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Eco Friendly Halloween

admin — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 04:01:14 +0000

Halloween as a kid was very exciting. Dressing up in scary costumes, staying up late, making lanterns, and gorging on the haul of treats collected. Living in a neighbourhood full of kids its obligatory to get involved again. The shops are full of cheap plastic masks, costumes and accessories at this time of year. But there are great ways of creating a truly green halloween (and also staying on track with the Salvos ‘Buy Nothing New Month’).

We’ve been putting our heads together to come up with ideas on how to have an eco-friendly halloween and to finish off October having bought nothing new. Here’s the summary.

Forget plastic lanterns, go for the real deal and carve up a pumpkin lantern or if you can find a big enough one use a more traditional swede or turnip. Use the pumpkin to make pumpkin pie or pumpkin soup and the lamp can go in the compost bin afterwards.
For costumes rent them or get creative with stitching or scissoring. Use an old sheet or reassign some old clothes.
The parents will love you for it but the kids might not – giving fruit as the treat instead of chocolate and sweets. This will avoid wrappers and waste. Or make some ghoulish cup cakes, or toffee apples to hand out when the hoards come trick or treating.
Put some candles on the porch or verandah instead of leaving the outside lights on.
Give the kids recyclable bags to carry their haul.

Great halloween games for the kids:

As well as the typical party games, limbo, pass the parcel, hula hoop, musical statues etc try these.

Ghastly lucky dip. Put potato peel or something similar in a bucket along with some items/prizes and get the kids to delve their hands into it to find them.

Apple bobbing. A bowl full of water with apples bobbing around in them. Kids have to try and take bites out of the apples without using their hands. Or apples hanging on a string, again you have to try and eat the apples which are dangled in front of you without using your hands.

Want Free Time and Money This October? Buy Nothing New

admin — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 01:00:48 +0000

Old is the New New this October, with Salvos Stores’ first ever Buy Nothing New Month. Get on board for more money in your pockets, time on your hands and a lighter carbon footprint.

Instead of a short‐term, throwaway attitude to ‘stuff’, Salvos Stores Buy Nothing New Month extends the life cycle of goods, maximises the embedded cost and resources in the stuff we buy and gives an introduction to the re‐cycled, free‐ cycled, upcycled , secondhand, ‘swishing’ and sustainable alternatives that are better for you, your wallet and the planet.

Salvos Stores Sustainability Manager, Donald Munro says, “Buy Nothing New is about seeing the value in existing stuff and reflects a growing movement of people switching off from shopping and tuning into life.”

But Buying Nothing New doesn’t mean going without. Make a Buy Nothing New pledge and you can beg, buy, barter and swap for whatever you need, as long as it is pre‐loved, but with the exceptions of necessities (including food, drink, medications and hygiene products) you can’t buy anything new.

Salvos Stores Buy Nothing New Month also shows going green doesn’t have to be expensive, but that by adapting our attitudes and approach, can be a money saving path to socially responsible consumption.

According to Affluenza author and Buy Nothing New Month supporter Clive Hamilton, “Consumption today often involves buying things we don’t need, with money we don’t have, to impress people we don’t like! Buy Nothing New Month is about spending our time and money more thoughtfully.”

In October, selected Salvos Stores featuring plasma screens sponsored by Radio Rentals/Rentlo will show the viral phenomenon ‘The Story of Stuff’, an animation on the lifecycle and impact of the goods we buy.

Shane Wakelin, Clive Hamilton (Affluenza, Requiem for A Species) Sarah Wilson (Sunday Life columnist & LifeStyle YOU presenter), Chrissie Swan, Gorgi Coghlan (The Circle), James Tobin (Cleo Batchelor of the Year, Ch 7 Sunrise), Monique Wright(Ch7 Sunrise), Damian Walshe Howling and Caroline Craig (Underbelly) are on board. Are you?

This October, think about where stuff comes from, where it’s going, its embedded costs and what are the alternatives. Get into Salvos Stores, markets, swap parties and online second‐hand selling sites to experience the joys of a life less wasteful. Plus there’s a prize for the most creative Buy Nothing New pledge. Logon to www.nothingnew.com.au when the site goes live on September 1^st for entry details.

Glossary

Swishing	Swapping clothes shoes or accessories with friends or acquaintances. It’s ethical, eco‐fabulous, social and fun. Marie Claire magazine on swishing “Welcome to the future of fashion.”
Up‐Cycling	Converting waste materials or use less products in to new materials or products of better quality or a higher environmental value.
Re‐Cycling	Processing used materials into new products to prevent waste of potentially useful materials while reducing the consumption of fresh raw materials
Free‐Cycling	Process of giving away rather than throwing away unwanted items to others instead of disposing of them in landfills. Check out freecycle.com
*’LOHAS’	Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability. ‘Lohasian’ describes people whose purchases are driven by values and attitudes about their health, the health and wellbeing of the community and the health and sustainability of the environment.

Top Tips to Buying Nothing New

Get into Salvos Stores	Save money, reduce your waste and carbon footprint. Check out your local Salvos Stores at www.salvosstores.com.au
Rent	Check out Radio Rentals for their hot range of rentals and update as needed. It’s cheaper and you lower your footprint by renting rather than buying.
Check IN at Checkout	Ask is it worth the time and the money to pay for it? If you don’t buy it, what can you do with the extra time and money, is there a more valuable way to spend it?
Don’t shop. Swap	Hold your own ‘swapshop’. Everyone brings five things cluttering their home and watch as one man’s trash becomes another man’s treasure!
Repair, don’t replace.	Got holes? Patch them with a gorgeous fabric and get a one off designer item.
Get Fit or Get A Hobby:	Don’t go shopping to alleviate boredom. Get a hobby and get out of the shopping strip.
Get the merry‐go‐round	Get into the old economy. Reuse and recycle, make stuff, alter stuff, buy used, donate quality old stuff, get free stuff, borrow, barter and trade. Have fun with it.

Buyers Checklist

Before handing over your hard earned cash, ask yourself:

Is the product really necessary?
What is its lifecycle and embodied energy?
What are the alternatives?
Where did it come from? How did it get here?
What is its environmental and social impact?
Who benefits from the purchase? What will it do for me?
What is in it? Who made it?

Top Tips for Salvos Stores Shopping

Best buys are gifts, clothes, homewares, kitchenware, books, toys and furniture.
Don’t shop Mondays. Stock gets wiped out over the weekend. Those in the know go Tuesday or Thursday

Watch your gift budget dive!Buy homewares like vases and frames, and store them for when you need a last minute gift.
Keep an open mind. Imagine the item out of the store and in a different setting.
Get over ‘second hand phobia’. Restaurants and hotels serve you from secondhand cutlery and secondhand sheets!
‘Up the hip ante’ of dresses by cutting short and sewing on mismatched patches and buttons.
Look out for jeans; you’ll get great brands, dirt cheap. Cut them into shorts or remake into skirts. It’s easy, cheap and they’re already worn in for you!
A quick test if jeans fit: Wrap the waist around your neck and the ends should touch. If you can’t fit the length of your fist to your elbow inside the waistband, the jeans are too small.
Every store differs if you don’t find what you need, try another. And new stock comes in everyday.
Ignore sizes. Second‐hand clothes may have shrunk, or designers may have changed their sizings so your frame of reference could be off. Try before you buy.

Carbon Offset T-shirts

admin — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 04:30:33 +0000

A T-shirt with a tonne of carbon locked up in it? That must be a pretty big T-shirt right? Not exactly. This new range of T-shirts has been created by Treecreds. Their objective is to save forests from being logged and encourages investment in avoided deforestation offset projects. The T-shirts each contain one tonne of carbon-dioxide equivalent emissions. That is, for every T-shirt purchased, Treecreds retires one carbon credit.

Treecreds assists organisations in calculating, reducing, marketing and offsetting their emissions. Treecreds wants to raise their profile through these T-shirt. In addition to T-shirts, badges have also been created. The badges contain an embedded offset component of 0.2 tonne of carbon.

A bit of background. Treecreds was founded in 2008 and works predominantly in the facilitation of sustainable events ranging from music festivals and performances to corporate meetings. Treecreds also assists with the marketing of sustainable business practices. It does this through a range of innovative measures including carbon neutral tickets and events and the creation of eco-art installations.

Treecreds avoided deforestation offsets are different to forestry offsets which are derived from treeplanting. Avoided deforestation provides an alternative income to clearing and logging and preserves forests that would be destroyed without this mechanism. Avoided deforestation supports living ecosystems, habitat and communities as well as the embodied carbon of the trees. Credits are currently sourced from the ‘Minding the Carbon Store’ project. This project saved 12,000 hectares of forest and woodland in Queensland from clearing for the next 120 years. Treecreds also supports other project groups in Tasmania, Indonesia and Cambodia and more offsets will be available later in 2010.

For more information on Treecreds, or to get yourself a T-shirt or badge visit http://www.treecreds.com/.

Eco Baskets Take The Test

admin — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 10:52:51 +0000

Ten years ago, Lindy McLeod was living abroad and while visiting France, admired the women of Paris rushing home in the evenings and on weekends with their fresh produce – fruit, breads, meats and cheeses – brimming in their seriously chic shopping baskets. She bought some for herself which rapidly became an indispensable part of her life because, as well as looking great, they proved to be extremely hardwearing and the handles were very strong and did not break.

After returning to Australia and realising how many plastic bags we use as a nation (at its peak over 7 billion annually!), Lindy began investigating the possibility of bringing a classic French-style shopping basket to Australia.

These baskets are genuine French-style market baskets imported from Morocco. Each one is handmade using traditional methods and techniques and so is unique. The baskets are made of strips of woven palm leaves from a species of date palm. These strips are then sewn together and the basket built up in “rounds” into the traditional triangle shape, variations of which can be found in countries all around the Mediterranean. The more rounds the bigger the basket! The handles are of genuine Moroccan leather and firmly fixed to the baskets so they never pull off. Handles are either short so the baskets can be carried in the hand or on the elbow, or longer to go over the shoulder.

Great for shopping, picnics, beach bags, gift hampers, use them for weekends away or they also make great presents.

For more information visit The Market Basket Co.

The Ethical Edge

admin — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 05:25:06 +0000

Doing sport makes you feel good. Buying ethical sports gear would surely make you feel even better. Etiko, a Melbourne based company specialising in Fairtrade and sustainable sports gear has captured a niche market. However, Nike, the sweatshop sinner of the 1990s, who actually inspired the creation of Etiko, is now rethinking its business. Find out what this means for smaller companies as the giants move to make ethical mainstream.

Its not news to Etiko, their founder Nick Savaidis was acutely aware of the positive impact that a company can have on people and communities – if it wanted to. Etiko’s ethically produced sportswear is the first non food range to receive Fairtrade certification and it is Savaidis’s hope that his range will triumph over the big brands such as Nike.

The competition is on as the big brands have cottoned on to the fact that today’s customers are looking more critically at products. Nike’s CEO Mark Parker realises that doing the right thing in terms of waste reduction, renewable energy and factory conditions is good for business. In Nike’s 2007-2009 sustainability report the CEO admits past mistakes with respect to labour conditions. Their new focus is on transparency and innovation to, in their words, ‘prototype the future rather than retro fit the past’. Eco-design is the new buzz word and when developing products, consideration is now given to everything involved with bringing a product to market, from raw materials sourcing to transportation. They have also sought to reduce the impacts of their manufacturing activities through the use of renewables such as solar and wind power on some of their facilities.

When big companies move into the sustainability arena, they bring money, resources and power, and can have a significant sway in terms of the performance of their supply chain which can only be a good thing. But where does that leave companies like Etiko?

Without the big marketing budgets of the big competitors, their success comes about through word of mouth, and whilst performance of products is key to their success, it seems they have a no compromise approach. While for Nike, sustainability is an add on, for Etiko it truly is core to the business and many consumers will go to great lengths to buy into that.

Etiko is a niche brand, and like other ethical brands, these products have a personality and a story which brands like Nike will have trouble matching.

Etiko’s awards

The 2008 Premier’s Sustainability Award – Small Business (Victoria),

2008 Banksia Environmental Foundation Award – Business Sustainability,

2008 Telstra Business Award – Social Responsibility (Victoria)

Winner of the 2008 FSC Responsible Forest Management Awards – Small Chain of Custody Operator of the Year.

Recycled Glasses of a Different Kind

admin — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 22:42:08 +0000

My husband has just become a respectable spectacle wearer. And after spending the day looking at frames I was wondering whether there could be a more eco friendly way to do it. I’ve heard about recycling unwanted glasses by donating them to those in need. We have a collection box for old specs at work. But to find a company that uses recycled metal and plastic was a bit of an eye opener. Oh dear sorry about the pun…..

I actually found them by accident as they started following Green Beings on Twitter. The name eco conscious optics got me curious. The company uses recycled metal (with a minimum of 95% recycled stainless steel) and plastic and ‘eco reinterprets the whole product lifecycle in an environmentally sustainable way, starting with its recycled content‘. Other company initiatives include planting a tree for each frame sold and providing easy access to facilities to donate unused frames frames to people in developing countries.
Well, that all sounds great, but the most important thing about specs is whether they look good, and even better, can they make you look more intelligent? One things for sure it makes a good talking point. The collections on the website look cool, but if they are unique frames with a uniquely high price tag then they are likely to only be affordable to those with oodles of cash. The prices on first glance seem reasonable where they retail in the US, Europe and Japan….The next question is will they be available in Australia?

We’ll find out.

Looking Great Being Green

jo — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 08:00:13 +0000

There is one way guaranteed way to ruin the great feeling you get from putting on a new outfit – finding out that it has been manufactured in a sweatshop environment or that the manufacturing process will have caused significant environmental impacts.

Awareness of environmental and social impacts from the fashion industry has created a backlash against what has become known as ‘fast fashion’ – clothes which are made cheaply and only worn for a season. As a result, a niche market has been developing in sustainable clothing using natural fabrics with socially and environmentally responsible manufacturing methods.

Gone are the days of the shapeless hemp hippie clothes. Today’s sustainable fabrics are beautifully soft, breathable and naturally antibacterial. Fabrics such as bamboo and soy, feel like silk, with the added bonus that they don’t need ironing.

To service this growing trend, a number of small, sustainable designers and sustainable fashion suppliers are becoming very popular – often selling directly on the internet or at specialist environmental or fashion fairs. The secret to their success is the ability to provide key wardrobe items which last for years and can be mixed and matched depending on the season. The added bonus of buying from these suppliers is that they have specifically sought out materials and manufacturing facilities that consider the workers and the environment s uch as Eastern Weft and Moral Fibre and as they do not provide the bulk fashion you find on high street stores you can be sure that you will be buying a unique item with a story attached.

For more information on the impacts of fabrics have a look at our ‘fabric facts’ and for further tips on reducing the impacts of your clothes, read our ‘greening your wardrobe’ article.