Eco Friendly House And Garden

National Family Week (UK) runs from May 31st to June 6th – but make yours and eco friendly one!

The event is all about celebrating Family and your time together – either indoors surrounded by books and films or outside knee-deep in grass and surrounded by bird song!

But there is no reason why your events can’t be green, local and without creating enough waste to fill your entire bin!

There are many events being held around the country that are on the official website, but why not use their guide to make a week of eco friendly fun for yourself your family and your friends.

The weeks events are running along a sort of ‘schedule’ to help give people a rough plan if the week, and you can do as little or as much as you like – or create your own eco fun, but the week is as follows:

Monday – Eco Friendly Picnic:
Why can’t you arrange an event where you make an old fashioned outdoor feast, with local or organic produce brought in bulk – rather than everything in it’s own tiny bottle or individual wrapping.  Why not get one person to bake an enormous cake, one to bake a loaf of fresh bread, one to chop homegrown salad and bring home-laid hard-boiled eggs for the filling. 

Buy huge bumper packs of crisp and nibbles to share out and bring all fully reusable plastic plates and bowls to take home after.  And don’t forget some tubs to collect wild blackcurrants or fallen apples in!

Tuesday – Family Film Day:
Why not extend the picnic theme indoors with a great matinee of one or two of the families favourite films – make sure one is a classic musical to get everyone singing and dancing.  Before the first film, maybe all spend time in the kitchen mixing pastry and cakes so that when the film is over there is plenty of home-made food for everyone to tuck into before the next film!

Wednesday – Great Story Telling Day:
Rather than read other peoples stories – why not spend this day surrounded by scissors, glue and old magazines with a selection of pens and string – and have everyone create their own great adventure story from all your old magazines and bits of the outdoors like pressed flowers and leaves!  Something they can take away and keep.

Thursday – Green Road Trip:
Car or minibus, it doesn’t matter – but if there is an adventure to be had getting there is half the fun.  Rather than take the straight route – why not find the country lanes that go through tiny villages, steepled churches and fields of cows and horses.  Maybe even take in a ruined castle or 2 on the way as well – and don’t forget the camera and a tasty home-made packed lunch!

Friday – Eco Friendly House Party:
Anything goes here – whether it’s literally a party that goes on all night (without annoying the neighbours of course) or whether it’s a day-time party where people bring their family and some tasty goodies to share.  Or maybe help out with some spring cleaning or reducing and recycling.

Take one room of your home that really needs a sort out and get everyone involved. Whether it’s taking stuff to the recycling centre, community furniture project or around a friends – many hands make light work! Maybe get together to help an elderly relative or neighbour – or just your own home and ring some green changes!

Saturday – Eco Garden Fun:
Maybe this one could be an eco garden house party, where you all take it in turns to attack someones garden for the better, laying hedges, creating a wildlife pond, a bug corner, putting up bird feeders or just planting some veg! Things you never really get round to yourself – especially with the kids under your feet! Imagine to things you could achieve with 10 people instead of just you and your mum!

Whatever you choose to do, I hope you have fun – and maybe send in some photos!
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I know it’s not Spring – but have a good clean out to get your home eco friendly!

We all hoard things.  Whether it is in the cupboard under the stairs, the garage or in the spare room!  So why not release your unwanted items into the world where other people need them!

What use is that tub of old paint, or that bag of clothes you don’t wear?  They aren’t doing anything hidden away in boxes and bags – so get them out into the world where other people can use them rather than buying things new!

How Do I Get Rid Of The Old Items?
Well, it depends on whether you want to give them away for free, or whether you want some money for them.

If it’s free you are after then there are plenty of options starting with your own local amenity site.  They are usually affiliated with a local recycling firm that takes away your furniture and electrical goods and them sells them at a reduced price to local people or people who are on a tight budget!

There are also many websites like FreeCycle that allow you to list anything you no longer want so that other people can come around to your house and collect them.  So it saves you a drive to the tip!

Most charity stores will take clothes and shoes as will the ‘Charity Bins’ at Superstores and some Retail Parks.  They can be quite fussy about electrical goods and damaged goods though.

If you want some cash for your goods then there are jumble sales, carboot or garage sales – or you can list the better items on sites like e-bay, from old toys to RV’s!  Virtually everything sells these days – and the buyers pays the postage too!

What Next?
Well, there will be things that can’t be used by others – like old paperwork and broken pots, torn books and tatty magazines.  So you need to thin them out into 4 groups:

1) Important documents and personal paperwork that you need to shred
2) Things that you think will be useful in the next few months or pictures for scrap-booking
3) Things that you can recycle
4) Things that you can only throw away

Not only will sorting things out give you more space at home and probably a few extra pennies in your pocket – but it will allow you to make room for the things that matter.

Like those recycling bins in the kitchen, the do-it-yourself corner where you can make and mend things, the kids can cut out magazines and paint pictures and you can feel good about having passed a few things on in the world – keeping the goods moving rather than creating demand for new ones!

Happy sorting!

A Life Stripped Bare: tiptoeing through the ethical minefield – Leo Hickman

I read a lot of books and magazines about the environment and ways to become more eco friendly, but I have at last found one that is really down to earth about the whole thing.  It is full of interesting facts and figures – but entertaining at the same time.

The reasons he gives for his actions and the changes he does and doesn’t make are so ‘real’ that it offers us all a chance to see where we too are choosing how ‘green’ we think we can be – or how ‘green’ we actually want to be!

He shows that you don’t have to go without things or scrimp and save all the time, but that it can be a viable option depending on your life style.  For example, working in a formal environment and having a baby can mean a different set of criteria to those working on a small holding without a family.

Could you really go to work in central London if you hadn’t shaved your chin for a week or were trying to wash your suits less and your whites weren’t that white?

What’s It About?
Well, the author Leo Hickman, has decided to find out how he could become ‘green’ and make his house more eco friendly.  He has recently moved to a new property and has a small baby, but generally he is just like any other average person in terms of ethical living.

He invites 3 specialists in to his home and life to find out what he has achieved so far, where he has gone wrong and what he can do in the future.

The result is a totally truthful account of his life and thoughts – as well as those of his not-so-convinced wife!

He covers everything from holidays to worms, nappies to the NHS, kitchen cleaners to lemon juice – and will have you in stitches along the way.

Why Is It Good?
Well, it allows you to see for yourself how eco friendly your own home is and more importantly – how you judge the actions of others.

There are many things he isn’t doing (or won’t do) that I find quite acceptable – and some things he decided were ‘ok’ that I found myself shocked at.  But basically it’s all about levels of green – as I must shock people who are ‘more green’ than I am with some of the things I think are quite acceptable.

He also gets letters from random people (he writes for The Guardian newspaper) who are what I would call extreme!  There is 1 lady who ‘washes only her stinky bits’ to save water and brushes her teeth with what she herself describes as a foul tasting concoction of salt and bicarbonate of soda to avoid chemicals!

Where do you sit on the green-scale?

How It Made Me Feel:
In general, his words certainly made me feel that I was lacking in certain areas and could really try a bit harder – but I also tended to agree with his comments regarding how ‘little’ it all feels in the whole global picture.

When you hear of all the disasters on the planet and how governments of the world seem to be trying their best to cut down forests, kill off species and pollute the atmosphere – you wonder if washing out your milk carton for recycling or watering your garden with bath-water is really going to stop the planet from falling to pieces?

Leo’s story just makes me feel like the little things do help and that my efforts are not being wasted.  It also tells me that there are many, many, many other people out there doing the same – or better – to help us curb our wasteful habits and make a difference for the future.

More Eco Friendly?
If you do fancy reading this book – make sure that you get this book from your local library to save a whole new one being made – and while you are there check out their noticeboard for some local events you can attend to support your local community!

If you do want your own copy for reference, then check online (there are usually free Internet computers at libraries) for a second-hand one on many of the book trading sites like Amazon, eBay, or Freecycle or search for another site. 

Let me know what you think!

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.

First things first here – I am not expecting everyone here to have all the latest inventions for saving energy, composting your waste and producing all your own food and energy!

This article is just focusing on energy to get the ball rolling, and will hopefully offer you tips and ideas for those little steps that can help you save money and help the environment save itself!  Don’t forget, that the planet can do just fine with whatever we throw at it and will still be here long after we have gone and taken all the other plants and animals with us – it will never just disappear – it will just adapt.  Think of the primordial soup.

What we are trying to do is save the human race.  We need a planet where the human race can survive, not just an actual planet.  Without certain plants and animals, humans will just fade away.  Without certain weather and environmental factors, humans will not be able to survive.

I know it all sounds a bit dramatic, but science has told us that this is where we are heading, we are destroying the very things we need to survive as we are now.

Your efforts can slow this down, between us we can help reduce our impact on the environment and make the world look a bit less bleak for our children and their children.

Electricity.
Electricity is one of the easiest energy source to save money on.  I know that it is really annoying to lean over the back of the PC or the television to switch everything off, but it all helps.

Valuable resources are used to create the energy you are wasting every time you go away for the weekend and leave appliances in a state where they are drawing electricity – and of course it is costing you money as well.  The energy suppliers don’t give you free electricity to keep the light on you washing machine saying ‘READY’. 

Just because you are not actually using an appliance, it does’t mean it is not using electricity.

Water.
Water is a bit trickier as some people have their certain bathroom routines, and I am the first one to opt for a deep bath, but you are still allowing your wages to flush down the toilet every time you do a full flush for a tiny wee, or leave the tap running for whatever reason (cleaning teeth/rinsing plates or veg/having just filled up the kettle but going over an plugging it it before turning off the water!).  These are just little things but they cost you money.

Gas.
Gas is very wasteful.  Try to avoid all appliances (apart from central heating) that use gas because it just runs up the bills.  I once watched the gas meter when I switched on my gas fire – and rest assured I will never use another in my home – go look at yours!.  I have one tip for saving gas, and that is don’t use it!  

If you are using a gas fire – and creating gas does give off less carbon than the creation of electricity - then make sure that the room it is in is well insulated to retain as much of the warmth as possible (curtains pulled/ door closed/ double glazing/ etc).  That way, whatever heat it gives you is controlled and not wasted.

Appliances.
And it’s not just the energy used to run the appliances that is a concern – what about the energy and resources used to make them in the first place?

Now I know that there are now more energy-efficient products on the market, and you should seriously consider buying these when you next need to buy an appliance, but don’t buy one if your old one is still working well.

The reason?  What are you going to do with the old one?  If you are going to throw it away – that is a complete waste of resources.  The old one will end up discarded on a skip, wasting all the valuable metals and minerals that went into creating it.  By all means give it to a breaker who will be able to reclaim any parts that are still useful and recycle them into other machines.

But you are thinking that you will give it to a charity or another person – and this is the better option, but either way, the machine will still be being used by someone.  It is still going to be using the same amount of energy whoever has it, but you would have spent money (and used further resources) to buy your new one as well. 

And I’m sure that if some mathematician could work out the extra energy you save with your new appliance and compare it to the energy cost of making your new appliance, transporting your new appliance, running your new appliance and the running costs of someone else still using your old appliance – it won’t be a saving.

The message I am trying to pass across here, is that jumping on the band-wagon of eco friendly living before you have eased yourself into the whole ‘circle of eco’ could acutally do you more harm than good.  You may have spent a lot of money or invested a lot of time in a new eco-friendly theory or appliance – possibly having family rows about it all, only to find out from someone else that you could have made a different decision in the first place.

Take your time.
Don’t rush into this whole style of living until you have read up on the issues or have spoken to friends, and have drawn the line about your limits.  Making small, effective changes that suit your lifestyle will last longer and give you more satisfaction than some of the bigger changes that you cannot keep up with and end up giving up on.

For example, if you can easily remember to reuse your shopping bags, do that.  If you don’t have a garden or an allotment it would be pointless to collect your waste food for composting.  If you can easily buy (recycled and/or charity) birthday cards on plain paper with plain envelopes then do so.  If you have 2 or more children however, you probably shouldn’t try to swap your car for bicycles!

Be reasonable to yourself and you will achieve more – and feel better about it too.