Eco Friendly House And Garden

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!

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.

Knowing what a plant loves best can make your eco friendly garden tick over nicely!

Eco friendly gardening isn’t all about using organic chemicals and using cold bath water – it’s about eco thinking too.

Yes, by reducing the chemicals you use and using ‘old’ water – you can make a significant difference to the energy demands of your garden – no matter how simple it is.  However, by thinking ahead you can reduce these even further without too much effort!

Just as an overflowing desk results in lower output and the fridge at the wrong temperature wastes food – a plant in the wrong place or with too many other plants around it can be a waste too!

Try planting 10 healthy plants into the same pot.  Even if you water them properly and they are all in the right light – they won’t all grow.  Plants have requirements just like people, food, animals and the Earth – so find out what they like best and you are on to a winner!

photo credit: brockvicky

Good Plant Husbandry:
Here are some simple things to consider with your garden – whether it’s existing or you are planning for the spring. 

A few minutes now can save a lot of time next year – for example with having to re-pot a fast growing plant, water a plant in direct sunshine more, treat a sick plant for disease, increase feeding for plants in the wrong soil etc.  It’s all your time wasted – and its wasted energy and resources too! So;

1) Plant the right plant in the right place according to it’s needs – not where it ‘looks best’!  If you don’t have space in direct sunlight for your sunflowers – then don’t plant them this year – plant something less sunshine dependant instead.

2) Use mulch to prevent splashing onto delicate foliage – not only will this make ornamental plants last longer by increasing the time the leaves are beautiful – but it reduces the water needs of the ground and will offer a haven for helpful invertebrates in your garden. 

3) Plant at ideal distances from other plants to improve ventilation- as every fruit tree grower knows; if you don’t have enough space between branches you will get less fruit in the first place and that any fruit you do grow could rot on the branches anyway!  Just as a crowed train gets sweaty an unhealthy – so do overcrowded plants.  They lose leaves, grow too fast (to try to out compete the neighbouring plants) and are more susceptible to disease.

4) Clear away dead leaves and dying plants when spotted- as the decaying matter can harbour fungus, encourage unwanted insects to the area and get to damp over the winter.  Rotten or dead leaves can be good for composting or mulching – but not while attached to the live plant!  Damp and disease can spread up the dying leaf from contact with the ground and infect or damage the healthy part of the plant in the same way that your arm in a bowl of cold water could make the rest of your body catch a chill! 

And, organic waste can be harmful too! Fallen leaves should be composted rather than left on garden plants as they can stain or damage flowering plants. Yes they are all over woodlands – but trees dont usually have leaves at ground level! A even grass cuttings can be a problem for certain plants as large amounts of cuttings can alter the ph of the soil – and could put certain plants under too much stress as a result – so make sure you are not going to imbalance your soils if growing delicate plants.

5) Keep land and paths even to prevent puddles and flooding- by decreasing the chances of surface water collecting in your garden, you are increasing the chances of this ‘free’ water being used by your plants rather than evaporating away!  Also, puddles forming in badly draining soil could in fact rot your plants where they sit!  Either way – make sure that you watch the way the water flows when you water the plants yourself, and aim to ‘fix’ any areas that hold water for any length of time before there is a real rainstorm!

6) Prune and shape plants well to maximise their growth and appearance – by knowing how each plant likes to grow and being aware of it’s ‘mature’ shape, your pruning could help it to grow more efficiently.  If your plant wants to grow in a ball and you keep trimming it in a square – you could be causing the plant to use more nutrients from the soil to keep throwing out new shoots all the time.  If you want a square plant – then try to plant one of them instead to save time and retain the nutrients in the ground! 

Also, if you grow a plant for it’s flowers – then make sure that you have pruned the stems and shoots to offer the most flower heads on stems that can actually support the fully developed flowers in the first place!  Imagine after several months of growing the flowers – they are too big and make the plant droop, or the stems to snap under the extra weight of a huge dahlia or something!

7) Learn which plants are invasive or likely to grow faster than others - this will help you do be quite ruthless with the pruning and planning for next year.  It means that you can plan to keep them in check during the growing season so as not to cover over or crowd and annual plants; let them grow more over the winter to cover more ground; or remove them completely if they take too much time to control or they are actually a ‘pest’ species that are sprouting up new plants from the cuttings – like buddleia or bindweed!

Planning ahead is always great for eco thinking!

Wasted time is the great enemy of an eco friendly professional!

Not arriving at an appointment on time can cause a huge drain on resources, peoples time, money and generally increasing your chances of opting for a more expensive and less eco friendly alternative.

Time is an invented concept that we hope to stick to – but being late can ruin a good day.  Not only for you – but also for the planet.

We all know that being eco friendly needs careful planning – and last minute fixes nearly always mean spending a fortune on a waste of resources!

The Scenario:
Say you are planning to meet a like minded associate to discuss a new product for your eco friendly business to promote.  The appointment is 10am in your city business lounge – to create a good impression.

You plan to arrive 2 hours before the appointment so that you can buy some locally made organic/fair trade/vegetarian food and drink to bring to the lounge for the meeting and to print off some last minute sales figures before she arrives.

However, you take a bit longer getting ready in the morning for no particular reason – but you know that the buses are regular so you plan to catch the next one.  That next one is delayed, so you miss your link on the train and lose another 25 minutes waiting on the platform.

You get a little bit stressed while you are waiting – thinking of what order to do things in now as you have lost around 45 minutes of time.

On arriving close to your lounge – with just under an hour to spare – you now have a new plan – but you don’t have time to walk……

photo credit: ~Sincere Stock~

The figures are more important than the food, so you head to the office in a cab straight away – however there isn’t a free colour printer for another 20 minutes as you missed your slot – so you get a bit more stressed and decide to print them in black and white so you at least have something to hand.

Then you remember the food – but now it’s too late to get to the local store – so you call a small scale catering company that the receptionist recommended and order whatever they can make at such short notice and deliver it ready to eat.

With 10 minutes to go – the colour printer becomes free and you know that this will create a better company image so you print all your figures again in colour just in time to collect the food from reception and get to the lounge before your colleague.

When she arrives, you offer her a drink and some food.  She asks if its vegetarian, and you sheepishly admit that you don’t know – so she declines.  The office coffee isn’t fair trade either, so you get her a plastic cup of tap water in the mean time – and pay reception to run out and get a suitable drink.

She asks for your figures and you pass her your file without thinking as you are still whirring from the stress, and she reads your black and white print out, and likes what she sees – however, she then finds your colour printouts of exactly the same figures underneath……..

The Result?
A complete waste of resources – just piling up higher and higher throughout the morning.  And eco friendly anything (apart from public transport) went out the window!

Planning ahead is an essential part of being eco friendly and running a successful business.  We all know that problems arise that are unavoidable – but when you really analyse everything that has caused you delays in the past few months – or even days – I bet it all just comes down to bad planning.

Those reports that your assistant didn’t get to you on time – did you really give them enough time to do it in the first place?  Did you really give your partner all the information you could have before asking them to make that important decision? 

If you used that software upgrade instead of inputting data by hand – could you have got home to see your son/daughter/nephew/niece/partner/parent in that sports day/one-off performance/school or college assembly/conference/graduation/any other achievement or anniversary?

Think about it – and think ahead.

Forget meeting associates in a pub and collecting your mail from a PO Box – get yourself a ‘hot office’.

These days sharing things is the new green alternative to buying your own everything!  Just like hiring the church hall rather than building your own one – you can hire an office space that is already where you want it – and is the right size for your needs.

These new business schemes for small businesses could really be the way forward for your green business!

The Best Space:
If you hire your own office space, you are stuck with it for the length of your lease.  Do you go for the smallest you can find, the largest you can afford or whatever you find that happens to be in the right place?

Then you are stuck with an office that it too small to grow into, a ginormous space to heat and power for just you or an odd shaped space that isn’t really ergonomic or even suits your growing needs.

photo credit: jcortell

So why not consider a scheme that allows you to choose the office size you want on a session to session basis or a scheme that allows you to have an office in the location you prefer but that will suit your needs.

Sometimes your meeting room, business lounge or mailing address can be all the difference between appearing professional or staying small!

Time Saving:
Needless to say, if you only use an office for the important meetings and conferences then you may find yourself organising your work more effectively to suit those days – and getting all your non-important work done at home on on the road.

Also a scheme that lets office space will usually also offer mail sorting and telephone services as well.  This way, someone else will be sorting and forwarding your mail and fielding all your calls – perfect for saving you time sifting through junk mail and endless customers who just want your opening hours/returns policy/prices/website address.

If someone else is doing all the basic time-consuming things for you – then you have more time to focus on the really important things for your green business.

Eco Savings:
And it’s not just time you will be saving – it will be the environmental costs of running an office you might only spend a few hours a day in.  I mean if you have rented that space and you work in that office for an average of 40 hours a week – that means there are 128 hours a week where your office will be sitting empty.

You will have to secure this unit, clean this unit, power this unit, supply water and toilets to the unit, heat and cool this unit and maybe even furnish and repair this unit – all just for you.  Your assistant will be using all their own resources too if you have one.

So thinking big – if your office block or industrial unit has 30 other small businesses in it – that all adds up to a lot of land, resources, costs and wasted time to keep you all in business.

However, 1 single office unit with these 30 businesses rotating office space to suit their needs and their working hours would save so much energy and resources.  Now add on a central reception area where all these businesses have their mail sorted and their calls answered (possibly with just 2 or 3 permanent staff) and you have saved so many resources that it might seem difficult to call your company ‘green’ if it didn’t use this service!

Conclusion:
Whether you are starting a green business or just trying to make your business more green – perhaps you should pretend that you have 30 offices to run instead of just the 1 – then see whether you are still green then.

I know everyone wants to achieve different things – but by scaling up your efforts you can see whether you would still be green if there were 30 of you doing the same thing.

We all have offices, phones, desks, windows, kettles, chairs and heating etc regardless of your business type – so thinking big can sometimes be better.

So before you sign that contract – think big!

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.

Cucumbers contain 97% water – So why are we still growing them?

In an age where nearly 7 million people need food to eat – why are we covering vast areas of arable farmland with something that is just water coated in green skin?

Yes, it’s juicy; it’s crisp on a salad and it has long been a favourite for the dieters among us – but this last ‘positive’ fact is actually totally negative in terms of sustainable farming and the environment.

Dieters love it as it has virtually no calories – but this is exactly what makes in a terrible food for the environment.

1) Water:
It is around 97% water – which means that this plant is a thirsty one!  I would imagine that this crop need to be watered much more than many other food crops and cereals – with much of that keeping the plant itself alive rather than filling up the cucumber itself.

Needless to say – water shortages cannot happen on a cucumber farm – so the water must be ‘stolen’ from other resources; such as landscapes, wild animals, plants, remote communities and other farms downstream.

2) Calories:
This food can hardly contain any calories as there is only 3% of the fruit left after all the water has been removed – and most of that will be seeds or skin.

Needless to say – farmland is being wasted on a crop that cannot possible sustain the world!  This cucumber land – and all of its water and other fertilisers – could be growing some seriously calorie-dense crops that can fill a person tummy and give them the energy to stay alive.  A person eating only cucumbers would soon be a non-person!

3) Nutrition:
Added to just the energy deficit – there can only be useful vitamin and minerals in this remaining 3% as well – so eating cucumbers may well be great as a supplementary food to something crammed full of vitamin and minerals – but then why eat it at all?  It probably uses more calories to carry home from the store, wash it, cut it, carry it into the dining room on your plate, chew it, digest it and poop it out than you get from eating it!

Needless to say – there are probably just as many vits and minerals in a 150ml glass of tap water – and you would probably need 100 or more glasses of water from your tap to equal the amount wasted ‘growing’ the 150ml of water in a cucumber!

And I dread to think of the wasted ‘other’ energy needed to farm and transport these fruits.  Collecting seeds, propagating them, preparing the land, planting out, watering, fertilising, harvesting, sorting, transporting to warehouse, packaging, transporting to stores, displaying on shelves, transporting to your home, disposing of your waste.

There are around 10 calories in 100g of cucumber so you would have to eat 500 grams of cucumber (basically 2 whole average-sized cucumbers) just to eat enough calories to then have the equivalent energy to prepare the salad for 20 minutes in the first place (50 calories for a 140 pound person).

If you were planning to do some gentle work on your farm or allotment, you would use around 500 calories per hour – that means around 5000 grams of cucumber – so that is equivalent to more than 20 cucumbers!

Whereas you could have got the same number of calories from just 350 grams of cooked white rice (1 average portion), or only 130 grams of regular muesli (large bowl).

And all these calculations are like-for-like comparisons – and don’t even start to take into account other energy losses.

4) Humans:
With the current world food demands and rising population (with an estimated 200,000 extra mouths to feed today) it does seem rather wasteful to even consider growing this crop – not to mention all the other ‘tasty’ crops that we like to see in our stores that aren’t worth the water, calories or nutrition they take to produce.

Take the myriad of salad greens and lettuces, species of melon, rhubarb, grapes, marrow and celery to name a few, which have ridiculously high water content and painfully low nutritional values.  Shouldn’t we be weaning these out of our diets in today’s unpredictable climate?

Just like cakes and sweets – they are a ‘pleasure’ food that we eat because we can, not because we need to. 

Maybe we should treat these foods along the same lines as the concept of Meat Free Mondays (or as seriously as vegans) as they are just as wasteful to our planet as herds of cattle are.