes, there are some genuine breeders out there who want to sell their puppies - but it is often not easy to spot them in local publications amongst the ‘money-makers’.

You need to look out for a couple of things before calling anyone, as there are many clear signs that can tell you that these people don’t actually really ‘love’ their dogs - and are therefore probably just after the money.  Than if you do call - check out a few further details…..

Advertising More Than 1 Pedigree Breed For Sale:  
What type of irresponsible pet carer allows 2,3 or even 7 of her female pets to become pregnant at the same time?  If they are ‘pedigree’ dogs - then the owner has actually paid and arranged for the many seperate male dogs to come and do the stud work!  And what sort of ‘loving’ pet owner can keep up to 7 female dogs as pets in the same home?  No-one - so all these bitches are outside in kennels.

Giving Only A Mobile Number:
Are they saying that they are more likely to be away from home than looking after the puppies?

Saying That You Might Not Be Able To See The Mother:
By the time you can collect the puppies the female could be pregnant again - or skeletal!  If she hasn’t had the correct nutrition through the latter stages of the pregnancy (or her whole life) then she will look totally bony and exhausted by the time the pups are ready for rehoming.  No wonder they won’t let you see her!

However, you should be suspicious if you do see the mother and she hasn’t got very swollen and dangly nipples - it means that the puppy isn’t hers even if she is sniffing it or the puppy is trying to suckle.  Whelping females (females that have just given birth) have unmistakably dangly boobies!

The Puppies Are Less Than 8 Weeks Old:
In an ideal world for the puppy - it should stay with it’s siblings and in the company of it’s mother up to between 8 and 12 weeks.  Puppies younger than this are really a little too young to be rehomed - no matter how cute they look - so the secret is to not look at them in the first place!

All puppies are cute - otherwise we wouldn’t want to get one in the first place.  And if you are looking for a particular pedigree breed - then they will look virtually identical anyway as that is the idea behind being a pedigree in the first place!

Offering To Meet You ’Halfway’ Or To ‘Drop It Off At Your House’:
This plays on the ‘falling in love with the cute puppy’ syndrome.  Breeders want to be seen as kind and friendly by saving you the trip to meet them - but in fact they are just making sure you don’t see the state of their kennels and the poor suffering bitches in their puppy farm!

If you want a cute chocolate Labrador puppy and have your money in hand - and the breeders turn up with a very cute chocolate Labrador in their hands - you will take it from them.  Even if it is too young, a ‘bit poorly’ has an ‘upset tummy’ or even a sore foot or cut on it’s face!

Basically - you will be so ‘in love’ with it that you will still pay full price for a ’sick’ puppy - it even adds to the appeal - I mean how could you turn it away?  

That’s their plan - and you fell for it!  Just like the thousands of people before you that they have been supplying with puppy farmed pets!

So What Can You Do?
You need to be tough - but the only way to stop this is to make sure that you don’t ‘feel sorry’ for a puppy, and don’t buy any that fit the above ‘dodgy’ criteria.

Every puppy farmed puppy you do buy just gives the breeders good reason to go and breed a whole new litter.  If you could make around £4000 for a litter of cocker spaniels - imagine how much you could make if you had 10 bitches breeding 2 or 3 times a year?

But, if you made nothing at all from the first litter - but had spent £1000’s of your own money feeding these 10 bitches and their 80 puppies and didn’t sell any - would you do it again?

Make sure you plan your puppy purchase so that you are not cornered by these people or fall in love with a sick or badly bred puppy!  There are plenty of healthy loved puppies out there to choose from!

Brilliant ideas to purify your lifestyle and feel good about it - she says….

Basically this book tries to cover all the organic and natural ways you can overcome the ‘evil’ or modern products and all the chemicals they contain.

And to prove it, she divides her advice up into 48 categories of ‘nasties’ including make-up and nappies. She explains in each case why we need to swap to more natural alternatives - by using scientific and medical arguments against each - and then offers organic, (man-made) chemical-free and more ‘natural’ products or ingredients that you could use instead.

The Book Itself:
I loved the layout of this book, and it was so easy to read that you find yourself reading chapter after chapter.  Each chapter is a 4-6 page debate as to the pro’s and con’s of each mini subject including for example, Make-Up, chocolate and toothpaste.

Hughes-Cooper helps to explain some of the main down-sides to the products we use today and offers alternatives.  There isn’t a full explanation of each due to the ’short’ nature of each chapter, and some of her answers or arguments are a bit vague or non-proven - but she certainly makes you think about all these issues while you are reading. 

She regularly uses phrases like ’this is totally natural’ - but remember that this is what they used to say about Arsenic, Lead and radio-active products that ‘glow in the dark’. It’s also important to remember that anything that can be found in plants, animals or in the earth is technically ‘natural’ in origin, but I doubt you will be in a hurry to use toadstools, uranium or snake venom in your kitchen or bathroom!

Due to the way in which you can read through this book relatively quickly, I found that I would stop for a moment after reading a particular fact and think ‘Oh my goodness, I should stop using that’ but then read on through to another section and do the same again. It seemed like page after page of doom and gloom, and worries about my health, but then I just carried on reading.  Almost like I wanted to find out how awful I was being to my own body, but then actually did nothing about it.

As with most of the ‘best things’ in this life, whether it’s growing your own veg, not flying, using only organic make-up, growing sprouted mung bens and seeking out the parabens free version of everything, the thought of it all just seems to overwhelm the normal working person.  I myself would love to consider doing most of the things Hughes-Cooper recommends in her book, but the time it would take and the possible financial costs just seem a bit prohibitive.  And it left me feeling like a bit of a failure!

Yes, there are some easy ones to achieve, like growing my own herbs in the window box and buying organic milk (as I do them already), but others I hadn’t really thought of doing, like buying hemp products instead of 100% cotton and un-bleached feminine products - which should both be quite easy to start doing. 

However, something else caught my attention as I read this book: Organic doesn’t automatically mean eco friendly - you might need a trade-off.  For example making your own smoothies, fruit juices, pies and vegetable noodles, all involve buying a new piece of electrical equipment - and creates a lot more washing up!  Neither of these are eco friendly.

Should you buy organic wines from Australia or non-organic British wines?  Think of the weight of the glass bottles coming from the other side of the world!  And there are constant references to using ‘natural’ cleaning products like white vinegar and bicarbonate of soda - but can you imagine what would happen if we all used these instead of all the shop-brought cleaners?  Vinegar is from grapes - so excessive amounts of water-hungry fruits will need to be grown to keep up with demand; and the soda is mined from the ground - so imaging habitats being destroyed to ‘naturally’ clean all the kitchens in the UK and US! 

I totally agree, however, that our actions can make us humans healthier and at the same time have less of a ‘chemical’ impact on the environment.  And sometimes the choice you have is so very simple.  However, there is still so much that you need to work quite hard to achieve, and I just don’t think that everything in this book can be achieved by a working family.

I mean I thought I was putting a reasonable effort in to the whole eco friendly/organic movement, but have only seemed to have achieved about a third of the things mentioned in the book. with maybe alf a dozen or so more in the pipeline now after reading it.  So, I hope that everyone who reads it (just like me) manages to get a few new ideas from it, because all those small things will soon add up!

Result: 3/5
If you were just reading this book the one time, then it might not really be of any use to you, other than making you think about how many toxins you and your children have absorbed over your lifetime, but if you were to use this as a reference book then things could be very different - and my Result would rise to 4/5 for it.

It certainly has it’s uses as a starting point for the layman, and has highlighted a few new things for me, but the thought of searching endlessly on the Internet for the right products, or reading label after label when I only have 10 minutes free time before having to collect the kids from school - or worse still, I have the kids in tow, then these things become unreasonable to achieve.

This book is part of the  ‘52 Briliant Ideas’ series, so I will be looking out for other relevant books to give me some more inspiration!

ISBN: 978-1-905940-57-8

Eco friendly and Fair Trade products are on the increase - and you can be a part of their success!

The only reason manufacturers never really use eco friendly resources for their products is because consumers as a whole were never really ‘that’ bothered where things came from - as long as we liked them in the first place and they were not too expensive. 

Even today, you may well still be buying products that don’t have a branded logo on them, like ‘fair trade’ or ‘FSC certified’ - even though these products are available.

Why?  Well, you can answer that one yourself.  I bet it’s the simple reason that they aren’t always available in your local shops, and if they are available there is very little selection for you to choose from.

The Problem:
Lets take, for example, tea for this first problem.  Fair trade tea has been available for years, but it started out as just the one type.  Basically you had to choose to have fair trade tea in the only flavour that it came in, or you could have non-fair trade tea in any flavour that you wanted (and had probably been drinking your whole life).  Not such a difficult choice for most: they went for flavour.

Secondly, with the example of shoes; one pair of plain, non-offensive brown shoes may have been made by a community of Fair Trade workers in India.  However, because they were made with care and a premium paid for their certification, they were usually a lot pricier than their non-fair trade equivalent shoes that came in a huge variety of shapes, colours and styles.  Again, factors were working against the new products.

Yet others were so hard to get hold of that they would never be seen by over 80% of the population.  Whether they were only stocked by online stores or only found in ‘hippy’ or ‘alternative health stores’ it didn’t matter.  If they weren’t on the shelf in Boots, M&S or Tesco - most people wouldn’t ever see them - and so most people wouldn’t buy them.

And ultimately, their scarcity and high(ish) prices meant that no-one could really recommend them to the general public as so few people wanted to risk their money on an unusual of slightly different product.

Step Into Today’s Market:
However, as we find today, there are now a whole host of ethical or eco friendly alternatives to almost every product available today.  They are still only really a small slice of the market, but at least now people are starting to actually ‘like’ and search for these products.

And we know that retail responed to this by stocking more - so by using such products ourselves, we are creating a better future market for these types of products.

Whether you prefer to help the planet by buying organic products, or you want to help distant farming communities with your support of Fair Trade doesn’t matter.  What matters is that you are buying these things in the first place.

And, the more support these products get, the cheaper they become too.  The reason why a lot of organic or fair trade products were not for sale in high street stores is because their retail price was so expensive compared to existing alternatives that there was no point taking them on - they were a ‘waste of shelf space’.

But now demand has made these product more reasonably priced and able to compete with known brands.  Take for example Ethletics cotton sneakers.

These cotton baseball boots look virtualy identical to a well known brand of baseball boots and shoes.  They come in the same huge array of colours, both for kids and adults, short or long, and even personalized designs - and they are even the same price.

However, Ethletics shoes are made with only organic cotton, use an FSC approved rubber source, offer a Fair Trade price for both the rubber, the cotton and the workforce and are 100% vegan and contain absolutely no plastic.

The other brand make none of these claims.  It doesn’t have to, it’s been selling it’s footwear for years based on the brand alone.  It may well use these same workers or forests for their supplies, and their shoes might also be free of animal derivatives - but they just don’t need to tell us.

Your Choice:
Whether you personally support the manufacturer who offers you certified proof of all their ethical attributes doesn’t really matter.

What matters is that we have got to a point where you can’t say you didn’t have a choice. 

But doing the right thing no longer means walking around in sandals, wearing a baggy t-shirt eating lentils.  Being ethical is now a lifestyle choice without the compromise.

Being ethical today means having everything you are used to, but sourcing it wisely!

We probably all owe money on something - but it isn’t doing anyone any favours!

Nobody likes to owe anyone any money - but if you needed any persuasion to pay it off sooner - think about all the good you could be doing with the interest instead:

• £4 a month - become a member of WWF to help save wildlife
• £20 one off donation - help Great Ormond Street Hospital
• £ANY - a year - buy fair trade food instead
• £ANY a quarter - change your energy supplier to a green one

I know we don’t like to spend extra money on things if we don’t have to, but if you are happy to pay that loan interest, or that credit card payment - why not use the same money for other more useful things - rather than just paying the banks!

Pay Off Your Bills Sooner!
I know it sounds obvious, but many people are quite happy to keep paying the minimum payments - and aren’t usually in and hurry to pay them early either.

We all want more money in our pockets - and who can blame us - but paying interest for anything is a complete waste of our money and our money’s potential.

Rather than paying £50 a month for nothing, that money could have helped buy a chunk of rainforest, saved the lives of 100 children in the developing world or helped build a wind farm instead of mining for more oil!

Change Your Life:
By working out how much you are paying a year in interest, you might really see what a difference you could be making to your own life as well.

I’m not talking about the ‘happy feeling’ of not having any debts, I’m talking about all the things you could have done for yourself with the money.

If you are paying a loan repayment of around £100 a month - that is £1200 a year that you could have spent on a training course to change careers, £1200 on stock or services if you were starting an eco business or £1200 to spend on eco renovations to your home.

If you are renting it could mean spending that extra £100 on a larger property, and if you own your home, that money could be paying off your mortgage a lot sooner.

Get Started:
So, speak to an independent financial advisor about the best way to pay off your bills for a better life for you!

Don’t always rely on your same old bank - especially if it them who you owe the money too as they want to keep you with them!  They may show you a better deal from their current one - but it will only be to their next best one - not necessarily the best product for you.

I’m not saying that your bank (or any bank) is trying to keep you in debt, it’s just that as a business, they would rather you were in debt with them rather than anyone else!  You can’t blame them really can you.

So by using independent or government-run financial agencies, you can be sure of getting a fair deal and great advice.

Get Sorting:
And, to help you out, why not refresh your own thinking to get things moving - after all what you spend on other things can’t go towards paying off your bills - and there could be a better eco friendly option too!

For example, try not to subscribe to magazines that you don’t really read - especially if they are available for less money as online magazines (no paper, no postage, etc).

By reducing your dependence on processed foods and by growing your own vegetables - you could seriously cut down on your food bills, and the same goes for electrical goods - turning off things you only use once in a while can reduce energy bills. 

And if you want to buy new clothes - make sure you sell your old ones first!

Here we are again - with some quick easy steps to staying green…..

1) Buy Old Stuff:
Choose products that contain recycled materials otherwise why are we bothering to separate out our rubbish in the first place! 

There is no point expecting people to wash out and separate out all their plastics and glass if we aren’t prepared to buy the stuff we make out of it all!  Something is only worth making if people are going to buy it - I mean you don’t see trifle flavoured crisps or eyeball pies in your shops do you?

2) Buy New Stuff:
If you see a new product that supports Fair Trade, palm oil certification, MSC or anything else - make sure you are one of it’s new supporters!

If someone has bothered to make something that supports something you believe in, then the least you can do is buy it occasionally.  Sometimes these eco friendly versions are just as tasty as the normal things you buy, but that extra 50p you spend could make all the difference.

3) Bring Your Own Stuff:
We all remember to save our bags for shopping, and nearly all of us remember to take our bags to the stores - but then we go and leave them in the car! 

So, try to make a concerted effort to remember your bags when shopping, and to take more than you think you will need.  The number of times I only wanted ‘a few things’ and ended up remembering a whole load of other stuff - far out-weighing my original bag capacity! 

4) Leave Stuff Behind:
Make sure that you don’t buy fish that is not MSC certified - otherwise that might become a type of fish that you won’t be able to eat in the future - especially if it is being over-fished!

Isn’t it better to go without it this week rather than lose it forever!

The same goes for everything really.  My local store didn’t have my usual organic, free-range medium hens eggs.  So I didn’t buy any.  Firstly, I can go back to the shop tomorrow without having starved to death overnight: and secondly, buying the less chicken-friendly alternative in the shop lets the shop manager know that I’m not really that bothered about the type of eggs I buy!

I mean, if non-organic supermarket eggs sell just as well when the organic ones have sold out - and there is a better profit margin on the non-organic ones - then they might well let the organic ones ‘run out’ more regularly knowing that it’s more important that customers have eggs than the fact that they are organic!

Don’t let supermarkets decide what you can buy - make sure you tell them what you want to buy.

5) Make Your Own Stuff:
Rather than buy processed foods from Asia, and vegetables from Africa - why not try out some new recipes and using veg you can grow in your own back garden!

Try shopping in the fresh and home baking sections only for a week.  Don’t rely on someone you don’t know making a meal for you miles from your kitchen and then sticking it in a box for you and shipping it to your nearest store!

Give it a go!

The RGS are hosting a fantastic EcoFair on the 5th and 6th of December in London.

They are bringing together some fantastic international eco friendly companies and charities to fill your day with excitement and fill your bags with great goodies!

Stalls include some of the old favourites like the RSPB selling wildlife gifts, memberships and information for your gardens and great days out and the CO-OP will be promoting their eco friendly and fair trade clothing ranges.

There are also products available from around the world, with alpaca clothing from Peru, ethical accessories from Nepal, hand-made silks from Cambodia and Luxury fabrics from India.

There are also creations from the UK, including recycled household goods, hand-made bespoke jewelry, fair trade organic babywear and luxurious oils and soaps.

There is also a free puppet show being performed at the show just after lunch time - called the Forest of Fables, and is performed using Japanese style puppets (made from recycled materials) to African music depicting well known Greek fables!

In addition, there is even a puppet making session beforehand - so your children can make their own recycled puppet like those from the show and learn how the show is put together - including a sneak preview at some of the songs - and they get to keep their puppet!

The whole show is free entry to all - with free fairtrade wine for all RGS members and guests - see the RGS website for more details……..

Is Your Favorite Supermarket Pulling It’s Eco Weight?

This month (August 2009) BBC Wildlife Magazine reviewed certain aspects of our favorite shops and rated them on the same criteria - and it made an interesting read.

For example- all 6 stores were rated on 8 hot environmental issues - giving them the chance to earn a total of 40 points.  The highest scoring store only got 29 of them - so that means that even the best performing eco friendly store was missing about 27% of the points - not so good really.

But then we sort of already know that supermarkets can’t ever really be ‘green’ anyway.

The Criteria:
There were 8 ways in which the stores were offered up to 5 points, these ranged from Air Miles through Fair Trade and on to highly contentious Palm Oil.

I will summarise each catagory mentioning the best and worst stores as judged by BBC Wildlife.

Air Miles:
Sainsbury’s came out worse here with only 2/5 as although they do source local food where possible they don’t label air-freighted foods.  However M&S do label their products - plus they also source all their in-season vegetables from farms in the UK.

Animal Welfare:
An issue we all have an opinion on, but did you know that Asda and Tesco still sell eggs from battery-caged hens!  After all this time - people are still buying them from 2 of our largest stores - and they are still supplying them!

Climate Change:
When asked if they have specific targets for reducing carbon emissions M&S said that they are due to become carbon neutral by 2012 and has 4 eco-factories that currently save 50% of the standard energy needed elsewhere.  Asda however has said that they will try to cut their emissions by 10% but have set no dates at all!

Fair Trade:
Co-Op wins here as they were one of the first stores ever to convert to Fair Trade products in many different areas and are still one of the market leaders and currently has over 260 Fair Trade lines in their stores.  Morrisons however have just 10 Fair Trade Lines in their huge stores - and none of them are own-label!

Sustainable Fish:
Carrying a huge 56 lines of MSC labelled fish is Sainsbury’s who stock their own brands of MSC labelled foods - but Tesco filed to provide full details of MSC products, apart from the fact that their own-brand foods are not labelled as MSC certified.

GM Feeds:
Whether cattle are being fed GM feeds is also an area that concerns consumers, and as a result the M&S have made sure that all their own label meat and dairy is GM free - although they haven’t been labelled as such.  Generally all the other stores use GM feeds forr their meat and dairy products unless they are certified as Organic (meaning that they legally can’t be).

Organic Foods:
Over 70% of fruit and vegetables in M&S have an organic alternative as opposed to only 5% organic products in the Co-Op (only 22 lines).  How can we be making changes to our shopping habits if we aren’t being offered a suitable alternative?

Use Of Pesticides:
Asda & Morrisons declined to mention whether they still used hazardous chemicals to treat their food or areas in which food was stored - whereas the other stores have put limits or bans in place for some well known chemicals.

Palm Oil:
A hot topic at the moment - although Asda and Sainsbury’s are the only ones that have actually done something about it that they are advertising.  Morrisons says some products are but won’t tell consumers which products they are, M&S use 7 lines that should get certification soon but so far are not listed as sustainable and Tesco and Co-Op are ‘looking to switch’ but not for another 5 years or so!

Frightening stuff really - that we aren’t really pushing hard enough for these obvious changes to occur in our favorite stores.

We aren’t creating the demand needed to get a reaction out of these large companies.  Whether we are making the wrong choices in our shopping - or we are making incorrect decisions based on little or misleading information - something isn’t working.

So either we need to start paying more attention to our shopping habits and the effect they are having on the animals and countryside around us or we may as well waste all the effort that has gone into the changes that people have brought around already!

Whether you are buying crisps, pet food or office equipment - look for the logo!

The Ethical Accreditation Scheme has been running for many years, helping to identify the most ethical companies in all areas of the market.  All those who pass the basic criteria can then display the Good Shopping Guide Logo on their products and websites so that you know you are choosing from the best out there.

For example did you know something as simple as choosing Sainsbury’s over Spar or Teacher’s whisky over Bell’s could be affecting the environment and even peoples lives?

What Is The Scheme About?
The Ethical Company Organisation runs the UK’s leading ethical accreditation scheme to help identify companies and brands that are one step ahead of the competition in terms of their impact on the environment, animal welfare issues if applicable, human rights, responsible marketing and suppliers and their ethical investment policies - amongst other criteria.

The ’scoring’ takes into account many aspects of trade and staffing, and then allows for full accreditation if all categories are met.  It also allows for other companies to be listed as ‘almost there’ and those that are no good at all really!

The History Of Ethical Shopping.
In the past 2 decades - ethical shopping has come along in leaps and bounds.  People as consumers are actually asking where their ’stuff’ comes from.  And are finding out that Brother make more ethical products than Samsung or Xerox for example.  Where products are not that different in appearance of function - it’s good to know that your choice can help make a difference.

Picking one brand of toaster could help support the sale of armaments and abuses of human rights where as another could be preserving habitats and helping to encourage fair trade.  The difference to you could be just 50 pence, but the difference to the whole chain of people associated with the raw materials and production could mean life or death!

1986 saw the boycott of General Electric for it’s involvement with nuclear weapons, 1989 saw Avon in the public eye for animal testing, then in the 1990’s Nestle were forced to rethink their Baby Milk marketing after the truth was exposed.  1994 saw the timber trade in the spotlight and France itself had to do some serious ‘fixing’ after it’s nuclear tests were thrown into the news during the following year.

Since then, there have been some serious changes in policy for most major areas like animal testing, the timber trade, marine and dolphin fishing, fair trade coffee and chocolate becoming mainstream and many many more - including the new palm oil certification.

Consumers want to know everything - and they know that they can make a change now.

Visit www.gooshing.co.uk for some information that can help you decide if Hula Hoops are a more ethically responsible choice than Pringles; whether your cooking oil manufacturer is supplying weapons to troubled countries or whether your sewing machine is harming animals!

Take a look……

Watch this short video - and it will jolt you into reality!

Where do you think all your stuff comes from?  What happens when you get that new phone?  How can we get our stuff so cheap?  What is the real cost of our spending?

All these are answered in this lively, well animated and well written short video by a well traveled, very experienced environmental investigator specialising in health and justice issues across the globe.

It is filled with some scary facts about what we are doing to our planet - or in reality what we are not doing to help our planet.

It highlights - with a fact-packed dialogue - what we are allowing to happen or are being coerced into thinking is ‘OK’.

Annie quotes that the US represents just “5% of the world’s population but uses 30% of the resources and makes 30% of the waste”  Is that right?  Or is that just how it ended up because no-one has really ever thought it was wrong?

Think about it!
She certainly makes you think about everything you are going to buy - or anything you have recently brought.  And it should certainly make you think about anything you are planning to throw away!

The cost of something shouldn’t be the value that the store attributes to it.  For example the $4.99 radio she talks about in her video could not possibly have only cost $4.99 to make. 

Firstly, the store has to make a profit and it needs to be packaged up and shipped across the world from where ever it was made.  So none of that is what it actually cost to make either - so we are down to about maybe $3.00 or less to make?

And how long would you think 1 single radio takes to make from it’s basic parts? About 30 minutes?  No, that would be stupid, right?  But would you work for less than $6.00 an hour? I don’t think so.

So, how much money do the people that build these get paid?  And we haven’t even started on the people it took to mine the raw materials and the time it took to shape them into the component parts.  And what about driving and shipping costs?

And we haven’t even started on the cost to the environment…… 

Yet to some people, throwing out an un-needed $5 radio is not a worry to them - it’s only $5. They don’t even think about what was destroyed or who was exploited to make it in the first place.

And you can be sure that many people do not think about what happens to it after they throw it out!

Well, Annie explains all in her hard-hitting fact-filled docu-video - but keeps it fun and a bit funny even.

And you can help out by showing people, schools, social clubs or anyone else this video to help change that!  Check out the resources on the site for more information.

Here we continue on from our debate with a look at what Organic and Fair Trade mean in terms of our food. 

One is more concerned with the health of the environment and ecosystem, while the other places more of it’s attention onto the growers and the farming communities of developing countries.

Organic:
Many governments have strict laws regarding the use of the word ‘Organic’ on food and feeds and they must be registered with a certified organic body.  However organic food can be imported from any country in the world, as long as it also has a certified organic body. 

The aim of organic farming is best described as optimizing the health and productivity of linked communities of soil life, plants, animals and people. 

As a result the environment is better treated; livestock and crops are not injected or sprayed with chemicals and the resulting food is as natural as can be and ultimately contains more natural ingredients and nutrition.

As a result the animals that we farm will be better treated (ie. have more space and more natural diets), the wildlife and watercourses will not be exposed to intensive farming and overuse of chemicals and associated problems, and the resulting food will be more nutritious and virtually chemical free.

Fair Trade:
This heading is more directed at the workers themselves, rather than the nutritional value of their foods.

Basically, it promotes the equality of workers in all countries by guaranteeing certain prices and certain working conditions that benefit small farms and local farming communities.

As it offers better quality of life to people, it therefore offers a great alternative to non-fair trade products from the same locations, for example fair trade bananas.  We can’t grow them here and have to import them; so why support poor working conditions by buying non-fair trade products?

The amount you pay is not that different, but more of the money can go into schools and communities rather than an international firms pocket!

Your Conclusion?
It is still very difficult to decide when you should by organic and when fair trade?  And can local produce even be fair trade?

You need to decide what is important to you first for each food type (as sometimes you will have little choice apart from not eating that food when you want - but when it’s available!).

1) If you want to reduce climate change then only buy locally and seasonal to prevent carbon emissions from extra resources and from flights and shipping long-haul.

2) If you want to be more environmentally friendly, then choose seasonal to reduce growth enhancers being used; and organic which will reduce the chemicals and fertilisers being used en masse in the countryside and waterways.

3) If you want to support developing countries and small farms, then buy fair trade (and possibly organic) to reduce their stresses and exposure to multi-national abuse and chemical overload!

4) If you want to ‘be healthy’ and reduce your families exposure to chemicals then buy locally and organically to reduce your exposure to artificial ingredients and chemical in your foods, but also from exposure from exhaust fumes from transported goods from elsewhere.

Sometimes, it’s not that easy - or that clear cut, but if you want to seriously make a difference, you are going to have to start making some decisions.