Eco Friendly House And Garden

In the UK you can buy meat products that are from a known source.

So you can rest assured that the animals were treated with the basic standards we would expect, received medication when necessary and were not cooped up alone for weeks on end.

So what does the Freedom Food label actually tell you?  It’s not organic, it’s not fair trade - so what is it for?  It has been in place since 1994 so it is obviously here to stay and is taken seriously.

Below I have summarised the 5 main points from their own leaflet, so that you can be sure of these things when choosing this type of meat product over the other similar products on the shelf that don’t have the RSPCA Freedom Foods logo, (or those that are certified organic as this has a similar set of criteria).

Labelling in all countries allows for certain words and images to be used on meat products that are not a true representation of how the animals were treated or where they were kept. 

For example the words ‘natural’ and ‘fresh’ mean absolutely nothing with regards to how the animals were reared or lived, and ‘produced in the UK’ doesn’t mean the animals ever saw the UK while alive - they could have been factory farmed in any other country in the world and shipped here after slaughter.

In addition, this RSPCA label (among others) is not connected to any food brands or food manufacturers, so you know it is only the animals they have in mind rather than profits!

So, here are the summarised points that mean that you could be making a difference to how your food is farmed:

1) Freedom From Hunger & Thirst:
These animals will have had access to fresh water and a suitable diet that maintains health and vigour.

2) Freedom From Discomfort:
These animals will be provided with an appropriate environment including shelter and a comfortable resting area.

3) Freedom From Pain, Injury Or Disease:
These animals will be living in an environment that helps prevent accidents and illnesses and offers rapid diagnosis and treatment if any of these are found.

4) Freedom To Express Normal Behaviour:
These animals are provided with sufficient space, proper facilities and the company of other animals of their own kind.

5) Freedom From Fear And Distress:
These animals will live in conditions that avoid mental suffering and offer a certain level of respect and care.

And due to this continuity of checks, Freedom Foods can be traced from their farm, through to their haulier, the abattoir and even right to the store!  So you know that the animal you are about to eat has been cared for through it whole life.

The meats included in this scheme cover everything you could imagine, from eggs to beef, pork to duck and salmon to cheese!  All meats and animal products are covered by this, so you can rest assured when buying any of them.

Just look for the label!

Posting something isn’t just about getting it totally wrapped up in paper - it’s about sending with love!

What I mean is, that the actual packaging and size of the packaging you use can have a huge environmental impact when sent through the post - and also the item you are posting could be better selected if you really want to save resources!

The Packaging:
Starting with the materials you choose for wrapping, it would make sense to avoid non-recyclable materials in the first place as they can only be thrown in the trash upon receipt.  And wrapping something up and then putting it inside an envelope or another layer or wrapping for posting seems to be just a waste of resources.

Bubble-wrap should be used inside the packaging rather than as part of the wrapping so that it can be re-used at the other end in both parts.  I mean, if you send a gift wrapped in a sheet of bubble wrap and then put inside a normal envelope or sheet or parcel wrap - then both parts can be put to use again by the recipient or the envelope recycled!  However, using an envelope with it’s own bubble-wrap concealed within cannot be recycled - only reused as a whole.

And, you don’t really want to use heavy packaging - like loads of sticky tape - as this will make your entire package heavier to post and therefore it will use more fuel and energy to move from your post box to the recipients!

The Size Of It:
Many, many, many people use the wrong sized packaging when posting an item.  It makes sense to find out the categories for your countries postal charges so that you can find out which is the most cost effective way to post it - and - the most energy-efficient way to post it.

Buying or using a larger-than-necessary envelope will take up more room in the postal system than a smaller one - creating more journeys for the postman and their fleet of trains and vans when added to all the other post going the same way. 

And in the UK, the rates charged for packages depends purely on the dimensions - so folding a pliable gift a certain way could save you a lot of money!

Anyone who sells things over the internet will know all about the best way to package something!  For example sending a ‘packet’ weighing up to 750g (1st class) is £2.65 - but sending a ‘large letter’ weighing the same (1st class) is only £1.77 - with just a few millimetres between them!

It’s worth knowing the small print if you have a lot of gifts to send! 

And why post items that the recipient can get for themselves - for example; toiletries and cosmetics.  Why send weighty bathroom goods through the post when they can buy them in their own stores?  Just use a paper voucher for that store - or make a personalized voucher telling them what you want them to buy with your money.

It’s still going to be the same gift - just from the store 10 minutes from their home rather than your store 500 kilometers away!  The items have already been driven across the country from the factory to the warehouse and then to your store - why get the postman to drive it somewhere else as well!!!!

The Gift Itself:
If you know you are posting something - then make sure you choose wisely.  Why send an item that is going to be costly to post in the first place?  And - are you going to pay the postal service to guarantee it arrives in one piece or more importantly credit you if the item is lost or damaged before it even arrives!

And, would it not be more eco friendly to have the item delivered directly to the person in the first place.  I find it quite funny that the wrapping of a gift is so important.  Some people have a gift delivered all the way to their home (at a cost) then wrap it themselves (at a further cost) then post it back out to the recipient (at even more cost!).

Why not just get it sent directly to the recipient in the first place - and have already told them to expect it and not to open it until you desire.

It’s still ‘wrapped up’ by the company - and it is still a gift from you?  This is even worth doing for overseas deliveries in some instances as the company your order from may well have overseas distribution sites that make posting items direct more cost and energy efficient!

Or better still - buy them an item that is virtual, so you don’t have to post anything!  Why not buy a ‘gift’ that helps others rather than clutters up our homes further, like charity gifts, memberships, or other good causes!

Make a difference with your money rather than making more things for landfill!

The Environmental Cost of Cheap Plastic doesn’t make for a great story.

However, there are some people out there who want to make a difference - and a crazy millionaire is about to set sail in a 60ft boat made of plastic bottled stuck together to prove a point!

He is trying highlight the problem of the ever growing ’sea of plastic’ in the Pacific Ocean. This ’sea’ is a place where all floating rubbish from the worlds oceans eventually ends up. It then becomes ‘trapped’ there, stuck together in this one place somewhere between Hawaii and mainland US.

This mass of rubbish floating just under the surface currently weighs an estimated 3.5 tonnes and is around 3 times the size of Japan or larger than Bolivia!

The Problem:
The UN estimates that there are over 45,000 pieces of plastic floating on every square mile of the oceans - devastating the wildlife that depends on it for survival. We are all aware that turtles eat carrier bags thinking they are jellyfish and seabirds collect them from the seas and feed them to their young instead of actual food - dooming them to starvation.

Because it isn’t biodegradable, plastic is with us for ever. Every piece of plastic that has ever been made since it’s invention is still here today. Yes, it’s not all whole pieces - plastic is gradually worn down or crushed by animals and people and much is buried under the earth - but it is all still there, doing nothing but damage.

More frightening is the fact that figures suggest that over 100m tonnes more plastic is being produced each year!!! All because of human demands.

How it’s generated:
Starting with food: Think of all those individual bottles of kids fizzy soda available, all the individually wrapped cheeses rather than fresh chunks off the deli counter. Shrink wrapped vegetables rather than fresh from the farm store!

Then the home: Disposable pens are thrown away, dropped or broken every day. Because they are cheap we don’t really care about them. Like so many modern technologies, it’s cheaper to throw them out than get them repaired. Disposible anything is a disaster waiting to happen - lighters, cups, cutlery, bottles, plates, straws, jewelry, razors and diapers to name a few.

If you buy things that have been designed to be thrown out after a short time or even one single use then you are directly contributing to this environmental disaster. Companies are not going to invest money in making these disposible items recyclable either if you are buying them as a product you know you are not going to use again.

Would you put loads of effort into making your friend an expensive gift if you knew it would be thrown out straight after?

What you can do?
Here is a list of ideas for you to help reduce your plastic use, affect manufacturers and clean up after yourself and others:

1. Never drop litter or expect someone else to take care of your waste.
2. Try to avoid buying over-wrapped products - even if the packaging is recyclable, it still had to be created and who is to say that the person who uses your recycled plastic won’t dump it later.
3. Buy larger containers of your favourite packaged products so that there is more product per outer wrapping. You could even write to the companies to ask if they could reduce their plastic packaging or offer refills rather than whole new products.
4. Let your local stores know that you would rather see less packaged fresh produce by actively buying those products that are currently loose. These include meat, fish, cheese, fruit, vegetables, bread and pastries to name a few. This way the stores sales reports will hightlight customer shopping patterns and improve their service in those areas.
5. Spend that bit extra for technology and office equipment so that it lasts longer. Better quality products will be cheaper in the long run as when maintained they will have a very long shelf life. Think about what you want to buy before you make a purchase so that your technology isn’t overtaken in a month forcing you to upgrade again. If you reduce your demand on manufacturers of cheap appliances, they will have to improve their products to stay in the market.
6. Don’t buy disposable anything. If you plan your time and activities better, you will never just need that one little thing to tide you over - and disposable goods usually come in large pack sizes creating more waste than you needed!
7. Take time to reuse everything plastic you can - use bottles for mini garden cloches, tubs for jams and preserves, to store leftovers, and many more uses.
8. Recycling can sometimes be trickier as many agencies send waste to other regions or other countries to be processed creating more energy waste than necessary - as long as it’s cheaper, it will be done like this. Make sure you know where your waste and recycling is processed and voice you opinions if you aren’t happy about it.
9. Organise a beach-combing or woodland team to collect litter and plastics before they do more harm. Not only are these great fun, they make your own environment look better and improve the health of your wildlife all at the same time. And then you can dispose of the waste more responsibly.

Can you have an eco friendly house if you eat alone?

People are not solitary creatures by nature, yet busy schedules and the demands of the career ladder can sometimes make it easier to just go it alone.

If you want to impress the boss or just earn more money you could well find yourself working such unsociable hours that you end up eating take-away foods or easy-cook meals that we all know are no good for your health - let alone the planet. But can you stop it?

Apparently, people living alone use 42 % more packaging than multi-human households; they also produce an estimated half a tonne of extra waste per year as well.

Now, many of these such figures can be explained away by ‘economical’ choices, but others are a bit harder to ignore.

By living an economic life, these singles may well only be purchasing the actual amount of food that they need, rather than larger pack-sizes or jumbo containers of food and drink, ultimately creating more packaging per unit. However due to erratic and unpredictable hours, they may well be forced to buy products from more convenient stores that offer only a limited range and at a greater cost.

Lets look at these in turn.

More Packaging:
Generally I would call this the ‘easy packed lunch’ mentality that many busy or less imaginative parents resort to. I mean why cut a large lump of deli cheese into chunks yourself and put them in a lunch box for half the price and about a tenth of the packaging waste when you could by a pack of ready-made bite-size pieces of ‘cheese’ that are all individually wrapped for freshness?

Why not make your own sandwich for lunch rather than buy one that costs the same as 2 whole loafs of bread? Why pay more for a 500ml bottle of branded ‘pop’ at the front of the store than for a whole 2 liter bottle of the same drink further in-store? It doesn’t make sense!

It seems that some peoples choices are too much about themselves with no consideration for the consequences.

All the extra waste we produce will require more time, money and man-power to process - but why should we spend money on clearing up all this seemingly unnecessary mess? We could be forwarding that money into much needed projects like improving public transport, offering local businesses incentives and taking care of our children and more elderly members of the community.

Local councils are having their financial decisions made for them by the mess people make rather than being able to decide on what the community would actually benefit from themselves. And then we wonder why our Council Tax and Rates go up?

Extra Waste:
Obviously the more packaged items you consume - the more waste you will create - but some people’s hands are tied.

Take the example of someone who lives close to work so they don’t need to drive in everyday. However, the only shop on their way home is a tiny petrol station ‘express store’. It rarely has any fresh food by the time they stroll in on their way home, and the product lines it holds have been selected for a reason that suits their business needs more than their customers needs.

Yes, they have essentials like bread and milk, but everything else is in easy-to-carry-home size and meals-for-1-size - the forced mainstay of any busy person. They hold hardly any of the products that you would normally buy from a larger store, and of course hold no bulk items at all. They don’t have any ‘value’ products either.

‘Convenience’ Stores:
Now, working in retail, I can see why they have chosen to fill their tiny understaffed store with the products they have, but it is no good for an eco-shopper or someone trying to save money - or even someone trying to be healthy for that matter!

The irony is of course that if you drive or catch the bus to the nearest larger store once a week (on one of your only days off that week) you may well get all the products you needed, but at the cost of the travel there and back. You will also be likely to buy more food than you actually need - just to be sure you had enough to last the week and to make the journey worth while. Ultimately, this causes more food to be wasted as it goes out of date - but also more packing is thrown out as you brought more things than you actually needed to.

As you can imagine the results are somewhat skewed and neither seems a very good option. But like so many people living and working alone - you almost have little choice in how you shop. Only by seriously putting yourself out can you maintain some sort of eco-friendly house keeping behaviour, and I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t know where to start.

If you are trying to be a wiser shopper, then here are a few simple steps that you can take to get you started without too much effort:

Keep Supplies:
Always have a supply of basic foods that have a long shelf life and don’t take long to cook so you will always have a dinner when you get home. This will no doubt save you time and money as it reduces the chances of you having to impulse buy. Examples would include frozen vegetables and hearty pies, tins of soup with part-baked rolls or quick-cook pasta with tinned tuna, and selection of dried herbs and sauces.

Plan Ahead:
If you were able to plan what you were going to eat for the next few days or a whole week even, when you went shopping you would only buy what you needed. You would make sure that you used the foods in date order making better use of your fresh foods - and you will make more economical use of all the foods that you brought, reducing your waste as a result. Ideally you need more regular hours to make this 100% effective.

Freeze Your Own:
If you planned your shopping around your day off, you could take the time to make a big pan of chunky soup, a curry, a pasta dish or chilli con carne with fresh ingredients. You could then divide them down into your tummy-sized portions and freeze them. This way you won’t need to buy just one-person sized amounts of everything, you can buy bulk!

You will create your own healthy ready meals exactly to your taste - and they only take a few minutes to microwave back to life!

Bake A Cake:
Why not take the time to bake a fruit loaf, make a fridge-cake or create your own oat flapjacks? You can then cut off a slice of your choice everyday for your lunch box. This way, you won’t be tempted to buy chocolates and other sweet over-priced snacks when working in town as you would have a piece of your very own healthy and unpackaged version to munch away on!

Remember - The tiny things all add up, so there is no need to change your lifestyle overnight.

Let it change in manageable and achievable stages. Even if you only make your own lunch 3 times a week, or plan your meals on your days off - it all counts.