Welcome

Here are some more of our favourite eco-tips with our responses, this time to do with an eco friendly lifestyle! We have many things here from picking fruit, not taking the car,  re-using shredded paper and encouraging children to recycle. So have a look and once again a BIG thank you to everyone who submitted these tips to our quoits competition. Simply click the link below to view them! Next and finally on friday we’ll post up our best gardening eco tips. For the meantime, click the link below and  enjoy!

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We would like to say a big thanks to everyone who suggested an eco-tip to us in our competition to win one of three rubberwood Quoits sets. We’re sorry if you didn’t win, but we had a hard time choosing our top 3 as there were so many excellent tips! The three winners of our competition are:

“Use empty plastic bottles to protect your seedlings from slugs and also provide a warm environment. Simply cut off the bottom of the bottle and place it over the plant. On hot days remove the cap pf the bottle. As the plant gets bigger cut off the top of the bottle.”
By Linda

“Use vegetable oil instead of smelly yucky chemically paint thinner to remove paint from your hands and skin. It works and its kinder to the skin and the  environment.”
By Sandra

“Make dandelion jam in spring. Dandelions are free and abundant. One bowl of washed dandelion flowers added with one cup of sugar, juice of a lemon, a  sprinkle of ginger, then make the jam in the usual way. It makes a good topping for ice cream.”
By C Brown

Go here to see what we thought of our winners!

Below are some more of our favourite household eco-tips submitted by you that didn’t quite make it but we loved them all the same. We will add more in the next few days!

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Red butterfly on a buddleia flower

As recently reported in BBC news there has been a worrying drop in bee numbers in the UK. The same is also happening for butterflies, as reported by The Guardian. So we need to do all we can to help their numbers as they have an important job in pollenating flowers around the country. And of course, without bees there would be no honey!

Grow bee-friendly plants and wildflowers in your home or school garden to attract bees and butterflies. Some of the best plants for bees and butterflies are:

Lavender
This plant with its purple flowers is well known for its relaxing, sweet scent, and is widely used in aromatherapy and is an essential oil. It is also extremely easy to grow in almost all areas, but prefers a sunny sheltered position in well drained soil. Bees and butterflies both love it. Grow some today!

Buddleia ( “Butterfly Bush” )
You can see this tall plant growing in many places such as along railway lines and empty grounds. It has long, purple flowers and can grow tall (So make sure it doesn’t get too overgrown!). You will be rewarded with beautiful cabbage, red admiral and other butterflies and bumble bees who love its sweet scent. Extremely easy to grow.

Hollyhocks
Another Bee favourite! These can grow as tall as sunflowers with one very thick stem full of lots of flowers in summer.  Again very easy to grow.

Jasmine & Honeysuckle
The Jasmine bush has plenty of small white flowers, the honeysuckle has rounded clusters of pink or yellow flowers. Both have  a great scent bees (and you!) will love.

Stinging nettles
They can be a pest, and you will notice if you touch one without gloves! But they are the perfect place for many butterflies to lay their eggs, including comma, tortoiseshell and red admirals.

Remember when you see bees and butterflies, watch but don’t disturb them. Follow our tip about making a wild corner too, and with these plants in your garden you’ll be helping these friendly insects to survive in the UK.

PS- our competition results will be announced soon!

Quoits. It’s a fun game for all the family. Grab your sandals, get into the garden and enjoy the tickle of grass on your toes. You can play quoits in your office, on the beach, on top of an extremely obese elephant, at school and even at the park — but make sure the hobos don’t steel your quoits set for firewood.

Enter the competition

We’re giving away three eco-friendly quoits sets to whoever sends in the most interesting ‘eco-tips’ — providing they live in the UK. So head over to Pea Green Things now and send in your best tip. That’s right, you too could be just like this idealic family, pictured. You’ve got until the 12th of July so best hurry up.

We’ll email winners and announce the winning eco-tips right here on Go Green. We’re after interesting tips and things that make us laugh. Bear in mind I’m on the panel of judges so best make the tips good.

It’s unbelievable but true that 786 million trees are felled each year to cope with the world’s rising demand for paper products, and the processing that has to be done uses a staggering 98kg of resources for 1kg of paper.  And we know how many student exercise books are gone through after pages and pages of homework and doodles!  So, some clever research has been done to find an alternative, sustainable paper source, and after much tiring research books made from sugar canes are now being produced. The materials, known as “Bagasse” or simply “BE” are made with crushed sugar cane stalks, and are a waste product from the sugar making process.  So not only does this save land  from being deforested,  but there is less need for wood based paper and less wastage from the sugar making process.  It also takes much less energy to produce bagasse paper than wood-based paper.

Surely there must be something wrong, but we can’t think of a thing. Don’t think the quality will suffer either! The sheets are 80gsm, and require less bleaching than conventional paper too. They look and feel just like “normal” paper, but with the knowledge that the environmental impact is  much lower. And, from the folks at The Consortium think it’s such a great idea that they’re selling them at exactly the same price as the standard exercise books.  We even think that soon they will replace them completely!

For a press release go here. Your kids may be writing on the same material as you put in your tea, but we don’t recommend this as a sugar substitute.  Remember this stuff usually gets thrown away! And if you’re a teacher, switching to BE books is easy.  We’re sure you’ll find the books so sweet you’ll never turn back.  (groan!)

psst- did you know we have a Twitter account? go here!