Did you know that the 17th to the 21st May is the UK’s official Walk To School Week 2010, encouraging parents or teachers and children to walk from their homes to school, leaving the car behind. So why make the change from sitting in the car to a walk? We’ve come up with five good reasons below!

Cut congestion around the school: With so many less cars around the school, you won’t be sitting in a queue for a parking space or behind a lot of other cars. There’s nothing worse than cars with engines running, stuck around the school polluting the air – so the less cars you see the better! Less cars will also make it much easier for others to cross the road and get to school safetly.

Get fit!: Walking is great for you, keeping you fit and feeling great. It helps you become stronger and healthier, as it’s a good form of exercise for parents and children. No matter how long the walk to your school is, you’ll be improving your health and fitness.

Learn the area: If you always take the car to school, with walking there you can learn much more about the area where you live. Which direction do you travel in? What are the road names, and any geographical features along the route that you might see? Conversations about the area can also aid in learning and encouragement of the local community.

Make friends: Walk to school week is often done in groups. Parents and kids can make new friends as they walk, talking about anything on the way! Without the worry of driving or becoming stuck in queues, conversations can run wild. If your best friends already live close by, it’s even better!

Save money: If it only takes 20 minutes to walk to school along local streets then there really is no reason why you can’t walk! The money spent on petrol for the car can be saved and used to buy rewards for the walks, or even new walking shoes! An average cost saving is calculated below…

Say the average cost of petrol is £1.20 per litre. An average family car travels 10 km for every litre of fuel. Now, depending on how far it is to school, , Assume the school is 2km (1.2 miles) away from the house, which can be reached in half an hour (the average walking speed of parents and children is 4 km a hour). This means that each journey to and from school uses around 0.4 litres of petrol, although it may be  more if stuck in a jam! Therefore, in that situation you would save 50p in petrol for each time you travel.  Of course, the cost varies between diesel and petrol cars, and  the distance to school is always different – but the savings will definitely make a difference.

If you’re a parent walking your children to school, consider taking them by foot on Walk to school week and beyond. For more information, please visit the official Walk to school! website. Always be safe: Remember roads can be dangerous and cars can appear where you least expect. Always take care when walking and take extra care when crossing any road, following the  green cross code.

Household waste in the UK is becoming an increasing problem, with people throwing out over 1072 kilograms  (1.07 tonnes) of waste per household every year, of which 403kg was recycled.  Per person, 473kg of household rubbish was thrown out and 173kg recycled. An average small family car weighs around 1 tonne, so the amount of rubbish people throw away a year per house is approximately the same weight as a car! In total, more than 27 million tonnes of waste is thrown into landfills across the UK each year. In Germany, which has a population that is 25% larger than the UK just 10 million tonnes are thrown away each year.

According to a new report by BBC news, landfill space in the UK is 109 square miles which is the size of Warwick and is constantly increasing. While other options are available such as incineration this itself can produce dangerous gases. Here are some tips for reducing your household waste:

Buying food with reduced packaging

On many foods purchased throughout the UK, there is often far more packaging than is required. For example, some fruits are also unnecessarily packaged in polystyrene trays with shrink wrap covering and some cakes are wrapped several times in layers of plastic material.  If you are a customer, look for products with less packaging to reduce your own waste, and even encourage stores and brands to reduce theirs.

Recycling all you can

The amount of waste sent for recycling is growing, and as people are made more aware of which products are recycled this will continue to happen. Go a step further by checking with your local council to see what products can be recycled from your house. Plastic bottles, cans and paper are commonly recycled but now many councils are also recycling items such as batteries, old clothes and unwanted containers.  The types of items that can be recycled varies per council across the UK so encourage your council to increase their recycling.

Composting your own waste

It is easy to compost much of your own organic waste at home which could substantially reduce the amount of rubbish sent to landfill. Many people already have a full sized composter, which is mainly used for garden cuttings, weeds or cut grass. But  home and food organic waste – such as almost any cut flowers, food scraps, tea bags and more can be put into a smaller composter.  A kitchen composter is an indoor composter that can biodegrade waste inside the home without smell or mess, and the biodegraded waste can then be placed outside either in an existing compost bin or buried to add nutrients to the garden.

Combined efforts of the government, businesses and individuals need to be used to combat the ever growing problem of rubbish generation in the UK.  Using the tips above, residents throughout the UK can make a real difference to the problem.

Fairtrade Fortnight is a yearly event celebrating Fairtrade products, and encourages as many people to make the switch from standard items to fair trade. This year, it runs from 22nd Feb to the 7th March 2010.

Fair trade items have constantly been growing in popularity and range. They aim to give the farmer or producer of the base item a good price, ensuring better working conditions, living environment and support for their family. While many farmers and producers are given a very low income for the goods they produce, any item which is certified as Fairtrade ensures that a good price is paid for the hard work gone into making it. Fairtrade also encourages a more ethical production as environmental standards are monitored, with sustainability of the local environment a priority – fairtrade producers need to adhere to a set of environmental rules regarding the local environment in which the products are grown.

Fairtrade items are mostly known as food and drink, namely the base ingredients such as cocoa, sugar, coffee, tea, rice and pulses, and spices. Nuts and exotic fruit such as banana and pineapple can also be counted. Many supermarkets, coffee chains and well known brands are already switching to Fairtrade ingredients. While the quality of the product is often better, the cost to the consumer is often not increased significantly and people can enjoy their products knowing that they were ethically sourced.

Less well known, fairtrade items can also be household goods. Clothes can be produced from fairtrade cotton, or entire products like handicrafts can be assembled and manufactured in fairtrade. In this situation, the person who is assembling and creating the item is guaranteed a fair wage for what they are producing, and the same environmental standards are applied to the manufacturing process. Fair trade goods can range from handicrafts such as photo frames, toys, and ornaments, and functional items such as footballs and rugby balls, scarves and cutlery.

Make the switch to Fairtrade today to improve the life of producers – and the environment – around the world.

For great ideas of Fair trade gifts to celebrate Fairtrade Fortnight, please click here

For information about a Fairtrade tea and coffee offer from The Consortium, please click here

For more information see The Big Swap website

Fairtrade and the Fairtrade logo are © 2010 Fairtrade Foundation

Here are five easy eco tips to make your office greener:

Easy notepads:
If your office uses a lot of paper, before recycling build a stack of about 50 sheets, then cut into quarters leaving 4 smaller stacks of paper. Attach a bulldog clip to the top, and you have your own eco-friendly notepad, sketch pad or jotter. You won’t need to buy any more and you can re-use the clip afterwards. When finished, recycle the paper as normal!

Reuse padded envelopes:
If you receive a padded envelope through the post, instead of tearing them carefully open the top, being careful not to rip the paper too much.  The envelope can then be reused again. Simply put a label with the new address over the old one, stick a layer of tape over the opening at the top. Once secure you can post it again. This can be done several times!

Ditch the plastic cups:
By that we mean the disposable throw-away cups- the type where you drink a coffee then throw the cup away. This can produce an extortianate amount of waste as hundreds of cups can be thrown out every day.  The simple solution is bring your own cup! If you have a vending machine, most will allow you to put your own cup when the drink is dispensed so the plastic cup won’t appear. You’ll get a bigger hot drink,  and a nicer looking mug.

Switch Off: Energy usage of many companies and households is sky-high, yet so many computers are left on overnight unnessecarily. If they are not used overnight, give them – and the environment – a break by switching them off overnight when you go home. Turn off photocopiers, printers, monitors and lights, and make sure phones and chargers are unplugged to save more energy. Remember lower energy bills also mean more savings. It is said that a computer left on overnight produces the equivelant of enough carbon dioxide ( CO2 ) to fill a double decker bus.

Turn down the heat: Your heating costs will go up by 8% each time you increase the temperature by just one degree. A 2°C increase in office temperature creates enough CO2 in a year to fill a hot air balloon. Turn down the heating, put on some warmer clothes if you feel cool and you’ll see your bills – and environmental impact go down. Never ever have the heating on and windows open at the same time- it is one of the worst wastes of energy possible.

People living in the UK throw away well over 28 million tonnes per year of rubbish from their homes, the same as three and a half million double decker buses. Unfortunately, only around 27% of this waste is recycled while most of the rest is tipped into landfill sites – better known as rubbish tips, large holes dug into the ground to store it. The rubbish stays in the ground for a long time because it does not decompose easily, and it releases poisonous materials,  greenhouse gases such as methane and carbon dioxide and the trash itself can be a hazard to humans and wildlife. The space left for landfill is running out– and more landfill sites will need to be created.

So, we want to encourage you to recycle and reuse as much as you can. At school, buy recycled or sustainable products such as BE books and Tru-Green envelopes, re-use unwanted print-outs as sketch or note paper and then recycle them, Buy equipment in bulk to reduce packaging and deliveries, and set up a recycling scheme for all those lunch time bottles and cans.  We welcome any more ideas you might have to reduce, reuse and recycle.
Wildlife Watch is a great website for kids and grown ups to learn about how to reduce wastage and rubbish by playing games and checking out some great eco facts. Take a look today!