Environmentally-Friendly

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?

Sunday March 2 is Clean Up Australia Day - are you getting involved?

Many local groups are cleaning up in their community, but if you can’t join a group, just picking up some rubbish as you walk around the block will help.

And now days, there are additional clean up days - schools will clean up on Friday (29th Feb) and businesses may choose their own clean up day or sponsor the main day. 

My post last week about shopping bags made me consider the question of paying for shopping bags.

Do you think supermarkets in particular should be openly charging us for plastic bags to carry home our shopping? Of course, they already charge us for them in the price of the goods, but I’m talking about a fee per bag charged to those who use a plastic bag.

Some places, Aldi comes to mind, already have a policy of not providing bags automatically as part of their pricing structure.

So what would be the advantages of charging us for bags?

• we would have a financial reason to remember to bring bags with us
• we would get reminders about the bigger price of plastic bags to the environment
• the price of reusable bags would suddenly seem greater value
• theoretically, supermarket prices would have to come down as they couldn’t hide bag costs in the product prices
• there would be fewer plastic bags flying around carparks and streets, and less landfill
• we would have fewer plastic bags cluttering up our houses

On the down side, it would feel like an extra expense when out shopping - but it is of course an avoidable expense if you bring your own bags! ANd some of us would have to find alternative bin liners!

Just as an interesting aside, did you know that China uses as many plastic bags in a week as Australia does in a year? That is a LOT of bags! Yet, the Chinese Government is working to have plastic bags banned within 6 months - that is, from June this year, Chinese shops will not be allowed to hand out free plastic shopping bags.

Australia is heading for a similar ban in 2009, but maybe we should bring it in sooner, too. Or maybe phase it on with supermarkets charging first and smaller retailers following a few months later.

It will be very interesting to see how charging for bags will impact on the number of bags used.

But I go back to my original question - do you think we should be charged for plastic bags at the shops, or not? And what do you think is a reasonable price per bag to pay?

What do you use to carry your shopping?

The odds are most of us end up collecting plastic shopping bags occasionally when we forget to carry our reusable bags or buy more than our own bags can hold. But generally speaking, what do you use?

Personally, I use a motley collection of reusable bags - the ones you get from some stores now are great - that I keep in the car so I can’t forget to take them to the shops (as long as I take the car!)

The plastic bags we do get at home - and it amazes me how they seem to multiply even when I avoid using getting them from the school) - we use as bin liners. Yes, they still end up in landfill, but at least we aren’t also using commercially produced bin liners as well!

What do you do with plastic bags that get into your home?

The term essential oil is used a lot more these days, but not everyone really knows what an essential oil is.

And let me start by saying that perfume oils and scented oils and other similar terms are NOT the same as an essential oil.

An essential oil is the natural oil derived form a plant - leaves, stem, roots, flowers, etc can be used in different types of plants.

The oils may be collected in a number of different ways and some oils are easier to produce than others. Note that this difference is why genuine essential oils vary in price between oils, which is one useful way to pick the less-than-pure oils available.

Essential oils are concentrated and usually too strong to put directly onto your skin. Their beneficial properties are not just the belief of some aromatherapists and the like - research has shown they have qualities that can be of use to humans. For example, eucalyptus and tea tree oils are well known for their antiseptic properties.

You can buy essential oils and products containing these oils for use in the home and for your family’s health.

How do you spend you Wednesday nights? Did you know that the first Wednesday of each month is officially “Lights Off Australia” night?

To participate, all you have to do is turn off your lights at home, and all unnecessary lights at work, too. That is, turn off any lights you aren’t using - but I’d like to set the challenge to find ways to reduce how may lights you need to use as well.

Maybe that’s the night to make sure the kids do their homework in the same room as Mum and dad are sitting in so only one light is needed in the entire house. Or a good night to have a candlelight dinner, pull out the camping lantern, sit and talk around a fire or candle instead of read under lights - what other ways can we cut back on our light use?

Let’s face it, for one night a month we should be able to manage! Of course, you can do a Tuesday or Friday night if that suits better, and you can do it more often than once a month, too! But even once a month will help reduce our electricity use and develop better habits.

You can learn more about Lights Off Australia at the Cool the globe website.

The production and distribution of new clothes have a significant environmental impact.  One way to reduce this impact is to buy fewer clothes.

Another is to have a Clothes Swap Party where everyone brings three items of clothing that they no longer use. The clothes are mixed together and everyone chooses three “new” items.  This works very well with a group of friends who want a new wardrobe every couple of months - obviously, only clothes in good condition can be included.

This tip was given by Merryl Donn

I am making an assumption that if you are reading a blog called environmentally friendly that you are interested in preserving our environment and consider yourself at least a little green! Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s the basis of this blog!

Some other websites are trying to determine just how green some of us are by running some green surveys, and I thought I’d help them get a wider range of responses by letting you know about their surveys. Both are quick and easy to fill in, and I will share the results when there are some ready to share.

So, one is about shopping habits and whether or not we make green choices as we shop.

The other is for business owners to see whether they are acting as green as they wish for their businesses.

If you could like to share your feelings about either topic, I’d love to read your comments, too.