I just found an article about Walkers reducing their carbon footprint by making their bags from recycled potato peelings. What a fantastic idea! And when I read that they make 10 million bags of crisps every day I was even more impressed by this huge step in the right direction. Reading a little more about this story I realised that this has already been tried by Frito-Lay, another crisp company who produced 100% biodegradable bags. Perfect! Except that people complained they were too loud! Too loud?! You're only eating crisps! Does sound affect your taste buds? Will it diminish your enjoyment of the crisps? I cannot believe that thanks to a 45,000 strong facebook group, entitled 'SORRY BUT I CANT HEAR YOU OVER THIS SUNCHIPS BAG' Frito-Lay took this green packet off the market.
Apparently Walkers new version will be quieter. Well, thank goodness for that!
Wednesday, 20 October 2010
Recyled Home
On one of the several trains I got from home to London this week I picked up the Sunday Times and read about a family in Bath who decided, rather than go through the cost and hassle of knocking down their structurally fine but badly designed house, they would restyle and recycle it instead. A slightly more drastic task than just a new lick of paint and some jazzy new cushions, they used the bones of the house to build a better designed and more personal home. This money saving plan has the added bonus of being much more environmentally friendly with less manufacture of building materials that would be required for a completely newly built house.
And to look at, the house bears no resemblance to the old, plain, suburban home. In its place stands glass, steel and concrete sculpted into a modern new building. Not only is this new home better looking, it is also more eco-friendly. Pulling the house back to its skeleton allowed the owners to rebuild with the environment in mind; fixing heat and energy leaking areas to produce a much more energy efficient home. Re-planning the layout means better use of natural light resulting in lower usage of electricity.
With so many of Britain's homes being such badly insulated, energy losing messes this could be the way forward. Don't just move house and leave your pathetic home to be inhabited by another family throwing money out the cold windows and pushing it through the draughts under the doors. Be a good world citizen and fix what you have. And in the process you're allowed to make it that little bit special and just that bit more You. And all for less money and less guilt. The perfect, green, home sweet home.
And to look at, the house bears no resemblance to the old, plain, suburban home. In its place stands glass, steel and concrete sculpted into a modern new building. Not only is this new home better looking, it is also more eco-friendly. Pulling the house back to its skeleton allowed the owners to rebuild with the environment in mind; fixing heat and energy leaking areas to produce a much more energy efficient home. Re-planning the layout means better use of natural light resulting in lower usage of electricity.
With so many of Britain's homes being such badly insulated, energy losing messes this could be the way forward. Don't just move house and leave your pathetic home to be inhabited by another family throwing money out the cold windows and pushing it through the draughts under the doors. Be a good world citizen and fix what you have. And in the process you're allowed to make it that little bit special and just that bit more You. And all for less money and less guilt. The perfect, green, home sweet home.
Wednesday, 29 September 2010
Shweeb!
Forget Boris Bikes, I want to pedal to work in one of these!
The Shweeb is an environmentally friendly, cost efficient merge of the monorail and cycling. Imagine cycling to work in a glass pod high above the traffic jams and dirty streets. And its even inbuilt with a little booster if you're tackling a slight uphill climb. Who wants to ride a boring bike, dodging cars and iPod-ed pedestrians when your alternative is lying back and casually pedalling through the sky?
Chosen by Google Inc as part of Project 10^100 for 'Drive Innovation in Public Transportation', Shweeb has gone on to get $1million from Google to help bring this project to life. And even it if doesnt, I want to go to New Zealand just to have a go!
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| Shweeb. Image from www.shweeb.co.nz |
The Shweeb is an environmentally friendly, cost efficient merge of the monorail and cycling. Imagine cycling to work in a glass pod high above the traffic jams and dirty streets. And its even inbuilt with a little booster if you're tackling a slight uphill climb. Who wants to ride a boring bike, dodging cars and iPod-ed pedestrians when your alternative is lying back and casually pedalling through the sky?
Chosen by Google Inc as part of Project 10^100 for 'Drive Innovation in Public Transportation', Shweeb has gone on to get $1million from Google to help bring this project to life. And even it if doesnt, I want to go to New Zealand just to have a go!
Thursday, 16 September 2010
Recycle those bottles!
I read this great new article today on the BBC website about charging a deposit on bottles with the idea that it will stop people littering, encourage recycling and save the country £160million a year.
If each bottle you buy has a deposit of 15-30p on it then most of us are going to take that bottle back. The more bottles being taken to these special centers means less bottles scuttling around the UK littering everything up and also so much more recycling will be happening. If these centers are cheap to run and situated in supermarkets and town centers, places we can all get to easily then what could possibly be wrong with this plan? It is absolutely fantastic. The sooner it happens the better!
Unless it means country-wide robberies of people's recycling bins...
As Bill Bryson put it: "What sensible nation would not want to capture and recycle its precious and finite resources? What discerning people would not want to enjoy a litter-free environment?
If each bottle you buy has a deposit of 15-30p on it then most of us are going to take that bottle back. The more bottles being taken to these special centers means less bottles scuttling around the UK littering everything up and also so much more recycling will be happening. If these centers are cheap to run and situated in supermarkets and town centers, places we can all get to easily then what could possibly be wrong with this plan? It is absolutely fantastic. The sooner it happens the better!
Unless it means country-wide robberies of people's recycling bins...
As Bill Bryson put it: "What sensible nation would not want to capture and recycle its precious and finite resources? What discerning people would not want to enjoy a litter-free environment?
Friday, 10 September 2010
Start Festival
On Wednesday I went along to the Start Festival in London, held in Clarence House courtesy of Prince Charles. I was there as part of The Green Thing, promoting our new project 'Saved'.
Saved is all about encouraging people to reuse and rewear old clothes. Four billion new tshirts are bought every year and a quarter of these never get worn, they just hang there in the backs of people wardrobes. Green Thing want to show people that you can take old, boring and rubbish clothes and still wear them. We use reclaimed and recycled fabric to cut into letters spelling 'saved' that we sew onto our donated, unloved tshirts to give them a new lease of life.
This project is all about sticking with what you have and resisting the temptation to buy newer things when your old things are still perfectly good!
We've all spent the last six weeks sewing our fingers to the bone to get enough tshirts ready for Start.
Each tshirt comes with a little tag telling you its story - what it was saved from, who it was saved by and who it previously belonged to.
Sadly there was no sighting of Prince Charlies himself although there were quite a few celebrities there. None of which I saw with my own eyes but was told by everyone I was with that they spotted someone. I think I was concentrating too hard on sewing...
The festival itself was so amazing, full of great ideas and fantastic designs - the dance floor that powers itself, fleecy coffins, a boat full of children's ideas on what they would take with them into an environmental future, the most rehearsed curry-selling man ever, bee hotels and giant corks. What more could you ask for?
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| Part of our stand at Start |
Saved is all about encouraging people to reuse and rewear old clothes. Four billion new tshirts are bought every year and a quarter of these never get worn, they just hang there in the backs of people wardrobes. Green Thing want to show people that you can take old, boring and rubbish clothes and still wear them. We use reclaimed and recycled fabric to cut into letters spelling 'saved' that we sew onto our donated, unloved tshirts to give them a new lease of life.
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| The Saved letters, waiting for eco-friendly customers to pick and choose what goes on their tshirt |
This project is all about sticking with what you have and resisting the temptation to buy newer things when your old things are still perfectly good!
We've all spent the last six weeks sewing our fingers to the bone to get enough tshirts ready for Start.
 |
| Saved! |
Each tshirt comes with a little tag telling you its story - what it was saved from, who it was saved by and who it previously belonged to.
 |
| Here is my tshirt that I saved and sewed and is ready to be loved again. |
The festival itself was so amazing, full of great ideas and fantastic designs - the dance floor that powers itself, fleecy coffins, a boat full of children's ideas on what they would take with them into an environmental future, the most rehearsed curry-selling man ever, bee hotels and giant corks. What more could you ask for?
Saturday, 28 August 2010
Tipi's and Tree Houses
My life dream is to have my own eco-friendly campsite and so I am always interested in new, different and (pretty importantly) environmentally friendly sites.
I volunteered on a fantastic little site called Camp Spirit in Holland last year. It is a lovingly run, eco site on half of a small island (De Kluut) on the Lake Veluwe. The other half of the island is a nature reserve that campers can walk through and explore. The campsite is made up of around 8 Tipis, 2 Yurts and 3 Sahara tents, all carefully erected and taken down each summer season. They are spread apart, giving you space to camp in peace. The site also offers lots of activities and they run a small boat to and from the island twice a day. I had so much fun on the island, cleaning the tents out, doing some gardening in their vegetable patch and learning about how to run a campsite. Their passion for doing everything sustainably is great and left a real impression on the guests.
This morning I was reading the Guardian whilst sat in the sun and I read about this amazing new camping experience in Sweden. In tree houses! It looked fantastic! All the tree houses are different from each other, all designed by architects that are interested in the project. The site is called Tree Hotel and it is about 60km south of the Arctic Circle.
The idea for the site came about when the forest behind the guesthouse of Britta (one half of the owners of Treehotel) was bought for logging. Realising they needed to save the forest they bought the land back and with the help of designers and architects they built the treehouses to prove that this land was more than just timber and money.
Needles to say, everything was built sustainably and with nature in mind. One of the tree houses, The Mirrorcube, is basically what it claims to be, a room built from special mirrored glass, allowing the guest to see out but not be peered in on. But the simple addition of an extra material, an infrared film, makes the cube visible to birds so there are no airbourne injuries.
The little houses are so beautifully designed; some with roof top terraces, some with electronic stepladders that emerge when a secret tree button is pressed, every little detail has been thought through.
The idea of staying way up high, looking out through the trees, all alone in your little safe tree pod is so fantastic. I don't know what would be better; to visit in the winter when the snow has settled over everything and you sit there in your warm, hanging house with the silence of snow, spending your days sledging and going on husky sararis, or visiting in summer with the green light and the energy of animals and creatures just centimeters away outside your windowed wall, canoeing down the river and walking around the picturesque villages.
Either way, I want to go!
I volunteered on a fantastic little site called Camp Spirit in Holland last year. It is a lovingly run, eco site on half of a small island (De Kluut) on the Lake Veluwe. The other half of the island is a nature reserve that campers can walk through and explore. The campsite is made up of around 8 Tipis, 2 Yurts and 3 Sahara tents, all carefully erected and taken down each summer season. They are spread apart, giving you space to camp in peace. The site also offers lots of activities and they run a small boat to and from the island twice a day. I had so much fun on the island, cleaning the tents out, doing some gardening in their vegetable patch and learning about how to run a campsite. Their passion for doing everything sustainably is great and left a real impression on the guests.
 |
| One of the smaller Tipis (own photo) |
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| Inside the main social Tipi (own photo) |
This morning I was reading the Guardian whilst sat in the sun and I read about this amazing new camping experience in Sweden. In tree houses! It looked fantastic! All the tree houses are different from each other, all designed by architects that are interested in the project. The site is called Tree Hotel and it is about 60km south of the Arctic Circle.
The idea for the site came about when the forest behind the guesthouse of Britta (one half of the owners of Treehotel) was bought for logging. Realising they needed to save the forest they bought the land back and with the help of designers and architects they built the treehouses to prove that this land was more than just timber and money.
Needles to say, everything was built sustainably and with nature in mind. One of the tree houses, The Mirrorcube, is basically what it claims to be, a room built from special mirrored glass, allowing the guest to see out but not be peered in on. But the simple addition of an extra material, an infrared film, makes the cube visible to birds so there are no airbourne injuries.
 |
| The Mirrorcube. Photo taken from website. |
The little houses are so beautifully designed; some with roof top terraces, some with electronic stepladders that emerge when a secret tree button is pressed, every little detail has been thought through.
The idea of staying way up high, looking out through the trees, all alone in your little safe tree pod is so fantastic. I don't know what would be better; to visit in the winter when the snow has settled over everything and you sit there in your warm, hanging house with the silence of snow, spending your days sledging and going on husky sararis, or visiting in summer with the green light and the energy of animals and creatures just centimeters away outside your windowed wall, canoeing down the river and walking around the picturesque villages.
Either way, I want to go!
Sunday, 22 August 2010
I love this recycled glass cup and saucer from Miki (http://www.miki.uk.com/)
Lots of the items are locally sourced and they are all gorgeous. The sale is very tempting!
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