Carbon free Lent

Do you normally give something up for lent? Well if you do why not consider trying something different this year!

Today two leading Bishops in the Church of England have teamed up with development agency ‘Tearfund‘ in calling for a personal cut in our carbon emissions for the 40 days of Lent.

The general idea is that for each of the 40 days of Lent, we try a different item from a list of actions which will have a positive effect on our carbon emissions, and therefore help us think about our daily actions and the effects they have on the earth and more importantly the poorer communities in the world.

Many of the suggestions are quite well known and indeed some of them have been suggested on this blog, but all in all I think this is a really great idea, even if your not particularly religious.

So go ahead and make a difference to the world today.

 
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Tags: lent, fasting, tearfund, 40 actions, carbon emissions

Eco commitment not top priority!

According to Mintel (research analysts) 2008 is not going to be the year for the environment. Only 1 in 3 UK adults will try to increase their recycling levels and only 1 in 10 will reduce the number of times they use their cars.

This a stark contrast to the almost 3 in 5 people who are planning to exercise more this year and the 56% who are planing to eat healthier. Getting one’s finances in shape also came out a  higher priority than the environment.

These may be noble sentiments, in light of rising obesity levels and the recent credit crunch, but when it comes to dealing with the environment I can’t help but think people are sticking their heads in the sand. How can little old me make a difference, so I won’t bother. Maybe they are simply overwhelmed by all the info out there! Maybe there’s too much information out there, or maybe people have just forgotten that all you really have to do is reduce your consumption and your waste.

Of course there could just be too much focus on the environment. How about the simple premise that following some of the ideas I and others have given could just simply SAVE YOU MONEY, with a nice side effect of helping the environment.

 
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Tags: mintel, research, environment, money saving, green, eco

Recycled and recyclable

I suppose as a small mail order company the company I work for uses quite a large amount of paper! We have to produce invoices, letters, catalogues and we do quarterly offers. Whilst I think everyone in the office has at least an interest in helping the environment, the suggestions we’ve been able to give our customers have been fairly limited. such as doing the usual recycling of letters and catalogues, proper disposal of our pots (due to food regulations we can’t take them back and reuse them!). Don’t forget that the best form of recycling is to pass things on to friends and family once you’ve finished with them.

Within the office we shred any unnecessary paper so we can use it as packing material, we use recyclable pots for our products and we all make a concious effort to reduce the amount of energy we use. We apply a lot of the principals I mention in my previous post about saving energy!

Well recently we’ve managed to make an amazing change to our paper source. We’ve recently been updating a small range within our normal range (Veganicity) and have had to print new catalogues, and working quite hard with our printers I am now pleased to say that our new catalogues will be printed on 55% recycled fibre, with the remainder of the fibre coming from FSC managed sources. We are now also using vegetable based inks. This makes our new catalogues more environmentally friendly as well as being completely recyclable!

The more other businesses start to use the environmental products available the more affordable they will become for everyone!

Tags: recycled, recycle, recyclable, FSC, energy saving