Eco Friendly House And Garden

We bulk buy products to be eco friendly – so does a bigger house give the same benefits?

We’ll not if you are just a single person or a couple – but what if you involved the whole family or some friends?  And I don’t mean join some commune or hippy campsite – although they are both options for some people.

What I am talking about is a great idea for saving energy, combining skills and resources as well as improving everything else ‘in bulk’.  So how about it?

The Theory:
I would love to live in a large home surrounded by land – but I know this would be a bit selfish in the overall scheme of things – so how about a compromise?

How about planning to live in a house with other people, whether they be my mum or sibling – or even friends – And it doesn’t need to be as bad as it sounds: you would plan to buy a property that still allowed you your privacy, for example a 3 story town house, divided into 2 sections or a detached property with a ‘granny annexe’ as part of it.

This way, you can pool resources too, like a joint investment in a garden allotment, solar panels, wildlife garden etc, as not only will you have more combined finances with this arrangement – you will also have a larger amount of space to work with.

2 couples living in townhouses may only have a small courtyard garden and a thin sliver of the terraced roof – but combine those 2 mortgages or using a larger deposit could mean you are able to buy detached, with more garden, off road parking, fruit trees, a larger roof and less overheads: only 1 TV license, one Council Tax, lower energy costs (the first so-many units are higher priced), lower food costs (buying in bulk), the list goes on……

It has all the same advantages as buying a 2 litre bottle of shampoo rather than 4x500ml bottles – but on a much larger scale!

Other Benefits:
For starters, all the maintenance costs will be shared between you all, insurance bills and repairs will all be halved – so more money to spend on green investments.

The security of your home will be increased as when you are away, the other people will probably still be around – and the animals and plants can carry on growing while you are busy.

Magazine subscriptions can be shared, and days out can be treated as ‘family’ tickets as there will always be enough people to make up the numbers! Less cars even, depending on your situation – and more shared journeys – or less journeys even; well if you are going to the store – then your flatmates don’t need to!

Food should never go out of date if there are twice as many people around to eat it – and if you ook together then imagine the energy savings!  And there will always be enough dirty dishes to fill the machine – and clothes for a full wash!

And can you imagine how great it would be for the kids to grow up in a friendly environment where they can learn skills from all the people around them, and live in an house with a bit of character and a large garden with chickens in it!

Sounds perfect – I just need to find some similar-minded friends…………

You may well be on your way to having an eco friendly house and garden – but what about having an eco friendly pony too?

In this article, I have just put together 10 easy tips for making your stable more eco friendly, and to make sure that you now only save money and time, but also preserve existing materials and reduce your waste.

Share tips with other people at your yard and get tips from them – as some things are best done by everyone anyway – like worming together. 

If only one of you ‘worms’ your pony – then you have wasted your money, as everyone else’s ponies will still be leaving worm eggs all over the fields for your pony to digest again!  What a waste of time (yours for dosing), food (as the worms eat it) and veterinary money (as your pony will still have worms and need working again!)  And think of the poor ponies too!

Anyway, on to these 10 great horsey tips for you to experiment with and improve on:

1) Clean your horse rugs regularly to extend their lifespan – and when they are past their best, use all the available parts for spares – like the buckles, straps and edging.  You never know when it might come in handy.

2) Cod Liver Oil and other liquid products are cheaper when brought in bulk, so make sure you get your friends chip in for the biggest container between you all – and then decant into your own reused containers (keeping a note of the expiry date).

3) Rather than keep buying or carrying about shovels and forks, why not invest in 2 small ‘sheets’ of board from around the yard and use them to pick up droppings or piles of waste. Less metal used for new tools and less trips to the store!

4)  And to reduce the amount of bedding thrown away when mucking out – use an old wire basket to sieve it first.  Once the solid waste is in the basket, give it a good shake and let the clean bedding fall back to the ground.

5)  Natural sheepskin numnahs can have their life extended by shaking a small amount of talcum powder on them after each use as this will help t absorb some of the sweat and dirt from the pony’s back and keep them usable for much longer.

6)  Use some old baler twine plaited together and strung across the tack room or elsewhere to hang up wet rugs after use.

7)  A great use of an old car tyre (which seem to build up all over the place) is as a secure holder for your horses food bucket.  Some ponies love to kick their food bowl around – wasting food in the process!

8.) Wash your tack using hot water and eco friendly washing up liquid, and soap well afterwards.  Not only will this keep your leather nice a supple for the pony, but will also extend it’s lifespan.

9) Buy really brightly coloured brushes, hoof-picks and lead ropes, etc, to reduce the likelihood that you will lose them in bedding or grass.  If you lose your equipment, you are as good as throwing it away – then you will have to consume more!

10) And the best till last - save up all your well rotted manure for paying gardeners and allotment holders!  Not only are you helping to keep their plots organic and local – but you will stop them buying artificial manures or unsustainable fertilisers and peats for their plants! 

Hope these are of use to you and maybe even inspire you to try some of your own ideas at the yard!

Should smaller woodland areas near villages and towns be for pets or wildlife?

Having recently moved to a new area, I am still getting used to the local woodlands, parks, commons and footpaths close to home – but I arrived at one the other day to find that the area just outside of the car park was a dog poo hot spot!

Being a nice woodland area in a small village just a 5 or 10 minute drive from a much larger town – it seemed to attract what I call the ‘for the human’ dog walkers – which are the ‘busy’ type that think that the only reason you need to take your dog out is for a wee and poo – and they fit this ‘chore’ into a slot just before work and just after they get home.

They are also the type that think that if noone sees it or their dog does it near some trees, then they don’t have to pick it up!

I’m sure that these types of woods are found all over the country and all over the world infact – but it was funny how people reacted to the news that, thanks to a recent exchange of hands, this woodland is being converted into a nature reserve over the next year or so. 

There will be heavy machinery on site to clear dangerous trees (so the site will be closed for some months) a new path for dog walkers with a big splash pool for water loving dogs (to reduce the contamination of a delicate chalk stream on site) and a poop area to reduce dog waste across the rest of the site.

The idea is that the current habitats will be enhanced to attract the wildlife that has been lost over the past 50 years or so.

The Village Meeting:
All this sounds fantastic, and I can’t wait to volunteer some of my time to help them achieve their goal – but the rest of the discussion group seemed up in arms!

The first thing they wanted to clarify was that they were a responsible dog owner – then all they talked about was where they were going to walk their dog while the site was closed and what they were supposed to do with their dog waste if there weren’t enough poo bins supplied.

Shouldn’t the owners of the land supply them with more bins? they were asking.

There wasn’t one mention of the hope of getting newts back into the pond, or clearing waste materials out of the lake to attract waterfowl.  They weren’t too sure about the 4 cattle being released to keep the grass and weeds down either or even having a ‘dog friendly’ path (I mean why can’t they just walk where they want on someone else’s land that happens to be close to their front door!).

What’s Best?
So, I was stuck in the middle: annoyed at pet owners for only caring about themselves and their dogs rather than wildlife, but then asking myself where do we expect these people to walk their dogs?  In the street?  Driving to areas that are more delicate or currently free from dogs?

If we don’t supply a spot for them close to home to ‘ruin’ – what areas will they end up destroying instead?

I recently went into a new pet store and found a massive ’exotics’ department – fully heated and lit up!

Now I have nothing against insects, spiders, lizards, frogs and snakes, but if they are not endemic to your home country – you need an awful amount of electrical equipment to keep them ‘comfortable’.

For example, a basic exotic pet tank (lizards, terrapins and snakes) would need a heat pad on virtually all the time to replicate the temperature of their home country; lighting to replicate the natural sunlight; a hygrometer to monitor the humidity; and possibly even a water pump for water loving species.  All powered by your electricity supply.

Compare that to a rabbit which needs none of those things listed above at all – and even eats your left over fruit and veg for you!

Should we be thinking about how much energy our pets take to keep alive?  Or should we just compare them a new gadget or some great new clothes – can we treat them as a personal choice?

The Dilemma:
I know that everyone has different tastes and that there are many people out there who loves exotic species, but should we reduce the availability of these to consumers who just want to ‘try one out’.  Those people who think a snake would be great, buy all the stuff, and then lose interest after a few months.

That snake could have been wild caught, or bred abroad and imported by plane.  The transportation needs to be monitored for all the things listed above essential to the survival of each specific species – and then it needs to be kept in these same ideal conditions until their sale.  This would explain the huge section in this pet store filled with exotics - with added light bulbs and heaters!

If there was less demand for these animals as pets, they would be less of a drain on resources.  I know that the pet store and the pet owner are prepared to pay for that energy, but should your country be creating all this energy to keep your homes warm and your transport network running, only for it to be used to keep a tiny spider warm?

Also, if your pet is from another country, then it’s quite possible that their food supply is too.  Most exotics that need heating are carnivorous – so you will need to feed them either live insects and other bugs (which also have to be kept warm before feeding), or frozen birds and rodents (which obviously need to be ‘cooked’ before feeding).

I suppose you could liken keeping an exotic pet to buying exotic fruit from overseas. 

But, shouldn’t you be buying local instead?

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……

Tips On How to Create And Manage Your Environmentally Friendly Gardens.

There are many things you can do around your garden that can make it more environmentally friendly – and this doesn’t just entail dragging bath water in buckets to the garden or picking slugs off your plants under the moonlight!

More people are moving into their gardens to make a difference to their lives, either to enrich the wildlife they attract, or to grow their own food and rear their own chickens!

This article hopes to highlight a few things that you might not have thought of in your garden plans, and explains why they will benefit you and your family.

Weeding:
Try to make time to weed by hand – not only does this reduce your dependence on artificial and possibly toxic chemicals, it will also give you a little bit of exercise and allow your skin to produce some Vitamin D – essential for health!

Obviously you will need some tools to weed with – but try to use manual equipment to do so. Not only is is quieter (there’s nothing more annoying than finally getting out in the garden to enjoy a good book and next door start their leaf blower or hedge trimmer!!) but it uses less energy. No petrol or electricity is needed to use your favourite pair of shears!

If you do have an extensive lawn or plenty of hedges, etc – then large – and often expensive – equipment may well be required. But rather than buying it all yourself and then leaving it in the shed until next year – why not borrow or hire a neighbors. Some communities join together to buy ‘shared’ equipment which you rotate through the group.

However if you do need these things – then it may well be cheaper to pay for a professional gardening company to do it once or twice a year for you, rather than buy, store and repair all your own items. This will then, of course, free you up some valuable time to do something more fun!

Avoid mowing your lawn in summer as young amphibians may well be killed.

Plants:
Make sure you don’t use peat products in your garden. Not only is it taken from a fragile and irreplaceable habitat – it is also a carbon sink – basically it is keeping all the carbon it absorbed years ago within itself. Digging it up releases this carbon into the atmosphere again – and I think we already have enough up there already!

Source local, native seeds if possible to limit invasive species gettting a hold here. Also local plants will be best suited to the environment you live in, therefore limiting their damage in terms of extra water demands and possible toxins if eaten by our native wildlife. Hopefully you will help to increase biodiversity with your choices and start to attract local species instead of killing them! Ideally, you would aim for the most drought-hardy versions of your selected plants where possible to reduce demands.

Ponds:
By putting in a garden pond, you could also attract frogs and toads who delight in eating garden pests! And you could also attract a whole host of other garden-friendly pest controllers with the mini wetland you create!

Ideally, you wouldn’t put fish in a wildlife pond as they may well eat insects, amphibians and their young. Also many products need to be used to keep the fish healthy including energy sapping filters and pumps (unless you install solar equipment) and these can go against the ‘eco-friendly’ grain so to speak. Having a few healthy fish at the expense of a delightful and welcoming wildlife pond teeming with local species and plants is your choice in the end.

Try to avoid to much fuss over the pond in summer as many creatures will be breeding and there will be young all around. You could throw them out if you start weeding!

Messy Area:
By making sure there is a part of your garden that is a bit dishevelled will ensure that more wildlife will find your garden a safe haven. Essential to attract is the humble bumble bee and you can do this by offering it a home in a hole close to the ground – they will help pollinate your plants and vegetables through the summer.

Your compost heap is an essential part of a sustainable garden – even if you are not growing your own veg. Plants can do very well on the composted result of your table scraps and dead leaves (it also saves a long drive to the amenity facilities to dump all your green waste too!)

Make sure you let nettles grow in a controlled area of your garden as well, as they are a great nitrogen fixer – making the earth beneath then become more fertile.

Ideally, your messy area and lawn should be proportionally larger than any paved or concreted areas, as these hard impermeable surfaces will increase rain run off during storms. As a result, it will divert valuable water away from your garden plants and send it (along with everyone elses run-off) into the drains and nearby creeks and streams. After long periods of heavy rain this could easily increase the risk of localised flooding as all the water gets to the waterways at the same time rather than slowly filtering through the ground first!

Pets:
Make sure that your pets are not causing a problem for wildlife or your garden. Cats for example catch mice and other small rodents which unfortunately is having a disastrous effect on bumble bees. These insects like to use old rodent burrows for their new nests, but if there aren’t any rodents digging the burrows in the first place – you can see the problem!

They also kill frogs, toads and wild birds.

Ducks are a tiny bit messier than chickens but they just love slugs and will eat them for you all day. However, they may destroy some plants along the way! Ducks will produce less eggs though if you were looking for a steady supplier!

Guinea pigs make great electricity-free lawn mowers and can keep grass down perfectly low if you rotate them around your garden in their spacious run. Rabbits also eat grass but will almost always burrow into your lawn creating a bit of a mess! Both will eat all the fresh table scraps you can offer and their bedding can be composted.

So, go get outside – and start developing you environmentally friendly gardens into something you can be proud of!!!

Do you know if what you feed you dog or cat is good for the environment or have you never even thought about it?

You have no doubt seen the huge array of pet foods available these days, either in the supermarket or the pet shop but is there much difference in their impact on the environment?

Basically there are a list of arguments as to why commercial wet food is not so good for anything really: it’s costs more to feed, it contains various sugars and salts, it costs more to transport, it uses a lot of metal and processing, and the standard of nutrition is less than in premium dry foods.

Lets take a look at the main points:

Packaging:
When you buy a tin of cat food; it will usually feed you pet for 1 or 2 meals – then you throw the can away or recycle it. When you buy a small bag of dry food it will feed your pet for many days or weeks, then you throw it on the compost heap or reuse it for rubbish. But how do they actually compare?

Lets use a cat as the example for this one. Basically a bag of premium dry food is usually around 3kg – that’s 3000g of food in the one bag. An average 3/4 kg cat would need around 40g of food a day, so the bag would last 75 days (nearly 11 weeks).

Needless to say that the same amount of days food in tins would be up to 75 cans per cat! Imagine the wasted packaging here!!! Lets break it down over a year.

The cost of making the tins:
The tins for the pet food need to be made in the first place. Because pets need to eat so many tins of food – there are thousands of tins made each day.

Wrapping the tins:
Each tin needs to have a label made, printed with the brand name and the ingredients and directions. This needs to then be glued onto the tins.

Packing the tins:
Pet food normally gets packed in bulk for transportation, and tins are normally sat on a cardboard (printed with branding) and plastic wrapped in a tray of 12. They are not usually displayed in this packaging so it is discarded before sale.

 Transporting the tins:
These trays will then need to be taken to a main distribution centre first and then transported again to a warehouse or supermarket warehouse when ordered. They will finally then be transported to the actual store that needs them.

Transport to your home:
When you buy the tins yourself (an average of 7 at a time because they are so heavy), you will need to package them up for transportation – usually in a plastic bag – and travel with them to your home.

Assuming you need those 75 tins, that is one 400g tin a day – that is 365 tins for the year. Bearing in mind you usually buy around 7 tins per shopping trip, that is 52 trips a year to the store, thats 52 journeys of your time and money to carry home your pets food.

If you live in a street where several of the residents also have a cat, (say a total of 10 cats) thats about 3650 tins a year that need to be produced for just your street. Your neighbourhood could need 5 times that – 13,322,500 tins a year for just 50 cats! Your recycling bins are going to be filled in no time!!

Water:
Dry foods do not waste money on transporting water half way across the world. They are dry foods because that is a better way to produce and transport high quality foods.

Wet foods can contain over 60% water – usually added back to the animal derivatives before canning – and you could argue that this is the same a real meat. But why should you pay for that water to be transported across the country when you can add your own water at home?

If up to 60% of a tin of wet food is water – then you are only getting 40% or less of actual ingredients – and bearing in mind most commercial wet foods contains vegetable material as well – how much of what’s left is actually meat?

Most cats prefer rainwater or water from your bathroom tap as they don’t contain as many minerals as our tap water – and will appear as though your pets are drinking more water when you start feeding them a dry food – but that’s not a bad thing. It just means that there was so much flavoured water in the wet food that it didn’t need to drink before!

Organic & Fair Trade?
Well, there isn’t really a commercially branded wet food that offers the choice of organic food for your pets – although there are several in the premium pet food market.

The pet food market in general is certainly lagging behind in the need for organic and fairly traded products and they will not start to branch out until people start asking and ultimately buying anything that does come out.

Don’t be fooled by ‘natural’ foods in the pet market, or ‘made with fresh chicken’ as all meat was fresh before it was cooked and all meat is natural too – they are false claims for a bit or ‘green-washing’. Never believe the advertising on the front of a product for the truth about a food – look at the actual ingredients so you can judge for yourself!

To Conclude:
Wet pet food uses a lot of packaging and wasted transport costs and energy – and you waste a lot of energy and money going out to buy it. If you want to reduce your impact – reduce your pets dependence on tinned wet food – and switch to dry – preferably a premium dry food (there are different types of dry food available).

Dry food is not bad for your pet, it is actually more nutritious. I know this because if your pet ever gets really ill or drastically overweight – your vet will recommend a prescription diet to fix the problem that is a dry food. So if vets use dry food to make sick dogs and cats better – why not use it when they are still healthy!!!