The Green Diaries

I have been keeping this blog for almost 4 months now. My mission: to become a more considerate, educated environmental citizen including using earth-friendly products, reducing my greenhouse emissions, buying locally and becoming more proactive. Well, it's time for my self-assessment. First, the bad news: After months of using Ecover products only, I gave in and bleached the kitchen sink and bathroom last week. It was just getting too grotty with the lack killer toxins. Is that shallow of me? I've gone back to Ecover but I have to confess, the power of bleach felt good. I'm sorry fish!  My husband has been giving me rides to work. It's 3 miles there and back. I usually take the bus home. It's been so hot in London and the tube in unbarable (and unreliable) and the bus in the morning is so hot and slow and uncomfortable. I do walk home about once a week, though the pollution caused by selfish people like me ruins the healthy effects of said walk.  I've slipp...

I'm ashamed to say it's taken me this long to try an organic vegbox from a UK farm. Well, I finally got with the program and decided to give Riverford Organic Vegatables a try. I had a flip through their very well laid out website, chose a nice medium size vegetable box and some other products. The vegetable boxes include seasonal vegetables mainly grown on their farm. Two days later, the box was delivered to our central London home in a sensible, reusable, fold up cardboard box. And in it, we found and array of good and dirty summer veg including: Bunch of beet root (my fave) Bunch of carrots Fresh mint Fresh rocket (arugula) An assortment of lettuces Cabbage type head (yet to be tasted) Potatoes Chard Bunch of onions Cherry tomatoes And the verdict: Excellent quality all around.So much better than supermarket organics. We plan on being regular customers. And the package came with a booklet on how the farm works, their ethos and interesting info on the farming process a...

There's a new wiki cheat sheet on staying green. + Wiki goes green It's the standard list on reducing your carbon footprint but to the point. Worthy of sticking on your energy efficient refrigerator door. There will be a test on this next Thursday, class, so please be prepared.

Brother Ren, who shall now be called Research Ren as he is better at it than I am, has sent in this guilt-alleviating website which allows anyone to purchase carbon neutrlaization packages. + Carbon Neutral Question you may have: What is a carbon neautralization package? Is it something that can only be purchased at Star Trek conventions? Answer: These packages plant trees to help absorb the nastiness left in the air from your flight to the Maldives. It will also calculate how much CO2 you emit on flights based on your destination as well as CO2 you emit with your car mileage. It's a smart site, easy to use and I feel more green-angelic just for looking at it. We're taking the Eurostar/TGV to a wedding in the south of France in 2 weeks rather than flying but we still have all of those air miles to make up for from our London-NY-San Fran-LA-London trip so looks like we'll be using this site's offerings to help to plant a small forest somewhere. (Though I do wonder how ...

Brother Ren has informed us that the government have been talking about getting rid of the planning permission requirements for micro wind turbines and solar panels by early July. I can't find anything online - has anyone out there heard anything about progress on this? Whilst searching for updates on the above, I came across the Environment Agency website which seems to be a good source for more serious green affairs in the UK.

Researcher Ren found this totally cool new range of utensils from Vegware - presenting Spudware! Who thought fully biodegradable cutlery could create such excitement? Spudware in action Mission: to persuade all of the stores we food shop with to start carrying this type of biodegradable utensil. Progress: Marks & Spensers' new packaging for their sandwiches uses cornstarch instead of plastic and FSC approved card board.