Until a national bottle deposit return scheme is created to enable re-use of glass bottles, they will remain the most energy-intensive packaging and transport option for alcohol. Large amounts of energy are needed, and it generally comes from fossil fuels. Both hops farms (pictured) and vineyards in many countries are threatened by local changes in…
Tag: ecotips
Recycling
While we won’t recycle our way out of the climate crisis, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t. If something isn’t recycled, then in order of increasing rubbishness, it will get incinerated, end up in a landfill site, or escape into the wild and especially with plastic, end up floating in the ocean. Here are a couple…
Waste No More
In the UK we waste about £250 of food per person a year, or 10 million tonnes in total, according to the sustainability research group WRAP. That includes waste by us at home, by shops, restaurants and cafés and farms. Here’s one way we can help shops and restaurants combat the problem and save money…
Buying Sustainable Flowers
The key to buying sustainable flowers is to have time to plan and avoid being trapped into getting the most unsustainable flowers at the last minute from the supermarket. There are three major sustainability problems with growing flowers: To a certain extent, the first two are mutually exclusive – the reason for growing flowers in…
Stain Removal without the Chemicals
Sodium percarbonate (nappy bleach) or lemon juice in your wash will help keep your whites white. Not quite as eco-friendly or effective as drying your washing outside in the sun, but with British winters, what can one do? Yellow perspiration stains come out by soaking the item in white vinegar overnight. Vinegar mixed 50:50 with…
Three Little Birds on your Doorstep
Make sure to help the local bird population right now as winter makes their lives hard. Less daylight hours to forage, less forage to find, frozen water sources and higher metabolic energy demands all pile on the pressure for our garden songbirds. So clean and fill up those bird feeders. You don’t need a garden,…
Vampire Energy
Vampire energy accounts for over a 100 billion kilowatt hours per year in the USA, and in Britain amounts to around 12% of domestic bills. Also known as standby power or phantom load, it is slowly being tackled at home by people who have to pay their own bills, but it is still horrendous in…
Circularity
One of the hot topics in sustainability this year has been circularity. It’s descriptive of how resources can be best utilised over and over in society and the economy. With over 8 billion people on this Earth, we can’t afford to waste stuff anymore. The old linear economy going from production to landfill is as…
Handkerchiefs
The issue with tissue is that we make it from trees, and currently we really really really need those trees to remain standing, absorbing that CO2 and fostering the wildlife. Around 10 million trees are cut down every year to make tissue paper. We can cut back on tissues by reverting to handkerchiefs. Another advantage…
Home Water Issues
The Rules of the Loo What you flush: the 3 P’s and that’s all – pee, poo and paper. NOT including: wet wipes of any variety, nappy liners, cotton buds, unwanted tablets and in fact anything else you thought was flushable but wasn’t pee, poo or paper. Down the Drain Down the sink? Don’t let…