Environmentally-Friendly

Trees for Life is a community-based, environmental organisation founded in South Australia in 1981. Its purpose is to protected SA from becoming drier and more eroded by planning and implementing revegetation programs.

The program has over 10,000 members, including 1,500 volunteer growers. Over 27 million seedlings have been propagated so far which is a great achievement.

Because I believe in protecting the environment and that planting trees is a key way we can help, every Natural Form customer spending $60 or more will have a tree grown in their honour through Trees for Life.

Have you noticed how many different brands and types of air fresheners are on the market now? It amazes me, but obviously people are interested or those companies would have stopped producing the stuff by now.

When you consider the energy and chemicals used in producing these products, plus making the bottles or whatever to hold them, they are expensive items.

And to my mind, they are completely unnecessary.

You want fresh air? Open a window or door!

You want a sweet smell? Bring in some flowers from the garden or cook some biscuits or a cake. Try growing plants with beautiful scents near doors and windows so tehy naturally enhance your living areas.

Alternatively, use an essential oil to make the house smell nice - one way is to use a nice oil with some water when you dust.

And if you choose cleaning products carefully, you are less likely to find your house full of chemical smells to get rid of, too.

You hear a fly buzzing around the lounge room but you don’t want to use a chemical fly spray. What can you do?

Here are some environmentally friendly tips for keeping flies and their friends away from you and your family:

• regularly check and maintain fly screens on your windows - or get some if you don’t have any!
• wipe up any spills straight away so there is less to attract flies in the first place
• keep a screen door shut - it may take a few reminders to the kids for this one, but it works!
• burn citronella candles or oils in the house
• use the old fashioned sticky tapes to catch flies - you can make your own by putting some honey on a length of tape of even an old jar lid and putting it to eh side somewhere. Flies are attracted to it, get stuck and can’t get away
•  leave spiders and cobwebs alone - they will happily catch and eat flies for you!
• rub doorways and window frames with lavender oil or water you boiled onions in
• apparently you can catch flies in a saucer of 1tsp cream, 1 tsp vinegar and 1/2 tsp of black pepper - but I wouldn’t do this on a really hot day!

Do you have any other tips for getting rids of flies around the home?

Do you know what your ecological footprint is? How many Earths would it take to sustain us all if we all lived like you?

Your ecological footprint is simply a measure of the resources (water, land, energy, etc) you use in your life, from food, activities, electricity consumption to holidays, car choice and the amount of space required to store your rubbish.

The EPA Victoria has a set of calculators on their website to help you calculate what your footprint actually is. The answers may be a bit confronting, but hopefully they help teach us where we can reduce our impact on the environment and inspire us to make a more conscious effort every day.

Are you game enough to share your footprint results here?

No doubt you have heard this before - add mulch to your garden to reduce water wastage. I have heard it many times and have followed the advice, too, but found it very interesting to read the Precious Water blog when they gave a story about seeing the value of mulch.

Not everyone likes the look of bark pieces on their garden beds, and that’s ok as that isn’t the only form of mulch available. Other forms of mulch include:

• rocks or large pebbles
• pea straw
• ground cover plants
• twigs and sticks
• leaves (autumn is a great time for leaf mulch!)

There are also synthetic options (purpose made or using things like old carpet) but they do not break down to provide nutrients (of course, the pebbles don’t either!) and may not allow much water through to the soil for the plants. Plus there is the envirinomental cost of producing them, too.