Check out the first ever edition of the Green Tips podcast below!
Click on the player below to listen to the very first of thetreehugger.co.uk’s Green Tips podcasts! For the first podcast I was joined by Tom Wood from Greener Bournemouth (@greenerbomo) and we discussed a number of green tips from Liz Hutchins (FOE), Cllr Don Collier (Poole Council), Chris Airey (The Green House Hotel), and Lizzy Maries from Lush Cosmetics. To get involved with the next podcast, tweet me (@treehuggertweet) your green tips for an environmentally-friendly life using the hashtag #greentipspodcast. Enjoy!
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Cllr Don Collier environmentalism stems from his passion for diving - image courtesy of doncollier.co.uk
It’s a gloomy afternoon outside the council offices of the Borough Of Poole, and Don Collier has just sat down to chat to me about his work as portfolio holder for the environment at the council. But before we can even begin he’s picked up my dictaphone and he’s asking me how it works and where I got it from. If the credentials on his website aren’t already a big enough clue, this example alone should scream at you that Don Collier is proactive, and above all, a do-er.
In the seven years he’s held the environmental portfolio at the council, Don’s inquisitive mind and pro-active attitude has introduced the award-winning ‘dual bins’ to the streets of Poole, increased the recycle rate of the area from 18% to 40% (with a participation rate of 98%), and now he’s setting about tackling the council’s carbon footprint. That’s an impressive amount of progress for any portfolio holder, but the environment is always tougher than most. For starters, with the ongoing debate over the true cause and extent of climate change, how do you go about changing the bad environmental habits of a lifetime? Don’s got a slightly different approach from the rest: “I’m not going to get into the arguments of, ‘is man responsible for Global warming?’ – that’s just a boring argument that will rage for centuries and I’m not interested. But what I am interested in is making sure that we operate in a sustainable manner, and that of course, has struck a chord with the authority.”
If you need proof that a chord has been struck, you only have to look as far as the council’s trophy cabinet where their latest accolade is none other than a Carbon Saver Gold award, meaning they’ve been independently verified as making a concerted effort to reduce their carbon footprint. But whilst awards and certification is all well and good, what does this actually mean?
“Well the fantastic thing about that is that there was actually no investment involved in it,” Don enthuses, “the only investment was time and people.” And those people are the CREW (Carbon Reduction Enemy Wardens – do you see what they did there?) who’s job it is (alongside their regular jobs within the council) to make sure that lights and computers are switched off when not in use, printers aren’t left on overnight, and most importantly, that those little green habits are sustained over a long period of time: “Anyone can do it in a month,” Don adds, “But keeping the habit in is about having that energy warden there to tap someone on the shoulder and remind them.”
Outside of the comfort of the council’s offices, with Don’s help, Poole was one of the first authorities in the country to introduce a kerbside dedicated recycling scheme – now known nationally as ‘the blue bin scheme’. “That was a real breaker that one,” recalls Don, “That’s one where the whole world changed at that point…it was a real challenge…would it work? There was a lot of theory, a lot of risk, a huge problem if it went wrong. But didn’t.” Don concludes, with an air of achievement.
There’s a continual strive for improvement in Don’s eyes though. “Oh we can always do better, there’s no question here that we can always do better.” Don remarks, as if it wasn’t even worth questioning, “we aint finished here yet either!” he adds, before telling me of his plans to reduce the amount of buildings that the council uses and the introduction of alternative energy sources to the area. “I guess the biggest frustration for me is not being able, so far, to mature the biomass wood burners.” Don’s a self-confessed advocate of biomass burners, which can heat homes and buildings using untreated wood and wood chippings without producing too much CO2. “However, people are still resistant to installing them, and something’s got to break,” he adds. Don’s comments on the reluctance of uptake of alternative energy sources came just a couple of weeks before the news that North Dorset district council unanimously rejected plans for a new wind farm near Silton, a worrying trend for the future of alternative energy sources.
Despite this, and some of the setbacks he’s had trying to introduce biomass boilers, Don’s confident of the future. His logic is simple, the more energy people save, the smaller their energy bills are, and that’ll take them out of fuel poverty, which he describes as ‘huge’. And as if the argument of sustainability wasn’t enough, Don reckons the situation in the Middle East will make all the difference to people’s attitudes to energy as well: “I mean what’s been going in Egypt is a big driver, because the crude price has just gone through the roof, so you’ll see electricity costs go up again.”
Don’s approach to ‘going green’ through the argument of sustainability and saving money is perhaps a less obvious one, and not one that your average eco-warrior may particularly align themselves to. But there’s a logic to it that makes it worthwhile, as Don explains: “You’re going to have the two sides of the argument, aren’t you? You’re going to have the people that believe that global warming is a load of nonsense and that global warming is nothing to do with man, and you’re going to have people who passionately believe in the other way round. And of course…where you have such desperately held views, you finish up with stalemate. So really nothing happens.” And that’s logic you can’t really argue with.
Perhaps the green movement has missed a trick here – rather than trying to fight the good, but ultimately unfruitful, fight of convincing the world that it’s warming up, the best way of getting everyone to ‘go green’ is to remind them that sustainability saves money. Don’s done it in Poole. Now, who’s next?
Giving power to the people at Bridport's Energy Bill meeting
How do you solve a problem like accountability? Well, Friends of the Earth and the Stop Climate Chaos Coalition seem to have the right idea. Take a local MP (one Oliver Letwin in this case), an expert on housing (that’ll be Magna Housing‘s Yogesh Yadgama), and someone who knows a thing or two about putting the government under pressure for green change (cue Friends of the Earth’s Liz Hutchins), put them in an unassuming church hall in the heart of Dorset, and get them to discuss what could potentially be two of the most significant green bills the coalition government could introduce. The result? A packed-out hall full of local residents finding out how government environmental policy affects them, with the opportunity to grill said speakers on the nitty-gritty details right after.
If you’re not up-to-speed with Energy Bill (the primary focus of the two bills touched upon at the meeting), then here’s an elevator pitch; originally called the ‘Energy Security and Green Economy Bill’, the Energy Bill focuses on three main areas. Firstly, on creating a ‘green deal’ whereby energy companies pay the up-front costs for the ‘greening’ of housing (better boilers, insulation, et. al) and the cost of it all is paid back yearly in the (hopefully reduced) energy bills. Secondly, the introduction of a smart grid system and smart meters to replace the old system, with the idea of reducing energy use and actually putting energy back into the grid. Finally, improving energy security through the strengthening of traditional energy supplies and the introduction of low-carbon supplies.
Struggling to understand how this all relates to you and what it all means? That’s exactly why these meetings were set up. The right people in the right place talking about the right issues makes all the difference when you’re trying to get your head around environmental policies that can, at times, seem pretty complex. The opportunity to ask questions and really put the people in the know on the spot makes it all the more worthwhile, and the people of Bridport certainly did just that.
Oliver Letwin was the main candidate in the firing line during the question and answer session, taking on subjects ranging from the opportunities for councils to set-up energy-creating businesses to the ins and outs of how the green deal will work for individuals. In every case, the whole panel chipped in to give the best answer possible – and that’s exactly the kind of informative approach that needs to be taken with the introduction of schemes like the smart grid and the green deal.
The result? Probably not as chaotic as you’d expect. Despite the fact that the hall was packed out within about five minutes of the doors opening, the atmosphere was surprisingly calm – although I’d like to think that’s down to respect rather than apathy. Every speaker got the chance to say their piece and subtly jab the other once or twice and there was plenty of opportunity for the gathered masses to hold them to account, with only a select few tempers fraying.
“Friends of the Earth and Stop Climate Chaos are trying to be in the back yard of every politician in the country and say that climate change matters,” Liz told me after the meeting, “and that legislation like the Energy Bill matters to local constituents.” I think its fair to say that Mr. Letwin certainly got that message.
The latest energy bill certainly has some terrific points, but perhaps the most interesting one is that of the ‘smart grids’ and ‘smart meters’ which the coalition government hope to install by 2018. Oliver Letwin was positively gushing over these during the meeting, stating, “We have the potential now to move from a 1950s, top-down electricity system, to a modern, as we call it, electricity internet.”
If the phrase ‘electricity internet’ sounds a little futuristic, well it probably is. Whilst the idea that your smart meter will turn off your lesser-used appliances automatically during peak hours of electricity use, and that electric-hybrid cars can return their charge to the smart grid during those same hours, is lovely, it all seems a little impossible, no? The government seem to reckon it’s all possible by 2018, but I don’t personally think I’ll be holding my breath for a smooth transition.
However, what struck me about the meeting more than anything else, was its demographic. There was a distinct lack of young people in the audience and as the future generation who will ultimately be dealing with the effects of climate change and the challenges of reducing carbon emissions, that’s a slightly worrying sign. Still, in terms of activism, it’s clear that more and more young people are getting involved in politics through things like the student fees demonstrations, and one can only hope that will spread to environmental issues in the not too distant future. As one audience member pointed out to the speakers at the meeting, “We do not have a lot of time.”
Check out our photo gallery featuring photos from the meeting below:
All images Copyright thetreehugger.co.uk 2011. Photography by Ben Martin.
Above: Check out the video above for an extract of the full interview with The Green House Hotel’s managing director, Chris Airey.
Tourism is big business in the South West. Over 16 million people visit each year, spending around four million pounds for the area. But what’s the environmental impact of it all? There are over 40,000 hotels in the UK, but just 2,000 in the UK. The aptly-named ‘Green House Hotel’ is just one of them – but how green really is it? Freddie Harrison went to find out.
“Well, my experience was that hotels were known for excessive use of resources and waste and so on” says Chris Airey, Managing Director of The Green House Hotel, “and I kind-of thought that no-one seems to be doing anything different, no-one seems to be tackling that.” It’s this knowledge and experience of the hotel industry that led to the conception of The Green House Hotel.
Despite its flourishing tourism market, Bournemouth wasn’t an obvious choice for Chris and the team when they were looking for a site for the Green House Hotel. “We started looking for buildings in London,” Chris explains, “we looked at places like Manchester, Bristol, Oxford, and ended up down in Bournemouth.”
But what about Bournemouth’s green credentials? “From a leisure perspective you’ve got things like the New Forest and the Jurassic coast and that all fits with the [environmental] ethos, but from a business point of view I’m not sure there’s any area where businesses are interested in it,” Chris says, before adding, “I think there are two extremes – the big companies that have to have CSR [Corporate Social Responsibility] policies and small companies where it [environmental awareness] is part of the business. It’s fair to say that The Green House Hotel falls firmly into the latter category and is part of a growing number of businesses where environmental awareness is at the heart of what they do.
The hotel itself, set in a Grade Two listed building in the heart of Bournemouth, isn’t exactly what you’d expect from an ‘Eco hotel’. “Eco hotels are in the middle of rainforests, in the middle of Wales, and kind-of remote places – they’re all what people’s perceptions of what an Eco hotel would be – something quite rustic,” says an enthused and passionate Chris, “and the idea was to take an existing building or new building and really think about the environmental impact of everything we did.” So how does the reality measure up to Chris’ early ambitions?
Well, they seem to have everything covered. Starting right at the very bottom the carpets are made from sheep’s wool, meaning they’re naturally fire retardant and don’t require any chemical coatings – that’s a far cry from the cheaper, synthetic carpets often found in the average hotel. At the other end of things, all the hotel’s lights are either CFL or LED and rely on a mixture of timers and sensors to make sure they’re only on when needed. The furniture inside has been sourced locally, and whilst it might not all be recycled, it has been sourced sustainably. Despite these energy saving measures, the hotel’s style manages to buck the normal perceptions of Eco hotels. Chris reluctantly describes its style as ’boutique’, and there’s certainly an air of quality to it.
From working in hospitality in the past, I knew that catering was one of the areas that produces the most waste – naturally I was interested to find out if The Green House hotel had managed to curb that habit too. Surely enough, the food and drink in the restaurant is seasonal and sourced as locally as possible – cutting down on the carbon emissions caused by long-haul transportation.
But if the challenges faced by sourcing materials and furnishings locally and through sustainable and recycled resources weren’t enough, there’s also the added difficulty of pleasing the conservation officers who could overrule plans for the Grade 2 listed building in which The Green House Hotel resides. “A conservation officer can overrule building control, planning policies, and pretty much whatever they like and that, I don’t think, is a very sensible state of affairs” Chris says, “especially when you’re looking at other issues, such as the environment.”
The Green House hotel hasn’t opted to put every single green technology into the hotel, but Chris has good reason for this. “We were very conscious that we didn’t want it to be a showcase of environmental technology,” says Chris, “we wanted to put in the technologies that worked, and worked together.” And he’s keen to point out that there’s always room for new technologies in the future. “I think it’s continuous improvement, you can never rest on your laurels, there’s always going to be more to do.
“Everything has been put in place, but we still haven’t got a lot of data on actually how well our [environmental] performance has been. So that stuff is being collated now and then we’ll be looking at all of the different areas and deciding how we can improve it.”
However, if it’s a measure of success that’s needed. You only need to take a look at their trophy cabinet, boasting accolades for ‘Excellent Social Responsibility’ from the HRS Social Excellence Awards and ‘Small Hotel Of The Year’ at Bournemouth’s tourism awards to name but a few.
So it seems that The Green House Hotel passes the green test for now, and with plans to expand to other towns and cities across the country in the future, it can only be good news for a tourism industry, where at least some are concerned at cutting their carbon emissions.
Friends of The Earth and Oliver Letwin MP talk the government’s green plans – Live Tweets from the Bridport meeting
Tonight, Bridport plays host to the aptly-titled ‘The Greenest Government Ever?‘ meeting. With so much talk about the coalition government being ‘the greenest government ever’, West Dorset Friends Of The Earth and the Stop Climate Chaos Coalition have bought together some of the key players surrounding the coalition’s proposed Energy Security and Green Economy Bill to talk about how it will affect the people of Dorset. With the opportunity for the public to have their say about what policies are needed for a green and sustainable future, it only seems right that I should head along!
I’ll be live-Tweeting from the meeting which takes place this evening, using the hashtag #bridportgreengov. Check out the stream below for everything I’ve got to say, and feel free to get involved by Tweeting using that hashtag as well, I’d love to hear from you:
A lovely GreenBottle, courtesy of greenbottle.com
I was reading the rather brilliant ‘i’ newspaper on my iPad this morning (and in the long run, saving a few trees in the process, I hope!) and I came across an article about this clever little thing. It’s an alternative to the regular plastic milk bottle. In an ideal world, I guess we could all go back to using glass milk bottles, but they’re heavy, prone to breaking, and perhaps a little a little impractical, so this seems like a great alternative to solving a problem like the five million tonnes of plastic the UK uses each year.
Now, I’ve already linked you to GreenBottle’s website twice now, so I wont spend the rest of this post boring you with the details of how it all works. Suffice to say the outer shell of bottle is made from cardboard (which can be recycled up to seven times or decomposed in a matter of weeks) and the inner shell is a thin plastic bag (it uses less energy to make than the regular plastic bottle and takes up much less space on a landfill site). Clever, right?
So the story of the GreenBottle goes that the inventor, one Martin Myerscough, came with the idea after his son came home with a papier-mâiché balloon from nursery. The balloon inspired Martin to look at how paper could be formed in to different shapes and used for other purposes. He already knew about the amount of plastic bottles that end up in landfill each year (enough to fill the Albert Hall 50 times over, according to him), and wanted to do something about it. He spent 18 months developing his GreenBottle and managed to get a lovely supermarket to let him trial it. That was in 2007, and this Friday, the GreenBottle will be launched nationally.
Anyway, the purpose of this blog post isn’t to tell you all about the GreenBottle (as you can see from above, there are plenty of websites that do that for me), it’s to make a point about getting inspired and doing something about the green issues we all face. Martin Myerscough didn’t like the idea of plastic bottles filling up our planet year on year, so he set about making an alternative, and an alternative he did make.
But Martin isn’t the only one in the world to have a big green idea, think about Ruth Andrade from Lush who’s green ideas have helped change a cosmetics giant, they’ve reduced the amount of plastic they use by making their products naked, or using closed-loop recycling, and those green ideas helped Lush’s founders, Mark and Mo, to get OBEs for their services to the cosmetics industry. Anyway, who says green ideas have to be big? I turned my old honey jars into candle holders, and was pleasantly surprised when I walked into a bar last night to see the same idea being used to turn them into light fixtures by hanging them from the ceiling. I’m constantly trying to think of new ways to use old things, and as corny as it may sound, it is actually quite fun trying to find new ways to live a slightly greener life.
From something as small as giving something you’d usually throw away a new use, to changing the way people buy and store their milk. Everyone has an entrepreneurial streak, but what’s yours? Here’s an idea I’ll share with you; everyone’s worried about the amount of plastic carrier bags we use, so what if every supermarket collected customers’ old plastic bags and put them in boxes at the end of the tills? That way we could all use recycled carrier bags instead of having to ask for news ones? Maybe that’s already been done, maybe it’ll never work, but the only way a green idea becomes a reality is by getting it out there and getting people talking.
Now it’s down to you, what’s your big (or small) green idea? Perhaps there’s a product you’d love to make greener? Have you seen anything like the GreenBottle you want to share? Let me know in the comments below, tweet me @treehuggertweet, or write on thetreehuggger.co.uk’s Facebook wall.
Meet the woman heading up Lush’s fight for a greener future – Ruth Andrade
Lush's Ruth Andrade
With over 600 stores in some 43 different countries, Lush is a worldwide cosmetics giant – but they’re bucking the trend of their competitors and taking the green route. Butditching palm oil, supporting environmental groups and campaigns and fighting against animal cruelty isn’t easy. Especially if you’re doing it all from a modest headquarters in the depths of Poole’s ‘old town’. Actually, how on earth do you manage it all? Freddie Harrison asked Lush’s woman in the know, Ruth Andrade.
Ruth is Lush’s environmental manager, but on a bleary Tuesday afternoon she introduces herself to me with the tongue-in-cheek title of “the visionary”. Joking aside, Ruth’s self-appointed “unofficial title” isn’t inaccurate at all. It’s been almost seven years since she started working for Lush and in that time a lot has changed, but their core environmental values remain the same: “I think the number one thing that we are probably most well known for is packaging, or actually trying to reduce the amount of packaging we use,” she enthuses.
Lush have certainly made a name for themselves when it comes to ‘naked’ products (products that don’t require packaging, as opposed to products that you must be naked to use) – around 70% of the products are naked and that’s certainly a breath of fresh air in the plastic bottle-orientated world of the cosmetics industry. “If we were all using solid shampoo bars, then we would greatly reduce the amount of plastic out there,” Ruth adds. It’s a tall feat, and they’ve just about managed it, with the hope that everyone else will eventually catch on.
Amongst all the practical solutions that come with being an environmentally-friendly, Lush has an ethos and a character that sets this Dorset-based company out from the rest. “We like to stand our ground,” Ruth says, “I think this creative engagement, this boldness, not really being afraid to speak and doing what people want to hear is something really, really interesting.” Since its humble beginnings on Poole’s high street in the 90s, Lush has been supporting environmental campaigns and donating to environmental causes as well as pioneering the Palm Oil-free soap base – a landmark backlash against a cosmetics industry that consumes 7% of the world’s Palm Oil supplies, leading to the destruction of rainforests across the globe. Today Lush estimate they save over 390 tonnes of Palm Oil per year, and that’s just the start. If you want a round-up of all the green things Lush do to look after the environment, check out this video, narrated by Ruth.
But how easy is it to be Green in the face of spending cuts from the coalition government and all that red tape associated with international business? “Personally I think we actually need a little bit more government control, because that makes it easier to justify the spending on environmental issues, and I think gradually we’ll get to the point where we’re having to make emissions cuts because it’s a legal requirement,” says Ruth, now in full flow, it’s clear she’s passionate about changing the way big companies to business with regards to the environment. “On the other hand we can sometimes find the law a bit of a hindrance, particularly with things like animal testing where we’re going to have to massively adapt the way we make our products to still make cruelty-free cosmetics.”
Issues like animal testing see Ruth really come alive with passion as she talks about the problems that Lush face in trying to keep their products free from animal-tested ingredients, and she becomes more animate and vocal still when asked about Lush’s environmental plans for 2011: “We have new ideas for new factories – very sustainable and low-carbon factories, we’re looking into various new packaging materials, and we’re working with so many groups around the world for our ingredients. For me it’s using Lush as a tool to see so many of these projects flourish. It’s not just about selling cosmetics it’s about being part of this global network to encourage these project, that’s the biggest aspect of 2011.”
For all her enthusiasm about Lush’s strong environmental and ethical stance, Ruth still accepts the company has a long way to go: “I think we’re only about 30/40% there,” she suggests, “we need to start preparing for things like peak oil, working to take away fossil fuels from our supply chain and transport of products, that’s going to be really hard,” she says, “there’s so much work to be done – I have enough work for the next two decades!”
Lush is just one of the companies who grace the county of Dorset and make a concerted effort to ‘do the green thing’. This is just the beginning of a number of interviews with the people and organisations that make Dorset a green place to live. Keep checking thetreehugger.co.uk in the new year for more stuff just like this, and feel free to give your views and opinions in the comments below – we’d love to hear from you!
Eco tip of the week see’s thetreehugger.co.uk’s Freddie Harrison adopt a new environmentally-friendly habit each week in the hope of becoming just that little bit more green. Ranging from the easy to plain ridicvulous – some of them will last, some of them wont, but the aim is to inspire you to live a slightly more environmentally-friendly life. Good luck!
Picture courtest of: http://www.buynothingday.co.uk/toolkit.html
This week’s eco tip of the week is late, and for very good reason! It’s Buy Nothing Day this coming Saturday (17th November) and you’re all invited to take part. How do you take part? Well, it’s pretty simple – buy nothing! That’s right, nothing, not a sausage. Well, maybe a sausage if it’s the only thing you eat all day, but you get the idea. As long as you don’t spend, you’re taking part in Buy Nothing Day.
Originally started by everyone’s favourite anti-consumerists Adbusters back in the 90s, it’s now a worldwide phenomenon that sees everyone take part abstain from spending and realise a little more about their consumer habits. This is all well and good, but from chatting to a few people I know, I’ve come up with a few flaws:
- Help! I can’t eat! Does Buy Nothing Day extend to food and drink? Well, if you’re taking it on in the strictest sense, yes. But what if the cupboards are bare? Surely then you can buy food? It almost ruins the point of the exercise but what else are you meant to do?
- Sticking it to the man…but working for the man. If you’re at work, Buy Nothing Day becomes that little bit easier, for at least eight hours you’re confined to a distinct lack of spending (unless your job involves buying stuff, and that’s a whole other problem in its own right) but surely then you’re becoming the temptress to the tempted? If you’re selling things then you’re not exactly helping the cause are you? That said, it’s hardly worth quitting your job over.
- What about the indies? Adbusters and the organisers of Buy Nothing Day raise their own very important flaw in the grand plan in that, for the independent traders out there, a day of people deliberately not spending in their stores wont exactly do them any favours. Of course this assumes that every man and his dog is taking part, but still, it’s worth a though. The organisers reckon there’s ways indie shop owners can get around this by offering taster days, swap days, or some other form of promotion which joins in with the general idea of the idea. Although I’m not convinced this will fly with everyone.
Despite all its flaws, Buy Nothing Day has a pretty important message to get across, according to the organisers, 20% of the world population are consuming over 80% of the earth’s natural resources, and that can’t be anything but a bad thing. If we’re buying so much, all that packaging that we buy it in has to go somewhere, and with a lot of being unrecyclable, it’ll eventually end up in landfill. Not good at all. On top of that, with such a demand for consumer goods, the production has to be quick and cheap, and that often means that ‘doing the green’ thing is lost along the way. So it’s easy to see how buying a little less could mean everyone leads a slightly greener life.
I’d love to know how you get on with Buy Nothing Day, I’ll be live Tweeting my attempt to take part over at twitter.com/treehuggertweet, feel free to @ reply me with your views and opinions or post a comment below!
Who say's re-using old jars isn't easy?
Eco tip of the week see’s thetreehugger.co.uk’s Freddie Harrison adopt a new environmentally-friendly habit each week in the hope of becoming just that little bit more green. Ranging from the easy to plain ridicvulous – some of them will last, some of them wont, but the aim is to inspire you to live a slightly more environmentally-friendly life. Good luck!
I can do tote bags, no problems, I’ve even got into the habit of refusing plastic bags if there’s only a few bits that I can carry home from wherever I happen to be shopping, and that’s a start right? So now it’s time to step the game up – as a student I’m part of a notoriously bad demographic when it comes to recycling, so I guess it’s down to me to change that.
The use, re-use, and recycle mantra can be applied to just about everything you come into contact with on any given day…except maybe people or animals. What does it all mean? Well it’s pretty simple:
- Use whatever you’ve got to its full potential (I have a thing about wearing a pair of shoes until they literally fall apart).
- Re-use that item when you can no longer use it (could said shoes make a great chew toy for the dog or a lovely new home for your new hamster?).
- Finally, recycle the item once it’s been used again or if it can’t be used again (ever heard the phrase ‘one man’s trash is another man’s treasure’ – well this is where it comes into play, friends).
And that’s it. Honestly, there’s nothing more to it. Except when it comes to puting it into practice. We’re a throwaway society, products are built with a specific lifespan in mind (that games console you’ve got – 8-10 years max?), and we’re all too used to throwing something away if a newer or better product comes out to replace it. We Brits alone throw away 30 million tonnes of rubbish each year – if we all aimed to use something for double its intended lifespan, we could theoretically half that number…well…maybe.
So this is all well and good me telling you what to do but eco tip of the week is all about putting my money where my mouth is. So, take a look up to the top left of this article and you’ll spy a little candle in a jar – those were actually old honey jars I used (I do love a good bit of honey on toast) – I washed them out (including scrubbing off the barcode and BB date), removed the label and all the sticky stuff that it left behind, popped a tealight in, and voila it’s good enough to be sold in your local hip furnishings store and could also make a real cheap present if you decorated it a bit and the money’s tight.
Now it’s over to you – what have you used or re-used or recycled lately? What’s the best alternative use you’ve found for a product? Let me know in the comments!
Eco tip of the week see’s thetreehugger.co.uk’s Freddie Harrison adopt a new environmentally-friendly habit each week in the hope of becoming just that little bit more green. Ranging from the easy to plain ridicvulous – some of them will last, some of them wont, but the aim is to inspire you to live a slightly more environmentally-friendly life. Good luck!
Tote bags are light, strong, and (like this one) sometimes free!
When I first moved into my new house in September, there was a bag hung on the back of the door to hold plastic carrier bags, about two weeks in the bag had split, bulging with plastic bags from just about every local supermarket and shop in the area. Now the door wont close and the bag of bags has become a big black bin bag of bags. Scary right?
After realising how many plastic bags I managed to accumulate over the space of a fortnight I decided that from then on in I’d try my best to take a reusable bag whenever I went shopping and refuse them at every shop I was asked. If you’re thinking that sounds too easy to be true then you’re probably right, here’s why:
- If you forget it, you’re back to plastic – It’s oh-so-very easy to walk out the house without a reusable shopping bag if you’re just popping to by five or six things, but try juggling those five or six things home and you’ll soon realise that a plastic bag is needed, as much as you’d like to avoid it.
- Five items or less? You’ll still need a bag - Let’s say you’re making spaghetti bolagnaise for dinner – pasta, mince (or Quorn!), tomatos, garlic, onions – that’s a bag already, don’t underestimate how little fits in a regular plastic bag, a reusable one will hold more and they’re less likely to split!
- Don’t overfill it’ll only end in tears – That’s tears like rips not tears like crying, what goes in your tote bag must come out, and if it doesn’t spill out the top, it’ll fall through the split and onto the floor. Whilst there’s no use crying over spilt milk, spilt alcohol might be a different matter.
That said, despite the pessimist’s warnings, using a reusable bag is lessening the demand for plastic carrier bags, so whilst it might not look like your local supermarket really cares when you refuse, as demand gets lower, less get made. Over a trillion plastic bags are made per year, and currently us Brits about six and half billion of them, they don’t degrade very quickly and if you do a quick search for the North Pacific trash vortex, it wont don’t take you long to realise what the problem with that is.
Oh, did I mention tote bags are all ‘in’ right now? Every band who likes a well-socked merchandise line has them, and companies who love a bit of alternative advertising are practically throwing them at you – making this the laziest green habit you can pick up, ever!
So, that’s the skinny on how a good tote bag could stop the plastic spread – now it’s over to you. Are they as annoying as I’ve made out? What else do you use them for? Let me know in the comments!
