Eco Friendly House And Garden

Why not keep an online record of all the eco friendly things you try in your home?

It’s always the way. If only you know about your promise to eat less chocolate or give up smoking, then you are more likely keep eating chocolate or have ‘just one’ more cigarette!

But, if you tell all your friends and family about it – then it is easier to stick to your plan and achieve great things!

So, tell everyone what you are up to in your eco friendly house – and not only could you inspire others, but you could find yourself making more of an effort to stay green!

How Can You Tell People?
Well, these days, the best way to tell everyone about what you are doing, trying or hoping to do is on the internet. That way you can instantly update everyone you know with your plans – and maybe include some pictures or videos of your attempts!

But to make more of a difference, why not let everyone in the whole world have the chance to read about what you are doing not just your close friends - by getting yourself a blog set up.

It’s really not so difficult these days to get yourself a really professional-looking blog – and for free! And rather than a social networking site where you have to follow their rules or wade through loads of things you don’t want on your site anyway (like list after list or who is now friends with who) – on your own blog, you only put what you want on there – and you make up the rules!

Your Own Website:
Unlike a social networking site, you will have to pay to keep your blog online, but it isn’t that much if you research it first, and you will have to pay for your website address (the url: ie www.myblog.com) – but many companies will sell you both together in the same package anyway, saving you money and effort.

Then, you can normally get the theme for free! If you are new to blogging, or you just want an easy life – always choose a WordPress (Wp) theme . These are the most common and easiest blog themes to use, and as they are so common there are loads of apps available for free online too.

These apps are called ‘plug-ins’ and can include one to upload your Flickr photos, a translator, a spam catcher, format assistants and all sorts of other useful things to make your like so much easier.

This blog you are reading is a WordPress theme – and if I fancy a change, I can just select another free theme and change them over with very little effort!

So, if you fancy a dabble on the internet with a few free Wp themes, then have a look at some of those available to you - there are literally millions of them out there from boring black ones to nature-filled, brightly-coloured, highly decorated ones!

Have fun!

Here are some quite simple steps to help you keep on the green road…….

If you are having trouble starting your year as green as you had hoped, then take a quick peep at the things listed below and get back into the swing of it!

1) Find Your Nearest Store:
Don’t drive miles to a store to get the cheapest prices on a few main things – visit a store you can walk to and just grab your essentials.

If you do a little shop every so often in your closest store, not only will it be there when you need it, but you will get to talk to your neighbours and maybe find some new products you never see in a larger store.

2) Find Your Nearest Products:
Apples are apples at the end of the day – but were they brought from down the road or from the other side of the world? 

If they were from a local farm, then in buying them you are helping to keep parts of your local area free from urban development and new roads – keeping wildlife close to your own homes.

3) Take A Little Less:
Always buy a bit less than you normally would of the fresh items, as we never eat everything we buy before it goes rotten!  So the less you buy in the first place, the more chance you have of eating it all when it is still nice and fresh!

It may be cheaper to buy bulk and save on packaging when ordering the larger pack sizes, but the cost of transporting and throwing away our food is just as costly!

4) Expect A Bit More:
Make sure you choose the products that are wrapped in compostable packaging.  There is no reason why vegetables these days are not packaged in compostable tray and wrapping.

If one vegetable can be presented and stored effectively using compostable wrapping, then so can nearly all others!  Make your choice right in the aisles.

If you tell the store what products you want to take home by buying them over others, then you don’t have to write in or attend meetings to get your point across.

5) Be Nosy:
Make sure you go up every aisle at least every month or so – allowing you too see new products and make new choices.  Don’t be put off by everything else in that area as you may find some tasty treasures and some eco friendly ideas.

There is more than 1 way to create the same meal – so check out frozen vegetables and canned fruit, pizza base mix and organic alternatives!  You never know what you can find hidden amongst the huge number of products in your local stores.

Going, going green…..

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here is your chance to take part in something amazing!

BBC Breathing Spaces in the UK, is attempting to break some Guinness World Records in the tree world.  As a part of National Tree Week in the UK, they have decided to try to break 2 World Records on the same day.  1 of the records is for individuals, and the other record is more of a massive effort of over 100 people!

Needless to say I will be focussing this article on the record that we can all take part in – for individuals and families around the world.  And, although this record attempt stems from the UK, you can live anywhere in the world to take part!

You can live in any country in the world to join in the effort, and so far – according to the website today – there have been people from 67 countries pledging to plant a tree!

How Do You Join In?
To get yourself and your friends involved you need to add your pledge to the growing number of ‘planters’ out there – but first of all, you need to decide on where you could plant a young tree – and of course, getting your hands on a suitable tree to plant!  Their FAQ should help.

There are strict rules regarding the planting – well, it is a world record so needs to be taken seriously – and there are natural ‘rules’ to make sure your tree actually makes a difference to the environment you plant it in!

So, here’s a summary of the guidelines in the order you need to worry about them:

1) You will need (digital) photographic evidence of you planting your trees – which shows the date and time of the planting, as these need to be emailed to the adjudicators after the event.

2) You must be free between 11am and 12 noon on the 5th of December 2009.  If you live outside of the UK, you need to be free at the exact same time – but obviously this won’t be 11am where you live, so you need to work out the time you need to plant your trees. For example, New York planters would need to be digging at 6am on the 5th, and people in Victoria, Australia would need to be planting at 10pm on the 5th.

3) You need to get decide on a suitable tree species to plant in a suitable habitat.  Ideally it would be a native tree species sourced locally and with other similar trees already doing well in that area.  So, don’t plant a small hazel tree in a densely packed conifer woodland, and only choose birch and the such for wetter areas. The whole point of the record attempt is to make a difference to the environment – so a badly chosen tree or location is a waste of time!

4) So, use their tree guide to decide on planting and caring for your baby trees to make sure that they benefit the wildlife they are surrounded by and so that they make a long-term difference to your community.  The UK are offering participants ‘free trees’ for the record attempt – so go to their stockist listings to see where you can get yours from!

5) Now, get online and make your pledge!  There is a Tree-O-Meter on their site to keep track of the numbers of tree pledges – 263,669 right now – but the current record is 653,143, so loads to go!

Make sure you are one of them!