Eco Friendly House And Garden

photo credit: comedy_nose

If you live in what is called a ‘hard water’ area, you may consider changing to ’soft’.

Now it’s not like you can change the bedrock of your house, so it would mean fitting a water softener to your existing water pipes to make the change.

But why would you go to that trouble and expense if you didn’t really have to - I mean the water still runs like normal, is clean to drink and washes dishes etc?

But there is a massive difference between the 2 types of water - and the soft water option can help you to live a more eco-friendly life.

How Can It Really?
Well, hard water contains magnesium and calcium that it picks up from the rocks on it’s path from falling as rain until it reaches your tap.  And these minerals can cause some serious damage to your plumbing and smaller white goods in the kitchen - not to mention your boiler and washing machine!

This build up of minerals in the water is then transferred into your pipes as it sits there waiting to be used - and can reduce the amount of water getting into an appliance, and cause permanent damage to the pipes as well.  Replacing either is a squeeze on natural resources and a costly exercise to boot!

And, with the capacity for water flow reduced, this can sometimes cause the appliance or boiler to have to work harder to keep the same level of function - or use more energy but give a poorer performance!

Soft water doesn’t contain any of these minerals, so leaves your pipes clean and working at their best!

How Can I Tell The Difference?
It isn’t immediately obvious which water you have got based on watching your boiler or feeling your clean clothes - but just using the water from your tap will show which water you have.

These minerals show themselves in water residue in the form of ‘lime scale’, so if you have a white patchy deposit on your shower head, grey residue left on your glass shower curtain, blobs of white ‘chalky’ stuff in your kettle, the list goes on…..

Sound familiar?

Now think of all the chemicals, cloths, scourers and time you have to spend keeping your bathroom and kitchen clean - then think of all that chemical waste!

And, think about washing your hair, hands and body.  Washing in soft water creates a lather more readily using less toiletries - and gives a more thorough clean.  People say that washing in soft water makes their skin feel better and hair look shinier!

How Big Is A Water Softener?
They will easily fit under your kitchen sink in smaller flats, or anywhere in a larger home - even a garage will do.

Basically it works on the main water pipes going in to your home or offices and changes the composition of your water before it enters your home.

Most water softeners are easily fitted and will pay for themselves within around 5 years due to the better efficiency of your heating and hot water systems, as well as in the reduced reliance of cleaning chemicals and toiletries!

And your appliances will last longer and stay efficient throughout that lifespan - and don’t worry about your appliances if you have been using hard water - as the softened water running through will eventually clear all the existing limescale!

So, taking the minerals out of your water could save you a lot of time and money.

If you had a smaller oven tray - would you waste less food?

Today’s society seems to be very much about bigger products for bigger value - and for many products - bigger also equals more eco friendly, for example a larger bottle of shampoo means less packaging than 2 smaller bottles and is usually cheaper as well.

However, there are certain things that we do that a bigger just for the sake of being bigger - and this normally involves food.

Super-Size Me!
There has recently been a growing trend in ordering the largest amount of food possible in restaurants just because you can.  You tell yourself that it is ‘just a little bit more’ so it is worth it.

Well, it’s not.

Have you ever wondered how these chicken breasts or beef burgers can be so cheap?  Well, there is a reason for it - and it’s not nice. 

Large food retailers (chain restaurants, popular take-aways and large superstores) have demanded that the meat for their meals be cheaper - and to make things cheaper, you have to make more.  One quote was that large chicken factories have machines that need to process 8000 birds every hour just to make enough meat to sell at the low prices we are used to.

Around 2 million chickens are ‘processed’ every week by one of the largest factories in the US - just to break even - and that is just one.  Imagine how many chickens are ‘processed’ a week in the whole US?  Or the whole World?

Down-Size Me!
It is a hard thing to think about the minimum you could eat to be satisfied - or in the rising number of people ‘full’.  You always think ‘it would be a waste of money to buy the smaller size and finish it when for just a few pence more I could get a lot more’.  And that’s what retailers want you to think.

They have to produce so much food to keep the prices down that they are forever trying to sell you more of what you already eat to still make money.  And we fall for it every time!

Buy 1, Get 1 Free, 20% extra, 3 for the price of 2.  They are all doing the same thing - they are making the retailers money - not saving us money.

How much stuff do you buy that you don’t eat, or that goes out of date before you get the chance?  Loads.  The stats are terrible.  But they make us buy it because it’s ‘cheap’.

Well, I think you need to change you tactics - and fight back!

First Steps:
Plan your meals - by knowing what you are going to cook and eat on certain days means that there won’t be time for food to go out of date as you have planned to eat it in due time.  Buying too much food sometimes makes you unable to choose the most short-dated ingredients. 

Busy lifestyles also make us eat whatever is ‘quickest’ to prepare rather than what we should be eating - all this leads to waste.  We end up replacing the fast-food over and over again, leaving the healthy foods to sit and rot!

Don’t be lured in by special offers - they are only really there so the store doesn’t lose money.  If the store gets a great deal on 10 million of product A, then they have to sell it - so down goes the price and you buy it.  They win!

Start buying enough to be satisfied rather than full - It’s all too easy to cook to much, then try to cram it all in leaving you ready to pop!  But you don’t want to waste money and larger meals are cheaper per serving, arent’ they?

Well, only if you eat them!  So why not prepare a meal for 4 people to use bulk ingredients, but plan to divide up equally and freeze the remaining portions for another meal time.

Buy Smaller Utensils - if you only had a small oven tray, then you wouldn’t be tempted to cook more than you needed - and you would save power on your cooking as they were smaller. 

Also, rather than cooking parts of your meal at different times or all over the kitchen, why not use smaller pans and fit them all in the oven at the same time.  That way, nothing has to share trays - so the meat juices don’t ruin the potatoes!

And less to wash up - which is always good news!

Choosing The Right Font For Your Printing & Help Save The Planet!

Well, I’m not saying that this new invention will drastically reduce levels of methane in the atmosphere, nor will it clean up the oceans and help coral to re-grow - but it will make a difference to your contribution to other environmental issues haunting us today.

It will save ink - lots of it.

What Is This Great Idea?
Basically it’s a typeface - like Verdana or Tahoma - that has got holes in it!

It’s called EcoFont, and at normal printing sizes (size 10 for example) it looks just like every other mainstream font. Perfect for printing your emails or on-line receipts.

You can’t see the holes in the letters until you make the font larger - for example up to size 32, but for normal use you won’t really notice them. So you can carry on as normal.

Apparently the Dutch company that invented this EcoFont are called Spranq, and they say that this will save a fifth of the ink used in similar fonts - that is a lot of ink for personal uses.

And let’s be honest, there isn’t a lot of personal printing that needs to be in perfect font, apart from the odd letter to the bank or a job application. The rest of the stuff you print won’t do any harm if it’s a bit ‘holey’ will it?

What Can You use It For?
Well, you can download the font free from ecofont.eu and get a good look at it and see what size you are happiest with - or whether the holes at the larger sizes even bother you that much anyway.

And it can only be used for printing drafts of homework and things at the last minute anyway. I mean, you can write you essays or reports in your preferred fonts and sizes, and only when you want to print the draft can you highlight the whole thing and change the font to EcoFont before printing.

After you have printed you can hightlight it all again and return it to your nice fancy font for the final report. That way it doesn’t have to be your ‘new font’ for ever - it can be your new printing font!

And why would the kids mind if their things were printed in a font with microscopic holes in it anyway?

Think of the money saved in ink-cartridges and the reduced pressure on natural resources by using a fifth less ink than you currently do!

Add this to other eco-office inventions such as the Eco Printing Software and recycled paper and you could be eco friendly and money-saving at the same time!

Several continuous small steps are better than one big single one.

I have put together some simple steps in the ‘beauty & fashion’ department that can help you make a move over to more environmentally friendly products without too much hassle.  And it can be a bit of fun too.

Many people are worried about which brand of this they should chose or what brand of that is better - but really the answer is to change bits of your lifestyle not just swap one thing for another.

It is always easiest to Reduce - this is the key to sustainable and eco friendly living.  Reuse comes a close second and of course never forget to Recycle - but focus on the life cycle of the items you are buying or thinking of buying and follow it from production, through use and then to disposal.

This brings me to the first fashion tip:

1) Stop Shopping!  The greenest products and clothes are those items you already have.  They have already been made - and it’s up to you to use them or recycle them.

If you decide to become ‘green’ overnight and go and buy something ‘organic’ or ‘bio-degradable’ instead - you are wasting all the energy, transport and ingredients that have gone into the one you already have, but are going to leave on the shelf.  Wasted.

We need to Reduce our consumption, so make sure that you keep wearing all your old clothes, use the last of that old shampoo or bubble bath, and don’t throw something away because you want something new.  Or, try Tip 2:

2) Have A Swap Party. There are many people like you who grow tired of the same shoes/top/beauty products/etc - so why not give them to your friends in exchange for something they ‘don’t want’.

You could come away with a whole new outfit, and change of facial regime or some household ingredients that your friends would otherwise have wasted.  Similarly, your ‘waste’ finds a second life!

3) Simplify Your Life.  Another things to consider when going to purchase a new item, is whether you actually need it right now.  I mean, rather than buying some nutritional supplements - why not actually consider eating more healthily instead!  Buying fresh local fruit and veg produces far less waste that factory-made tablets in tiny plastic bottles!

Similarly, technology out-dates itself overnight it seems - so rather than make that rash purchase - think about ways you can make do with what you have until you really have to upgrade.  Otherwise, you could be disposing of something that was perfectly usable for something that will be out-of-date in 3 months anyway!

And, most technology and appliances come ‘eco friendly’ these days.  With low energy rating listings and reduced-chemical electronics readily available and at a similar cost to the short-use energy-hungry models we brought last time!

4) Back To Basics.  Why do we need everything so perfumed and highly specific these days?  Can’t we just use unscented nappy-sacks, hygiene products and ‘exotic’ air-fresheners?  Use natural instead: tea-tree oil, lavender, along with other plants and herbs all have their uses - and without the chemicals!

Try Aloe for sun care, oats for facial scrubs, cucumber slices for eye recovery - and many many more.  I have seen quotes that ladies apply, on average, 126 ingredients and chemicals in daily beauty regimes!  That’s amazing really - and seeing as so many of those are potentially harmful to us.

Babies are particularly sensitive to chemicals yet we use an array of man-made (and potentially hormone-affecting) toiletries for them without any real reason - other than ‘we saw the advert’ and it said ‘this does this…..’.  Well warm water and an organic cotton cloth cleans even the dirtiest of bottoms!

See Part 2 tomorrow for further eco friendly tips…….

An Easy Way To Stop Wasting Money At Home…..

I have always been the person nagging others at home or in the office to check what they print before they print it.  The number of times they churn off 3 or 4 pages of just a tiny line or a few words rather than having taken the time to check their ‘print preview’ before taking action.

Even an information sheet a friend got from her local hospital one time had just 2 lines of information on the second sheet!  It was headed and footered (if that’s a word) with all the important pre-printed Hospital details as well!  What a complete waste of money from our health services!  Why on earth someone couldn’t have checked this before printing off a batch I don’t know. 

They many only have needed to delete a few non-important words from the introduction or joined one short papragraph onto the end of a neighboring short paragraph and the paper, money and energy saved would no doubt be amazing!  What if every hospital didn’t do this for all their every-day information sheets?  Its no wonder there is always a waiting list at the hospitals here - they are wasting goodness knows how much on headed paper and the staples holding empty sheets of paper together!!!

Anyway, no matter how hard I tried when printing spreadsheets and documents, I still had great trouble with the Internet.  How many times the information went off the sheet at the non-existent right margin!  The number of sheets of paper printing off just the website address and page 12 of 13 on them was unstoppable!  I needed help.

Sure enough, after some searching, I found a free piece of software that could help me out here!  This fantastic ‘i can’t believe someone hasn’t thought of it sooner’ software is sure to amaze you and also save you a fortune - and the planet!!!

Does It Really Make A Difference?
When I first visited the site earlier this year, I noticed that they had a count-up facility, that monitored how their software was saving printed pages of waste and how much that was in terms of carbon emissions.  It said then that they had saved around 4.5 million pieces of paper (thats just under 500 trees by their calculations) and just over 3 million lbs of C02 saved in energy and inks printing the useless things!

Since then (about 8 weeks), their calculators are showing that they have saved another 100 trees, and stopped a further 500,000 lbs of C02 being spat out from factories to print our blank pages!

Obviously this calculation is only based on the people that have downloaded the software, but maybe something like this should become standard for businesses, like hospitals, so that waste is severely reduced.  The example of the information above is frightening that with just a few minutes of better preparation the costs of printing could be halved - and staples would stay in their boxes!

Of course, you can save printed waste without this software by using ‘page preview’ every-time and cutting and pasting information from websites onto your preferred written software (reducing the font size and editing the information down to save ink and pages), but this is free and easy to use.

What Does It Do?
It helps you to highlight and remove unwanted pages that are going to print from the pages you have selected allowing you control over what it prints and what it deletes.  It also allows you to create PDF’s with one click to avoid the mess that usually prints from a web-page.

Their GreenPrint World Edition always self-deletes the wasted pages at the end of most article itself.  You know - the ones with just the URL, banner ads and legal disclaimer on them that you no doubt have to then shred or recycle having served no purpose at all - except increases your overheads!

For fun (or serious if it’s your own business), it also allows you to keep a track of what you have printed since installing the software and how much paper you have saved!

It’s not like you will be missing anything important - just saving time, money and resources.

Green Print software is compatible with Windows 2000, XP and Vista (32 bit only). And it’s free to anyone.

They are aiming to save over 100 million trees and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 300 million tonnes (and while I have been writing this they have saved another tree!!!).  They also offer great deals on recycled office supplies!

You don’t need money to make the world go around according to the millions of LETS schemes being implemented and successfully run around the world!

These rapidly growing Local Exchange Trading Schemes basically allow people and communities to become more people focused and sustainable - lowering the need for external services and supplies, and reducing the amount of ‘old’ products thrown out and new products purchased.

What Do LETS Do?
The whole system is set up on the basis that everyone works for nothing - there is no money involved. You do things for credits.

Now these credits can be called anything you want in your community - whether it’s Acorns, Gooseberries or Gribbets - and they are all worth the same. You only get ‘paid’ whatever others think you are worth in your community and many skills are equal.

For example if you were a secretary and did an hours work, it would be equal to a solicitor working for an hour. If you made a piece of furniture for someone, it may well be equal to someone mowing you lawn.

Each scheme has it’s own moderated credit system and all the members decide what should be worth what. Your credits are stored up for your services and then you can spend them by using the services of others.

That way, if you offer to babysit for someone for 7 Groats, you can then call on someone else to help you put up your shed for that same amount. The idea is that people can get things done by local people without having to spend money.

How are they helpful?
The way that LETS come into their own are where people have a skill that they can share. If a person is not currently working for whatever reason, they can still offer that skill to others without the hassle of having to be employed or having to draw up contracts.

It also means that people can practice and improve their current skills without having to be employed by a larger company. So a part time photographer can put their skills to use without leaving their current job in the towns supermarket. Or a retired person can still offer their advice as a lawyer or soliciter in exchange for heavy gardening or a dog sitter while they take a holiday.

It’s also great for those with niche skills who can get to practice their trade and get their services recognised without having the drag of finding formal employees or a retail premises.

They also offer a great service as it is not a direct swap - you are not offering something to the person you get your service from - so the person who’s flat you are cleaning isn’t the one who has to give you something back - you pick and choose the services you want to receive.

Why not see if there is one in your area - and give it a go?

I’m not a fashion follower and I don’t buy the latest models of everything the minute it changes, but I am planning on buying myself a new laptop.

My current laptop is getting rather tired, and I know that buying new technology can be a waste of resources but I am in a dilemma. I have been using the same piece of equipment for several years now, it is very slow and sometimes doesn’t start up at all! It’s also getting a bit tricky to keep on top of things as often as I’d like.

I don’t want to buy a PC as I don’t really have room for the whole unit and I want flexibility to use it wherever I am - also a PC uses more energy than a laptop AND laptops are designed to run cooler so no need for the great big energy-sapping fans found in desktops.

To send and receive emails, write new articles and research projects and everything else - I need access to the Internet and my current laptop is a bit behind the times. It doesn’t have WiFi, so to become ‘connected’ outside of my home, I would need to buy a 3G stick to replace the cable to my broadband server.

If I use someone elses laptop or PC (and security is not an issue - which it usually is) I already need to use a flash drive (USB stick) to transfer the data back onto mine. My laptop is now so old that it won’t run at all unless it is plugged into the mains, so I am really in the laptop ‘dark ages’.

And working online is always going to require certain technologies and securities, so it’s not like I just want a laptop to mess about on occasionally or to show off to my friends - it is part of my life.

So, What Are My Options?
A) Change the way my life is going and try to live a technology-reduced life. This would result in a complete turn-around for my laptop needs (so I wouldn’t rely on the Internet for day to day things) and the old one will be fine.  Although I might aim for this in the future, I’m not really in a position to do so now.

B) Stick with what I have and just put up with everything taking longer and hope that it doesn’t break down and lose all my important data. This means I will need to buy other smaller additions to make up for it’s age and to keep up with the times! However, if I buy upgrades and other USB attachments and it ’stops working in the next 6 months or so - then I will have to buy another old one (see C), or a new one anyway - and have to sell all the now unnecessary attachments!

C) Buy a reconditioned laptop and hope that it has been completely cleared so no sensitive data or damaging viruses are on it. Also without really knowing how much better than mine it is and for how long it will last is this even a very good option?

D) Buy a brand new netpad - a tiny laptop that only runs programs that I use. It comes with guarantee from the manufacturer that they will recycle it when I no longer need it, removing all the toxic materials before disposal and they will reuse any parts they can. Obviously that won’t be anytime soon, but at least the manufacturers now-a-days have to be more responsible!

So, Where Am I?
I’ve been checking out the options for new laptops, and here are some of the things I will be looking out for:

Efficient Running:
I need the technology to determine when my laptop needs to use less energy. Ideally as a result of this, it will adjust the flow into the machine saving my battery and extending it’s running time and reducing my drain on my electricity supply.

Many machines lose energy as heat when being used and this new technology (already in some laptops) claims to make them more than 96% power efficient.

Reduced Chemicals:
There are many hazardous chemicals currently used in laptop technology. Many companies claims to have removed up to 37 hazardous chemicals - including both lead and mercury - from their products. The current WEEE directives only ask for 6 to be removed.

This step would also make sure that discarded computers would pollute less. And of course that their factories are free of these chemicals too - perfect for retaining the health and safety of their employees!

Eco Friendly:
Ideally the company and their suppliers are sticking to green methods as well. I need to know that the long list of components and added ‘ingredients’ used for new technologies and equipment is not harming others along the way to their finished products. Also that foreign companies are not exploiting the environment or the communities that they rely on for raw materials.

Recycling:
I would like to be reassured that manufacturers are designing their products with their dismantling in mind, so that the components can be reused, recycled or discarded individually (rather than the whole lot just being thrown away).

I have also heard of several companies including Asus who have already collected over 5500 unwanted pc’s from their customers and have been reusing the parts where possible and reclaiming the precious metals and technology from machines that cannot be repaired.

They also claim to have donated over 1000 usable computers to local schools in disadvantaged communities as part of their ‘recycling’ package.

The Results:
I know that shoppers need to talk with their money, so I intend to do just that. If I make sure that I buy from a company that is heading in the best direction - this is not just true for laptops and other technologies, but for kitchen appliances, food, clothes and cars to name a few - then I know I am part of the change.

The more people like us that support the efforts of those companies that are trying to make a difference - the more of an impact they can make. If other companies start to see their designs out-sold by such ‘eco-friendly’ companies - they may well start to be more responsible too and clean their own acts up.

If we keep buying products because of the brand rather than the good they do, we can never expect any changes to take place.

So do your bit next time you buy!

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.