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.

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.

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?

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?

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.

Is a natural, mild disinfectant that is so safe! Vinegar can kill 99% of bacteria, 82% of mould and 80% of viruses. It is particularly useful for

. Cleaning stained stainless steel cookware - add a few tablespoons of white vinegar to a few tablespoons of salt

. Cleaning windows -four parts water to one of white vinegar: also cleans some timber floor surfaces (test on small area first) and ceramic tiles

. Add 100ml to rinse cycle as a softener

. Cleaning dishwashers - 200ml in an empty dishwasher and put through a wash cycle

. As a mould agent

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. 

Of course, growing your own fruit and veggies is cheaper than buying them in the shops so finances make it a good idea, too.

Further, have you ever thought about the environmental cost of buying food from the shops? It takes water and energy to grow, store and transport the food - especially when out of season food is transported from a long way away. The more food you grow at home, the smaller your environmental footprint.

This section of our blog will continue to give you tips on how to grow foods at home, but let me just say that growing organically isn’t that hard and is worth a go.

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?