What could be more environmentally friendly than renting a Christmas tree? Yes, I know just leaving it in its natural habitat and buying a recyclable fake one! But many of us insist on sticking with tradition and having a real tree over the festive period.
Well, if that sounds like you, Christmas Tree Man could be the answer to your prayers. The tree of your choice is delivered to your door (oh, joy!) in its own pot, where it will stay over the holidays. When you have finished with it, it will be collected (even deeper joy!) and returned to its rightful place in the ground.
If you are a real stickler for tradition, you can even have your own tree labelled and reserved for your use every year, that is until, it gets too big for your home.
Halloween is fast approaching, so why not keep it green and keep it cheap? Give the ghouls and ghosts an energy saving, healthy treat by:
Making your own sweets
Grape lollies – take a bunch of loose grapes, rinse them (dip them in sugar, if you must) and put them in the freezer for an hour or so.
Choc fruits – dip strawberries, raspberries and satsuma segments in melted chocolate and set in the fridge.
Ensuring you have no-waste pumpkins
Separate the flesh and seeds as you go and use the flesh to make a warming winter soup or pumpkin pie.
The pumpkin seeds can either be roasted or eaten raw as a light snack. -After Halloween, put your hollowed out pumpkin lanterns on the compost heap so they can be later used to fertilize your garden.
Creating your own costumes
Collect old rags, rip them up into strips, dye them black if desired and pin onto conventional clothes.
Make witches/wizards dresses and capes out of black bin liners
Make monster masks from papier-mâché.
Make scary ‘hands’ by padding out latex gloves.
Use old pillowcases to collect ‘treats’ – dye it with the rags or decorate with felt-tips.
Creating a Gloomy Glow
Switch off the lights and fill the house with candles.
Torches – when out and about use ones with rechargeable batteries or the wind-up versions.
Car Sharing
Share the fuel, hassle and expense by all bundling into one car on way to your trick or treat venue.
Recycling Take a bin liner with you to collect up all the ‘treat’ wrappers. Recycle what you can on your return.
Closing Doors
When Trick or Treaters appear, close the front door behind you to conserve energy
Eco groups say they are ‘recycling’ empty buildings to save the planet. Welcome to the new face of recycling – squatting with a purpose.
This is a craze which is rapidly spreading all over the country, vacant buildings and unused land are being ‘rescued’ by squatters and turned into ecologically sustainable communities.
An example of this is The Spike in south London, an old Dept of Transport building; it was transformed by eco warriors and artists from a crack den into a community centre, with a well-being clinic and yoga classes. Another community have set up at Kew Bridge; it has 15 full-time residents who live on produce or food found on ‘skip-runs’; sound systems, drink and drugs are banned as they alienate people.
Although these groups attract the stereotypical squatter they are also joined by graduates, activists and young professionals. As a result they are well informed on their rights and manage to research their next locations via tip-offs on Google Earth. The groups are insistent that they only ever intend to make use of the property or land while it is vacant and not prevent any development projects.
Is this an acceptable way to beat the housing crisis and/or the credit crunch?
Billionaire, eco-warrior David de Rothschild has built a catamaran out of re-used plastic and re-cycled waste. He plans to sail ‘Plastiki’ from San Francisco to Sydney via the ‘Great Garbage Patch’.
The purpose of his journey, scheduled for late summer, is to highlight the floating plastic of the North Pacific Gyre; the enormous ‘garbage patch’ caught up in the swirling currents of the Pacific Ocean and which is now believed to have grown to the size of France or Texas. This pollution is now devastating populations of seabirds and fish that live in the area.
“The plastic water bottle epitomises everything about this throwaway, disposable society,” says de Rothschild, who originally trained to be a showjumper and who has trekked to both the north and south poles. However, he added that he is not aiming to demonise plastic, but is trying to show its alternative uses, as well as focusing global attention on the dangers posed to the ecology in regions such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
During his trip, which is being sponsored by The International Watch Company and Hewlett-Packard, de Rothschild will collect water samples and post blogs, photographs and video clips of the area, in an attempt to publicise the perils of plastic pollution.
