Deep Water

Water... There's not much I can add to the plethora of information you can find on the Web about saving water in the home - just google, and you'll find page upon page of instructions, hints, tips and techniques. Another google search asking "what is water?" will yield another stockpile of information on the properties and scientific facts of water. And ofcourse Rachel and Emma's posts on this subject over at That Little Bit Greener, do a good job of summarising the things we can do at home to be more conscious of our use of this valuable gift from Nature. No I don't believe that having water available to us is a right - nature doesn't care a jot for human rights. Water is a gift, and the best we can do is treat it as such.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again... Everything we can do to be greener boils down to MOTIVATION. We humans wouldn't do a thing without it. I don't mean the sort of motivation that is briefly encountered when we are told something that we 'know' to be "the right thing to do"... I mean the motivation which comes from deep within our psyche. The type of motivation which changes opinion into assumption and then forces us to do what we believe to be the right thing so that what we are striving to do becomes an automatic function of every day life - totally integrated, as normal as breathing, we then no longer think of the task at hand as something which is an effort, or particularly remarkable. But we have to find our own motivation, and the best way to learn is to do the research yourself.

As regular readers here may have realised, I am an animist. I do believe there is spirit in everything, and water, as one of the main forces of life, is obviously no exception. So my motivation started with exploring every aspect of the realm of water - physical, metaphysical, scientific and spiritual,

Meditate with water. No I don't mean clear your mind into a zen like status whilst humming over a tibetan singing bowl full of bottled spring water. I mean, find relationship with water. YOUR water - from the tap, from the puddle outside your house, from the dew on your grass, from right under your nose.... Think of all the things that water is to you, where does your water supply come from? How does it reach you? What does water do? What would we do without it? Why do we need it? What is it made of? What is in it? What are WE made of? What of the rain which falls so regularly on our little island here, how old is that water? Who lives in water, and who lives without it? Where is water? What of the places where there is no water, and the places where it is abundant? Don't stop at the scientific facts and figures, or the shocking realities which inform us of the millions of people who die every single day in parts of the world where there is none. Move onto the elemental lore of nature, the mythical and mystical properties of water, and the natural cycles which it is a part of. Where is the water around your home? The rivers, brooks, springs, streams, seas .... Can you feel the water? Does each source or body of water seem different? or the same? Does it change with the seasons, or the days, or the time? Just as you can talk to trees, sit by water, and speak to it - see what happens. Listen. Hold a glass of water in your cupped hands, and call to the spirits of water. You will soon feel the hum of it's energy, while little bubbles pop out from it's depths and float to the top, each bursting bubble inducing a child like wonder and delight. Just as we connect with friends and family, connection with water will change our attitude towards it.

Now extend your consciousness a little, into your shopping basket. Do you buy bottled water? Why? We live in a country where water is plentiful, where every second of every day, if we want, we can just turn a tap and out it pours, clean, fresh, life giving, drinkable water. How lucky we are!

Bottled water is my biggest water bugbear of the moment. There are many rapacious companies who, with questionable rights and even more questionable morals, buy water rights all over the world - particularly the third world, they bottle this stolen water in millions of plastic bottles, and fly it back to us in the west, while the people in the countries from where it has been robbed, die of thirst!! Scandal just isn't the word! Read THIS article and then this one. Bottled water is where we really need to be pulling the plug.

Bags of Choice....

“The Earth is not dying, it is being killed,

and those who are killing it have names and addresses”

- Utah Phillips

Today's TLBG topic is Morsebags. Have you heard of them? I did, 2 years ago when they were featured in Sewing World. I made a few and gave some away. I have since made lots of other types of shopping bags, and I have given some away as presents, and I know lots of you have too, and continue to do so. I can't really add much to what's already been said about this campaign by Rachel over at TLGB, or by Morsbags themselves on their website which makes tragic reading .... but I can ask the question - what of the things we use our bags for? We may have ethical bags, but what about our shopping?

How can we shop ethically and where do we draw the line?

We all live within the boundaries of our own ethics, whatever they may be, and becoming an ethical consumer is a gradual process. It is also different for everyone and whilst the accepted definition of ethical purchasing is: “buying things that are made ethically by companies that act ethically”, the concept of “ethical” is a subjective term, both for companies and consumers. In its truest form it means “without harm to or exploitation of humans, animals or the environment”. In practical every day life for example, this could mean that it is ethical both to choose a meat free lifestyle or to only eat locally produced organic meat, or to buy your petrol from BP instead of Esso, etc. etc., Finding your own ethical limits is the first step. Sticking to them is the difficult part.

I don’t believe we should spend excessive amounts of time compiling lists of who makes what, and therefore what to avoid. As I have said before, this is a lifestyle based upon choice, not denial – look at all the things you CAN have instead of the few things you can’t have. Look elsewhere. Do some research. What are the alternatives? Who are the companies who pride themselves on their quality and their ethics? And who are the ones who are covering up? There are many small companies who make goods of a much higher quality and for not much more money than anything you can purchase from a supermarket shelf or a high street store. Organic Box Schemes, farm shops, markets and health food stores are ways of shopping for groceries which avoid the weekly horror of the supermarket – and although these options may at first glance look more expensive, consider how many things you buy at the supermarket that you don’t need when “double bonus points” or “buy one get one free” offers make certain goods irresistible. It's all about quality not quantity (I've said it before and i'll say it every time!). Ethical shopping can save money and finding ethical products can turn into quite a fun challenge, made even easier by the internet, with many goods and services being available directly from the manufacturer. You will soon find just as much choice – if not more – than before. One of my biggest bugbears in life is when I hear someone saying "I can't afford to shop ethically - it's too expensive" when they have 3 cars on the drive, and/or enjoy 2 holidays a year... Choice... it's all about choice.

It's Only Natural

Rachel at That Little Bit Greener asks us this week "How concerned are you about the impact all our cleaning products have on the environment? Do you use any eco-friendly cleaning products? How do they perform? What about home-made products? Is this something you want to find out more about?"

So here's what I know …

The household cleaning market is dominated by two companies, Unilever and Proctor & Gamble. Between them, they make most of the cleaning products on our supermarket shelves, from washing powder to toothpaste and dishwasher tablets. These two companies are not endorsed by bodies like Naturewatch and Friends of the Earth because not only do they use manufacturing techniques that involve gross pollution and animal testing but they also contain substances which are classified from toxic to corrosive to poisonous. Manufacturers are not required to list specific ingredients on labels, so you don't necessarily know what you're getting and this makes it very difficult to protect yourself, your family and the environment from poisons. In addition, some ingredients used in washing powders contain petrochemical surfectants and optical brightening agents to make whites look white. These harm fish and other aquatic life.

Ofcourse, we all like to live in clean and comfortable homes. Every night as we sit in front of the television, we are bombarded with advertisements on the best washing up liquid, the fastest drain cleaner, the most effective antibacterial spray, the most convenient bathroom cleaner. There are so many amazing cleaning products available at the supermarket, that with only a tiny amount of effort, we should be able to clean our lives away!

In my early 20's when Mr Marmalade and I bought our first house and money was tight, I used to despair at my monthly shopping bill - it was costing us more to keep the house clean than it was to feed ourselves! I started to think about what was really necessary to keep our home dirt free - in fact, just how dirt free does it actually need to be? And what is in all of these products which keep our homes sterile but dirty the world around us, because as synthetic chemicals and materials are not easily broken down, the ecosystem can become toxic. As you know, I am an anti-consumer and I just don't believe the marketing twaddle we are hypnotised with by these companies who are making the most obscene profits at our expense.

And so I re-evaluated the contents of my under-the-sink cupboard, and now instead of a jumble of squirty bottles and sprays filled with chemicals designed for every type of dirt, I have two or three items which help keep the place clean, the cupboard tidy, and my wallet healthy. The rest is in my larder.

I don't have a dishwasher - I use Ecover washing up liquid. I clean my bathroom with a substance called "spotless" which is made with just 5 natural ingredients and which is a trillion times more effective than anything labelled with the word "Flash", and in place of Mr Muscle, I have vinegar. Dusting is done with a dry or damp cloth and I polish my wood once a year (if I remember!) with a natural beeswax polish.

That's it apart from the water in my tap and a couple of "E-Coths" … I don't use the branded e-cloths, they are rather expensive for what they are. I have cheap brand 'industrial' e-cloths which are used mainly in the hospitality trade. I find them much more effective, and I've been using the same ones for about 4 years now. You could probably find them in a Cash and Carry.

There are lots of natural cleaners which all of us probably have lurking about somewhere in the home. A quick google search for "natural cleaning" or some such phrase, would reveal a whole cornucopia of chemical free, yet effective, recipes. Here are a few guidelines of my own:

Bicarbonate of Soda (baking soda)

• naturally abrasive (without scratching)
• absorbs smells
• clearns limescale
• cleans silver without scratching
• deodorises

Top tips:

To clean fiddly silver items, line an empty plastic ice-cream carton with aluminium foil (shiny side up), add a cup of warm water and a teaspoon of bicarb of soda. Drop the silver items in the solution. After a few seconds your dirty silver will be gleaming!

To remove odours from the fridge, place a dish of bicarb in there - it will absorb the smell. This also works with shoes.

Distilled White Vinegar

• fantastic for removing limescale
• cleans windows a treat 50/50 with water
• cleans brass, bronze and chrome

Top tips:

If your shower head is all limed up, take it off the hose, put it headfirst into a pint glass or vase and pour vinegar in to cover the head. Leave for a few hours. The lime scale will have softened and can be washed off effortlessly with water.

If you have limescale round your taps, soak kitchen towels or rags in white vinegar and wrap round your taps covering the offending lime-scale completely and making sure that the area is saturated. Cover with a plastic bag in order that the rags stay wet. After a few hours, you will be able to wash the limescale off.

To clean windows, make a 50/50 solution of white vinegar and water. Wash windows with this solution, dry, and then buff with scrunched up newspaper. Your windows will never have been shinier!

To clean brass and bronze, mix half teaspoon of salt and half a cup of white vinegar, then use flour to make a paste. Apply thickly, leave for 30 mins, rinse off.

To clean chrome, wipe with vinegar, rinse with water.

Lemon Juice

• removes lime scale
• polishes copper

Top tips:

To clean lime scale from cups and glasses, cut a lemon in half, cover the cut half with salt and rub this into the lime scale. Rinse the glass and the lime scale will have vanished.

To clean limescale stained glass (i.e. what you get after too many dishwasher attacks), sprinkle salt on a slice of lemon and rub the stained area.

To clean copper, polish with a lemon juice and salt paste.

Borax

• anit-bacterial
• cleansing and stain removing
• fungicidal
• bleaching
• deodorant

Top tips:

Mold and mildew can be tackled with a mix of borax and water - simply spray on and wipe off. If your shower is prone to mold, wash down with borax and do not rinse. The borax residue will fight mold growth. (note to self: must get some borax!).

Make your own spot remover with 1/4 cup of borax dissolved in 2 cups of water. Sponge on stain and let dry, or pre-treat before washing. Good for blood, chocolate, mud, coffee, mildew and urine stains.

Add half a cup of borax to your wash load with the usual amount of washing powder to boost its cleaning power and deodorise the wash.

Dissolve 1 tablespoon of Borax in a litre of warm water and use to wipe the fridge clean and deodorise it at the same time.

Mix borax into a paste and rub into carpet stains. Allow to dry and then vacuum the powder. For wine and other liquid stains dissolve half a cup of Borax in half a litre of warm water, leave for 30 minutes and sponge off. For odours, dampen the area sprinkle with Borax and vacuum when it has dried.

Tea Tree Oil

• antibacterial
• antiseptic
• anti-fungal
• healing

Top tips:

Use tea tree oil in a spray bottle (with distilled water) as a disinfectant for anything at all that needs disinfecting. (I like this for toilets).

Use tea tree oil in a nappy bucket instead of “napisan” to soak nappies or re-usable sanitary or menstrual products.

Use neat tea tree oil on insect stings – it will clean them and stop irritation (actually I prefer neat lavender for this).

Use tea tree oil in a spray bottle to fight mould.

Back to Basics

As you know, I have joined up with "That Little Bit Greener" and the topic for this week is 'tips for greener living'.

I'm afraid that when it comes to being 'green', I'm a bit of a fundamentalist. My (estranged) birth family consider me to be a militant bean-eating hippy with socialist tendencies, which is pretty horrific in their materialistic view. Clearly, as you can see, I do not fit this description - at least on the outside. Too many people see being 'green' as being 'boring' or 'crusty'. or 'weird'. It's not true. Anybody can be green, and the best place to start is in the way you think. So my tip for this week is to read this book:

(I've said it before and I'll say it again!)

What's the point of reading this book?

Because being green is more than just recycling our plastic containers and consuming greener goods. It is about changing our values radically to encompass a greener lifestyle.

In order to do this, we must understand and take responsibility for our actions. It's not about simply choosing 'organic' over 'mass produced' or absolving the guilt of buying heavily packaged goods by recycling. It is about questioning both the nature and volume of our daily consumption and re-assessing our role as individuals in transforming the fundamental inequalities in today’s world economy.

The best quote from this book that I can give you to illustrate the point goes like this:

"Each and every quarter pound of hamburger is handed across the counter after the following production costs which i've searched out precisely: 100 gallons of water, 1.2 pounds of grain a cup of gasoline, greenhouse-gas emissions equivalent to those produced by a six mile drive in your average car, and the loss of 1.25 pounds of topsoil, every inch of which took five hundred years for the microbes and earthworms to build. How can all this cost less than a dollar, and who is supposed to pay for the rest of it? If I were a cow, right here is where i'd go mad."

Living a less clutter-filled, more simple life means quality not quantity and most importantly, it means being able to assess the difference between what we really need over what we simply just want. It is therefore about having less impact on our own environment and in doing so, the wider environment, inspiring ourselves and others to ask what is really important: our convenience or the future of the planet? It is about not taking more than our fair share and ensuring that life remains worth living for future generations.

The Government is very good at blaming us for the impending ecological crisis and as consumers we are largely to blame, however, supply matches demand and we can challenge government and industry to adopt greener policies by voting with our pennies to ensure that we buy, and therefore demand, more compassionate and ethically sound products.

In short, being 'green' is a form of self-empowerment based on choice not denial and for me personally, it is a practical commitment to the earth itself.

"Small Wonder" is a collection of brilliant and insightful essays covering topics which range from genetic engineering, and world poverty, through to motherhood, sustainability and conservation and although written from the perspective of an American, the issues discussed can be applied to a lifestyle anywhere in the West. Although I was already writing about environmental issues by the time I read this book several years ago, the lessons I learned from it were life changing for me and I have read it many many times since then. The reason I recommend it over all other 'eco' books, is because of the way it is written. It doesn't preach, it doesn't evangalise, it doesn't tell you what to do and the writer does not proport to be perfect or expert in any way. She simply puts forward her opinions and ideas in a down to earth manner which every woman/wife/mother can relate to and take action upon. In her own words:

"I'm skeptical of evangelism so I'm not going to have a tent revival here. But if you've come with me this far, you are in some sense a fellow traveler and I'm glad for your company. In this congregation we don't confess or sit around chanting "we are not worthy"; we just do what we can and trust that the effort matters."

Sew Wonderful!

It's not every day you come home from work to a package like this:

It was from Miss T! who also, a few weeks back, gave me these lovely lavender bags that she had made ..

THANK YOU Miss T!! I AM getting on with your top (honest!)! Although I have also been sewing some of these with the help of Miss Wonderful. It's practice. They are Soapnut 'T-bags'. ie: bags filled with the requisite number of soap nuts for a wash. Each 'T-Bag' will last about 4 or 5 washes - according to the instructions.

I wrote about Soapnuts a while ago here. Florence, if you still haven't got any, send me your address and I'll send you some!