March 23rd - Chris Jordan - Environmental Artist

Bit macabre I know - but great art by Chris Jordan - thanks Andy for the recommendation!
http://www.chrisjordan.com/
This is a current environmental project "Midway" showing where some of our discarded plastic ends up - in the stomachs of baby albatross living on a remote island in the pacific ocean over 2,000 miles from the nearest continent. Shocking stuff!

February 22nd - “Water, Water Everywhere But Not a Drop to Drink” ?

Friends of the Earth describe bottled water as “environmental madness” stating that it is absolutely absurd to be putting this very heavy, bulky, super-cheap product in bottles which weigh almost as much as the product and carting them round the world. In a world where many people still do not have access to clean drinking water critics may also quite reasonably be outraged at the sheer decadence of western consumers wiling to pay 10,000 times the price of tap water for the bottled equivalent - http://www.foei.org/en/resources/video/videos-we-like/the-story-of-bottled-water for an interesting short video called “The Story of Bottled Water” on the FoE website

Well, when you put it like that I feel rather daft for ever buying it! (although as one of the fastest growth areas in the food and drink industry I’m not alone).

The WWF states that 22 million tonnes of bottled water are transported each year between countries resulting in thousands of tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions and producing up to 1.5 million tonnes of plastic waste each year. Depressingly the industry is largely controlled by multinationals like Danone (who own Volvic and Evian) and Nestle (Buxton, Perrier Vittel, San Pelligrino) and Coca Cola who’s brand Disani was withdrawn from the UK after it was revealed to be tap water originating from the Thames!!

But what to do when we’re constantly warned that the practice of making water safe to drink actually involves adding large amounts of extremely poisonous chemicals such as liquefied chlorine and aluminium sulphate to it?

According to http://freshlysqueezedwater.org.uk/, despite the fact that the fluoridisation of water is banned in all other European countries and a huge and ever-growing body of evidence that the science behind this mass medication programme is questionable to say the least, around 10% of the UK’s water supply is fluoridated. Fluoride is currently associated with all sorts of problems and can affect the brain, thyroid, bones etc etc. Add to that the fact that our water generally travels through Victorian water pipes it seems pretty much certain that it’s going to pick up some pretty nasty additions along the way such as lead, arsenic, hormones, pesticides, bacteria etc. You can buy water testing kits from places such as http://www.simplexhealth.co.uk/potential-water-contaminants-cms-43.html but these are pretty pricey.

Yuck! But it appears that our bottled water may not be that clean either and is subject to far less stringent safety tests than tap water. While tap water must be checked daily under a rigorous inspection regime, by contrast, bottled makers are only required to undertake monthly testing at source. Once filled and sealed, a bottle of water might remain in storage for months before it is sold and so not containing disinfecting additives such as chlorine brings other problems. In addition there’s the whole recent worry that plastic can leak dioxins (which cause cancer) not great!

So bottled water is:
· Expensive
· Bad for the environment
· No cleaner / less clean than tap water
· Feeds the non-ethical big corporations

Apparently tap water is safer if you bring it to a rolling boil for at least 5 minutes (although this process also removes the oxygen and makes it taste flat) - not really very practical (!) or you can filter it. This seems like the best option. Some fridges have filters attached or you can just buy a jug with a filter Brita for example will take back your used filter cartridges and recycle them.

January 18th - Five a Day

One of our aims for this year is to eat more healthily.  So that means making sure we eat five portions of fruit and veg. a day (although according to Leo Hickman in “A Good Life: The Guide to Ethical Living” this should be more like nine but the government daren’t tell us this in case we totally freak out)!  Current thinking also seems to suggest that this should be more veg. than fruit due to sugar levels with news stories about unhealthy bananas banned in the monkey house at Paignton zoo this week!  Quite frankly just getting five a day is enough of a challenge for us so that’s what we are aiming for….

Sourcing fruit and veg. ethically is a hugely complicated process.  Some of the main things to consider seem to be:

• Locally produced – less air miles, supporting local farmers, not necessarily organic.
• Fairtrade – ensure producers receive a fair price for their goods, usually on foods from the developing world; so air miles will be high.
• Organic – free from the pesticides which are known to poison us, wildlife and the environment.  It is worth noting that pesticide residues are higher on the edible parts of fruit and veg. where skins are eaten or thin.

Local versus organic? – where a choice has to be made, environmental organisations such as The Soil Association http://www.soilassociation.org seem to advise local over organic due to the environmental damage caused by transportation. Most Fairtrade products are likely to have high associated air miles but the certification process keeps a check on the responsible use of chemicals, social and economic issues.  Simplistically it seems better to buy local seasonal produce where available, Fairtrade then organic where choices need to be made.

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/seasonal-calendar/20036  and https://www.vegsoc.org/sslpage.aspx?pid=525# are links to guides showing what is in season (although this is not all local produce) and “The Eat Seasonably Campaign” produce a funky little wheel that you can download with local produce for each month http://eatseasonably.co.uk/what-to-eat-now/calendar/ . www.bigbarn.co.uk also allows you to search for local food suppliers.

Predictably, supermarkets don’t really appear to be a good bet when making these choices as they are generally unethical www.ethicalconsumer.org and their organic produce is usually expensive and over-packaged in plastic.  Waitrose have a dedicated local food section if you can afford!  Local box schemes are worth a look we used www.riverford.co.uk although we found this quite expensive and we often couldn’t choose what we got – one carrot and four cauliflowers between a family of four just didn’t work!  Farmer’s markets and fruit farms and farm shops are also a good bet.  To get FARMA certification produce should be grown within a 30 mile radius, someone involved in the production must be on the stall and information should be available about standards and production methods. www.farmersmarkets.net.  N.B. some of these are only open during the summer months.

Probably best of all is to grow your own.  You can eat cheap, seasonable, fresh, local produce and can be sure that it is organic.  We don’t have a very big garden but we are going to plant a couple of fruit trees.  We have also been lucky enough to have been offered a share in an elderly neighbour’s allotment – in his nineties he has a wealth of valuable experience but is unable to do the necessary digging etc.  We can do the donkey work but lack the skills so we have agreed to work together and share the produce.  Hopefully this will be an arrangement to suit everyone and the kids will also get to join in and learn some valuable skills.

Complicated stuff… but our plan as far as our five a day then is to grow some of our own organic fruit and veg. and buy mainly from farmer’s markets and local farms.  We all think that pick your own is a really lovely family activity so we are going to do that when the local fruit farm opens in May.  For the odd other thing that we need we will aim to choose local shops over supermarkets where possible and buy Fairtrade and organic where available.  Watch this space!

January 7th - Big Green Smile!

Our order from www.biggreensmile.com has arrived.  Communication was great, the order arrived exactly as promised all items were included and even the customer services people were nice! :) :)

So far everything looks great...apart from having inadvertently ordered a teeny tiny dolls-house package of washing powder!!  Very hard to judge sizes online!

We ordered lavender fabric conditioner from Bio-D and I could sit and sniff it all night!

So far definitely so good! :)

January 4th - Clean and Green?

With the Christmas decorations down you can really see the dust and dirt :) so today seems like a good day to clean house.

As far as cleaning products go we don't normally pay much attention to ethics in terms of what we purchase and tend to go for the same products that we have used for years that get the job done.  Having read a fair few scary things over the last few weeks about their effect on the environment and on our own health we thought we'd better give it a bit more thought.

Most of the things we use seem to be owned by Proctor & Gamble (Bold, Lenor, Fairy), Unilever (Cif, Domestos) or Reckitt Benckiser (Dettol, Finish, Windolene).  Predictably all of them have dire ECRA ratings with human rights violations, animal testing policies, anti-social practices etc.  Most of them are sprays and so are breathed in when we use them and apparently the effect are more harmful to children than adults as their bodies are smaller - guiltfest!

So we have decided it is time to clean up our cleaning cupboard and switch to products which are kinder to us and the environment and produced by companies that operate more ethically.

Our main worries are:

• Will more natural products work as well?
• Will they be expensive?
• Can we get hold of them easily?

Options seem to be:

• To go completely green and use completely natural cleaning products which are also much cheaper.  These seem to be mainly baking soda, vinegar, lemon juice (there is also something called borax - not quite as kind).  
• Or to find more ethical cleaning products.  

Going completely natural is a step too far for us at the moment and I really can't practically see myself mixing up potions and squeezing lemons every time I clean the loo (!) - it would get done even less than it does now! So we opted to do an online "green" cleaning product order.

We definitely didn't find this easy! In fact it was a minefield: checking out different websites, comparing the prices with our usual brands and looking up ECRA ratings.  It actually felt like learning another language.  So in the end we picked a few brands that rated well:  Ecover, BioD, Ecoleaf, Green People and just looked at their products. Like anything I suppose this will get easier as we get used to it but it was a big time investment in the first place - it took us two hours to do a £30 order.

Prices in comparison to supermarket brands are EXPENSIVE!  It seems that the way you get round this is to order in bulk which makes an order much more reasonable and is greener from the point of view of van delivery. We found that most companies offer free delivery over £50 as well.  Our plan at the moment is to eventually cut prices and packaging by placing a big order three or four times a year.  We only placed a small order this time as we aren't really sure what we were ordered to be honest (how big is a 10 litre bin bag?), whether it's any good what it will smell like especially washing powder etc.  Bulk buying also requires storage - where will we store 50 recycled loo rolls?  We are aiming to clear all the junk out of the garage (long overdue) and use some old shelving that we have.

We opted for www.biggreensmile.com in the end as we liked the website and they give you an expected delivery day - Tuesday.  Sad to say but I'm quite excited :)

January 3rd - Twelfth Night Approaching

It's definitely a sad moment every year when you finally accept that Christmas (fun) is over :(

Tradition has it that all Christmas decorations have to be down by midnight on Twelfth Night (5th January) with all tree spirits living in the Christmas greenery released back into nature before the wassailing of twelfth day (the end of Christmas) commenced, otherwise they would wreak havoc in your house; spilling milk, letting rats into the larder etc.

With the intention of avoiding all that disruption we've already started taking things down, that was the easy bit - what we then do with them is harder...

Christmas cards can just be recycled but apparently if you take them to Sainsbury's before the 14th January (old gift wrap too if you still have it - we don't) they will make a donation to the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) based on the volume collected.  They donated over £9000 last year.  Some other places do similar things too.

As for the Christmas tree we couldn't find a really inspiring way to dispose of it (we usually take it to the tip or drag it to the bottom of the garden and leave it there to create another eyesore).  But a wise friend suggested burning it in our own magical ritual to Midwinter - and that definitely appeals!

BTW This year we are leaving the mistletoe up all year as it apparently attracts peace and harmony in your home; worth a try :)

January 2nd - Where to Start?!

One of our main aims this year is to use more ethical companies.  One of the biggest problems in the past has been the fact that bar the obvious baddies: Tesco, Amazon, Starbucks, we just don't know which companies are ethical and which aren't...

However, last night we found this: www.ethicalconsumer.org  A website produced by ECRA (Ethical Consumer Research Association) where you can look up anything that you want to buy from baked beans to laptops and it will give you information about the different manufacturers.

Good Points:

• It's really, really easy to use there is even a video guide to explain all the ratings if you get stuck.
• As everybody's ethics are different, you can customise what is important for you e.g. environment, people, politics etc.
• Different brands are given an "ethical rating" and presented on a really straightforward table (scorecard) with in-depth information if required.
• You can see which companies are owned by who 
• There is a mobile-friendly version so you can use it when you are out and about.
• It is run as a co-operative

Bad Points:

• You have to pay!  As a not for profit co-operative I presume they have to fund themselves somehow.  However it's only £29.95 for the year, you get a magazine on-line or hard copy and you can do a 30 day free trial (although you have to pay first to get this)
• Not every brand is represented (although they do track over 30,000 companies)

Validity?

• This has been around since 1989 as a worker's co-operative, it became a not for profit multi stakeholder co-operative in 2009.  
• It appears to be endorsed by some really big names such as Friends of the Earth, WWF, Rainforest Foundation, Comic Relief etc.
• Ratings are updated regularly and links are provided to evidence.

We decided that this is likely to be a big help for us this year and have signed up for the 30 day free trial.
I'm already obsessed with it :)
There's me using Body Shop thinking they are an ethical company that doesn't test on animals - turns out they are now owned by Nestle who have the worst ECRA rating for animal cruelty, serious issues around human rights...and the list goes on - ha! 
Think this might be a bit of an eye opener!!

January 1st - New Year Resolutions!

So this is the list that we've come up with as a family (post Christmas excesses) and a starting point for our project...sure this will change as we progress and find out a bit more about what we're doing...but for now just 5 things....

• To have a more healthy diet  - less fat, sugar, alcohol (!), more fruit, veg, water etc.
• To have a more healthy lifestyle - less stress, rushing around, more sleep etc.
• Spend less time on the TV / computer / iPad and get more fresh air / exercise.
• Be less wasteful (spending, food etc.) & dispose of the waste that we do generate more carefully.
• Buy the things that we need from more ethical companies / become more self sufficient and less reliant on supermarkets.

The challenge will definitely be to do this without making unwelcome compromises to our lifestyle, having to spend loads of time or money (dreading the January credit card bills). Bring it on!