Have Yourself an All-Consuming Christmas

December 22nd 2010

When it comes to Christmas, everyone has their own traditions. You might unwrap your presents after lunch or you might open them before 7.30am, you might send recycled Christmas cards or you might send e-Christmas greetings, you might buy low energy or LED lights for your Christmas tree (something this family in America should have done) or you might decorate yours with old, painted light bulbs and homemade chocolate Rudolfs. My dad’s friend and his brother send each other the same two Christmas cards back and forth each year with the wrong name scribbled out and the right name written over it.

Whatever you normally do, it’s easy to make small changes - which usually turns out to be enhancements, employing clever tricks and saavy thinking to master the art form of using everything up and wasting nothing.

Recycled and upcycled gifts are getting better and cooler with each year that passes. Homemade presents are perfect for those with a small purse this Christmas. But if you’re not arty and craft-y and can’t think of anyone who wants an egg box covered in dried pasta then the web is crammed with sites great, green gadgets, fantastic, environmentally-friendly fashion and cool, carbon neutral Christmas presents such as Ethical Community, Nigel's Eco-store and Upxchange, to name a few.

Green Thing has rescued and united Britain’s lost gloves into perfect pairs for only £5 and Saved your unloved t-shirts from being forgotten about under the bed into a green fashion statement for £20.

Do you go for a real tree or a fake tree? How about a cardboard tree? How about any one of these 5 amazingly green trees? With some simple recycling and paper folding skills you can make some beautiful decorations. CD’s, sweet wrappers, homemade sweets and chocolate treats and Christmas cards from previous Christmas’s all make fantastic tree decorations.

Ah, now for the wrapping paper. Depending on your level of excitement you either carefully unwrap your presents and reuse the paper for next year (My Gran’s Tip: iron the paper to look just like new) or if you’re just too eager to see what’s inside and you rip it open. Small shreds of paper are perfect for composting and recycling (and bigger bits can be saved for next year’s smaller presents, ironed of course). You might even have wrapped your presents the Japanese way using Furoshiki (wrapping with cloth that gets reused every year).

Your compost bin is likely to get a lot of usage on Christmas day with all the vegetable peelings from Christmas dinner. Not to mention the paper hats, napkins and crackers (including cracker joke but not plastic keyring of Santa). If you’re unsure of what can be composted then take a peak at Recycle Now for handy hints.

Christmas dinner is the biggest waste provider of Christmas. Controlling portion sizes can be tricky enough normally but when it comes to cooking the biggest dinner of the year for all the family, it can be pretty difficult. Luckily the clever people at Love Food Hate Waste have come up with a handy Christmas portion calculator. Simply select the food you want and how many you are cooking for and hey presto, the portion sizes pop up on screen. But let’s presume that as well as having leftovers for the obliquity turkey (or Tofurkey) sandwiches on Boxing Day, you end up with more uneaten food than you had hoped. The Love Food Hate Waste folks have more helpful suggestions – leftover food recipes. And if that wasn’t making your life easy enough, you can pick what foods you have leftover and it will produce a recipe to suit your personal food needs!


So this year, have a very, merry, all-consuming Christmas!

http://www.dothegreenthing.com/blog/have_yourself_an_all_consuming_christmas

House Bling

December 21st 2010

Don’t you just hate it when you want to decorate the outside of your house at Christmas but you (delete as appropriate):



a) Don’t want to pay for more decorations


b) Haven’t got a ladder


c) Don’t want to increase your electricity bill


d) Don’t want your house to stick out like a sore thumb


e) Know that 10 hours a day of Christmas lights generates enough carbon dioxide to fill 5 party balloons every day


f) Can’t be bothered to leave the warmth of the house


Well fret no more, Shelter has provided the answer. Simply click over to House Bling, pop your postcode in and festive up your house front, you can even make it look more December 2010 by painting snow on. No hassle, no cold and best of all - no energy required!


Once your masterpiece is finished you can send it to your friends and family, you can also donate to Shelter who are helping to keep Britain's homeless warm and safe this Christmas.

http://www.dothegreenthing.com/blog/house_bling

How to be a Humankind Superhero

December 20th 2010

This is a Book review of "How To Be A Humankind Superhero" by Harold Forbes.

I’m one of those people that finds it difficult to concentrate on a book unless it’s a story and has a very clear beginning and end so the idea of reading a book on climate change, which obviously has no ending (yet!) was a little frightening. I also find lists of facts and statistics as easy to read as ancient Greek, backwards, upside down and on the ceiling. But, hurrah! How To Be A Humankind Superhero was easy to read and I whizzed through it.


It is written very clearly and with lots of relevant and suitable explanations when the science gets a bit too complicated. But it isn’t just science. It touches on philosophy, sociology, history and, funnily enough, ancient Greece. To talk you through what you can do to become a Humankind Superhero, Harold Forbes relates what we need to do with Hercules Labours (if you don’t know your ancient Greek, Hercules got set a variety of labours to prove his strength, courage, skill and determination).


Rather than focus on what will happen in the future if we don’t do anything, the book gives details about what each individual and community can do to lower carbon emissions and ultimately stop global warming. These ranged from the easily do-able to the superhero tasks that require a bit more Herculean determination, giving practical advice and people to contact. Talking about everything from recycling and using your home to create energy to who are the worst world offenders and how to thwart them (seriously though, his solutions are simple and well-though through, not just a few radical ideas thrown into mix).


It's all too easy to self-righteous when discussing climate change but this book has missed both these dangers. I definitely feel more knowledgeable about the risks, the history, the plans and the arguments behind climate change and, pretty importantly, I know what I can do to play my part in correcting it. It has great advice for home improvements and plenty of tips on speaking to your local authorities and MPs. And it is packed full with astounding and scary facts. If you are like me and are easily put off by non-fiction and worried about reading a book that lectures you then put your fears aside and give this a read! I guarantee you’ll feel more passionate and positive about what you can achieve.


http://www.dothegreenthing.com/blog/how_to_be_a_humankind_superhero

Comedy Vs Climate Change

December 10th 2010

Comedy and climate change. Not two things you usually hear together in a sentence but in a pub in Islington on Wednesday that’s exactly what happened.


A dedicated greenie, KP, decided to set up a comedy night to raise awareness for climate change with proceeds going to Emission Impossible – a film documenting efforts to start a public conversation on the legal and financial implications of climate change for energy-related investments. Yes, it does sound a bit long winded doesn’t it? But that’s where the comedy kicked in. Luckily she already knew some (award-winning) stand-up’s as there aren’t many that are well known for being verbally environmental. The four comedians - Luke Toulson, Mike Wozniak, Sara Pascoe, Tania Edwardshad - had especially written some new, green-related material (very) loosely around some climate change facts that KP had given them.


The comedians were great, plenty of funny green material and lots of laughs. The compere Luke Toulson was fantastic and managed to keep the fun atmosphere going even after the grumpy landlord came up shouting about which greenie was responsible for pulling down some trees in the Amazon to block up his toilet. Clearly he thought he should have been the funny one on stage. Sara Pascoe introduced us to Bri the Polar Bear (Sara Pascoe in a white woolly hat), Tania Edwards openly admitted her indifference to climate change and then made everyone laugh about other stuff. Then came the headliner, Mike Wozniak, with the most fantastic moustache you’ve seen (and it’s not even Movember anymore!) Mike, with reference to his pregnant wife, filled us in on how to have a 'green birth' (burying the placenta in your garden apparently) and the science of fingers.


The whole night was taped and is set to be put online as soon as KP manages to get the tape back from the pub – grumpy landlord strikes again! If you’re keen on climate change and love comedy then check out the website, it is absolutely worth a watch. And keep an eye out for another comedy night coming soon.

http://www.dothegreenthing.com/blog/comedy_versus_climate_change

Bringing Back the 90's

December 7th 2010 

Everyone has an understanding as to how to recycle. You put your plastics in that bin and they get made into cosy fleeces and garden chairs. Your paper gets put in that bin and goes off to become new paper or maybe even Kranthout, the Dutch paper-wood. Your old 90’s phone goes into that bin and gets a make-over into a cool new phone. Wait, what?


French company Lëkki have decided to go back to basics and refurbish those old 90’s mobiles back to working order. Perfect for those people who just want a phone to be a phone, the ‘new’ Motorola StarTAC’s are brightly coloured and complete with a retro, retractable antenna and not an app in sight. You can also make your own phone by choosing the colours you'd like.

But this isn’t just about another retro product being bought back to make money. Nor is it a (100%) anti-app and lets-go-back-to-the-good-old-days movement. This phone has a big idea behind it. A big green idea. It's all about sustainable product development. The lifespan of a mobile is around 18 months but it takes around 6-7 years to balance out the carbon emissions produced through making one. So to extend the lifespan of the handset, Lëkki are recycling and revamping these vintage phones, showing us that brand spanking new doesn’t mean better, especially when it comes to the environment. Being green has never been so easy to do and still stay looking cool.

If you’re interested in recycling old but not useless objects then check out Saved, Green Thing’s way of prolonging the life of neglected t-shirts and making the unfashionable fashionable again.


(Spotted on For Love Not Money)
http://www.dothegreenthing.com/blog/bringing_back_the_90_s_phone

The Visable Shower Tank

December 2nd 2010

Everybody loves new gadgets and there are tons of green gizmos that tell you how much energy you’re using and how long you’ve been in the shower compared to yesterday. But how much notice do we take of all these blinking screens and colour changing thingybobs, especially on a cold Monday morning in winter? What would be great is something bold and obvious, something unmissable... insert the Visible Shower Tank!

No matter how bleary eyed and almost asleep you are, a massive tank of water (stylishly) plonked into your bathroom is going to make you rather aware of how much water you’re using.


Designed to stop people turning the shower on to warm up and then leaving it to waste up to a massive 6L of water, it has a temperature system and the constant reminder of how much water you are letting gurgle away down the plug.

Showers aren’t the only place that water is overused, the system also has a tank for the sink and toilet flushing. If you add to this your Stop The Water Whilst Using Me showergel and pop on a Short Sharp Showercast, well, it will be a good morning.


(Spotted on Treehugger)
http://www.dothegreenthing.com/blog/the_visible_shower_tank

Calling All Unreasonable People

December 1st 2010

So you have this AMAZING idea, it’s fantastic, it’s perfect, it’s going to revolutionise the green movement...but where to begin? This year the Unreasonable Institute are looking for people like you with big new ideas about the environment. 25 entrepreneurs will take part in this six week fellowship complete with mentoring and development to get your idea off the ground. You‘ll have meetings with big businesses, possible partners and investors.


Some of the Unreasonable ventures and projects from last year include a carbon neutral agricultural waste converter creating clean burning fuel in Kenya and toilet paper made from 100% recycled materials with 50% of the profits going towards building toilets in developing countries.


So if you want to start up that project you’ve been working on and change the world with your incredible ideas then apply now and this time next year your ideas could be changing the world!

http://www.dothegreenthing.com/blog/calling_all_unreasonble_people