Showing posts with label waste. Show all posts
Showing posts with label waste. Show all posts

What's the honest-to-goodness best way to wash your produce?


Below is an extract of a wonderful website: ideal bite

It is well worth subscribing to this website as they so often have quirky but very useful tips.
I particularly like this one as like she said, some of us have a bottle of white vinigar in our cupboards and wondered how it ever got there (and what to use it for)

Use water and white vinegar - no lie. A few squirts on your fruits and veggies gets rid of the nasty stuff (like pesticide residue) that you don't want - no store-bought washes necessary.

Brushing bugs under the rug. A diluted vinegar rinse kills 98% of bacteria on produce - researchers found it works even better than a scrub brush.
Cash savings you can believe in. Water and vinegar rinses cost just pennies; the premade washes we found cost $4 and up.

It's a simple truth: Buying plastic bottles of produce wash means having to recycle them too (not to mention the energy and materials needed to make and ship them in the first place) - you'll still need to buy bottles of vinegar, but you'll buy fewer of them.

Wanna Try:
Mix water to white vinegar 3:1 in a spray bottle (if you've already got a bottle of the premade stuff, use it up and reuse the sprayer). Rinse with water after you spray. Yes, it's that easy.

Related Tips:
The Eco-cleaner

Rubbish Electricity

A company in Leicester, UK, is using organic waste to produce heat and electricity.

Waste, which would normally go to land full is sorted and then fed into an anaerobic digester. This allows the methane gas generated by the rotting organic material to be collected, fed into generators and there produce heat and about 1.5kw of electricity.

This isn’t a massive amount but as the firm says, better to extract some power from the recycling system than throw it away and cause potential dangers from land fill methane seepage.

The BBC’s environment correspondent explained how it works in a short video report here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk

Food Dating

On the day the UK Government tells Britons to stop wasting food, we thought you might like to know about a very practical solution for the home.

Count On It™ is a small circular date label which you stick on your food packaging (or containers) when you put them in your fridge or freezer.

We throw away over 4 million tonnes of food a year (about £420 per family)so anything which might help reduce this has got to help the environment and our pockets.

Count On It™ labels use a ‘scratch-off’ system which means you don’t need to hunt for a pen. Just scratch off the month, then the date (which show up in florescent pink), pop them onto your food and you will always know when you stored the item. They come in a small, recyclable, box which you can keep in your fridge and cost £1.99 (plus P&P) for 25 labels. If they help you not throw away a couple of food items, because you can't remember how old they are, these little labels will pay for themselves quickly.

Their advantages include:

  • - takes the guesswork out of storing food safely
  • - stops consumers from throwing edible food away unnecessarily
  • - encourages the use of leftovers
  • - ensures food is eaten at its prime
  • - prompts consumers to eat food in date order
  • - eliminates unnecessary re-purchasing
  • - reduces household waste
  • - helps reduce our carbon footprint


We have a couple of boxes here at the EcoList, which we are testing right now and will let you know what we think shortly. In the meantime, have a look for yourself at
www.count-on-it.co.uk

No Smoking Day -Quit the smoke, and fire up your finances


No Smoking Day is today 12 March. Use this day as an incentive, it will be better for the environment as well as helping your health. Quitting smoking boosts your wealth too. It's not just saving on buying smokes, but many policies, including Life Insurance and Private Medical Insurance and others, are substantially cheaper (i.e., up to 30%) for non-smokers. You're classed as a ‘non-smoker‘ after a year without smoking, so once you hit that date, always get new quotes and save a fortune.
To help you stop smoking have a look at the following website and video http://gosmokefree.nhs.uk/?WT.mc_id=ilevel_search_08

Don't burn your money, it can then be used to put into place some more environmentally sound ideas.

You can most likely do all this in the next year if you stop smoking today. You might even have more money left over. Give it a try, look after your good self and the environment in which you live and work.

Stop the fly tipping and keep Britain tidy! use Real cycle instead


Cycling along idylic country lanes makes you aware that not everyone appreciates them the way I do. So often I see that people have gone out of their way to dump unwanted items in remote places. To save them a trip and petrol, I can recommend them to list their items with Realcycle and give them away to whoever wants them. So often you find that what is waste to you is a find to someone else. You might find someone is willing to give you what you need for free.

The Realcycle email list allows people to advertise unwanted items to registered subscribers. It used to be called Freecycle and is part of a worldwide organisation, with email groups in areas across Britain - sign up to the Nottingham list to find out what's on offer locally.

Visit www.groups.yahoo.com/group/realcycle_nottingham to sign up find out more about freecycling. Once you've signed up, you'll receive an email update whenever new items are on offer - which could include anything from bricks, doors, pots of paint, garden sheds , electrical items and pushchairs to bicycles and books. Please do your bit for our environment and tell your neighbours, friends and family to keep your town tidy.

The scrap metal man


This gentleman was Robert Reynolds, known as ‘Chipper’, this rag and bone man gave peep shows of re-enactments of the battles of Waterloo and Spion Kop in exchange for old clothes and scrap metal.
Today, we may not have such a service that our scrap metal man will entertain us, he will however very happily come and pick up your old washingmachine, corrugated iron and any other metal bits and pieces so that you do not need to take it to the tip. Dave is my scrapmetal man, he is based in Nottinghamshire .Give him a ring 0777 860 4127 you will do eachother a favour.
If you don't live in Nottingham, look in your yellow pages under 'scrap metal' merchants and try to recycle your metal that way.
When it comes to rags, charity shops and realcycle are great for the better clothes, so are the clothes banks, be courteous and make sure the clothes are clean. For those items that are not good enough, the shops may still take them as they are sold to the rag trade. Just make sure you mark the bag.
If we all did this, we would not find kitchen sinks, old beds and mattresses fly tipped in the road verges.

Can the Ashcan be the answer to the end of cigarette butts?


Millions (I am not exaggerating) of tax payers money is being spent on clearing up the butts thrown on the streets. Many of the smokers don't even realise that they create a mess or that fines are being dished out for dropping cigarette butts on the floor when they are out and about - £80 a time. To save them some cash, they might like to give up smoking.

Or if they can’t manage that, invest in the Ashcan. It’s a portable ashtray that puts out the cigarette and keeps the smell inside, thanks to the airtight nature of the container. And when it’s full, it is emptied in a bin.

There is evidence that those people who wanted to kick the habit, have found it a help to reduce smoking as they are only able to put a limited amount into this devise.
If you don't smoke but your friend or colleague does, please tell them about the ASHCAN or buy them one if you feel generous. This way you do your bit to try and keep Britain tidy!

The Ashcan is available from Tesco for just £1.20.

For more information: Tel: 01892 538 717 Web: http://www.ashcan.co.uk/

Nottingham launches Big Spring Clean 2008!


This year’s annual Big Spring Clean campaign is being launched today, March 3 with a parade showing how the wider problem of litter can affect our city. Many people have the attitude that one dropped piece of litter does not have a negative impact on our city. Nottingham City Council wants to change this attitude by showing that if everyone has this mind-set our city will become overrun with litter which will attract vermin. The parade around the city centre was led by actors dressed as giant dropped pieces of litter with a parade of school children from Blue Bell Hill dressed as rats and pigeons following it to represent the health hazards caused by litter. The costumes were made out of recyclable materials. School children from Blue Bell Hill also wrote an anti-litter chant for the parade to sing around the city centre and the actors involved members of the public in street theatre.

The clean up campaign runs until Friday March 28 and aims to demonstrate what can be achieved when schools, businesses, students, and local communities come together with the joint aim of making the city a cleaner place for everyone. Keeping the city clean is not only about picking up litter and cleaning the streets, it’s about educating society on how their actions can affect the environment.“During the campaign we will involve young people across the city in environmental programmes to educate them on how to reduce, reuse and recycle their waste.

During last year’s Big Spring Clean there was a successful joint effort by everyone across the city which resulted in approximately: 440 tonnes of rubbish collected; 1,580 fly tips cleared; 14,548 square metres of graffiti cleared; 50 Neighbourhood clean-ups and 18 community group/organisations participating.

To get involved in this year’s Big Spring Clean campaign or if you have any ideas that could help make Nottingham cleaner and greener please phone 0115 915 2000 or email bigspringclean@nottinghamcity.gov.uk. (This information was taken from the Nottingham City Council Website)

If you don't live in Nottingham City, why not start it in your house, your street, your school, your business or the town YOU live.

In the next few weeks I shall try and give you some Clean Spring Cleaning ideas. Good luck!

Plastic shopping bags - THE hot topic for the day!


For some strange reason a simple plastic bag is making us hot under the collar.
Some people hate them, some don't see what the fuss is all about.
Some countries ban them, some tax them and some companies hand them out like hot cakes.

Where I live, the hedges are covered with bags from our local ASDA store. The road verges are a mess...it definitively is not a pretty sight. For as far as I am concerned the clearing up is a waste of council tax money.
Businesses are worried that we would stop spending if we don't have those cheap bags and the debates are never ending. Since a short stay in Holland, I have used the collapsible shopping crate instead of any bags. It has been wonderful. Easy to use and store, great capacity, very strong and durable. I would definitively recommend investing in a few, put them in your car, your kitchen, use it as a laundry basket for your freshly ironed clothes, great for on holidays, you name it and it can be used for it. I just found out that Wilkinsons are selling the Tontarelli Collapsible crate for only £1.69 . What a bargain and better for the environment as well!
www.wilkinsonplus.com

I am looking for a half sized crate, please let me know if you have found one. [K]

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