Are you on the lookout for a pair of boots for stomping about in this winter?  Take a look at these.

They’re eco-friendly, made from hemp and recycled car tyres, making them extremely hard-wearing.  The soles are the part made of car tyres, and the uppers are amazing, prolific hemp, the super strong fabric that is so easy to grow and there’s no waste because all the plant is used to make hemp fabric.

Available in black and chocolate.  These boots will last, so they’re good value at £85.00.

Last week when I wrote all about the potential danger that air fresheners could pose to your health, and your children’s health and looked at some natural alternatives to getting your home smelling good.  I’ve since come across another product that I’d like to add to that list of natural alternatives.

Ecover (who make great eco-friendly cleaning products) now also make an essential oil and plant extract based air freshener.  It comes in three fragrances, Lavender, Lemon Tree and Rose Garden, consisting of the oil in a glass jar topped with a cork, and a bunch of sticks.  You open the jar and put the sticks into the oil.  The oil’s fragrance is then wicked from the bottle to the air by the sticks, fragrancing your room naturally.

Wherever you turn people are talking about the credit crunch.  Most of us are feeling the pinch in one way or another, and so we’re coming up with clever ways to save money.  Most of these ideas have been around for ages, but because of a consumer economy that brings us goods at prices that don’t reflect the real costs of manufacture, and because of cheap oil, many of us have not had to scrimp and save like our parents or grandparents may have had to.

1. Buy in bulk

Here’s an idea that’s been around for a while.  Buy in bulk.  Get together with friends and do it, or if you have the space, just do it yourself.  And if you think that those organic or eco-friendly products are too expensive to afford these days, buy them in bulk to save.

2. Turn your thermostat down

Okay, it’s not time to switch the heating on yet, but you can turn down the heat of your water in the meantime.  And when it’s time for the heating to go on, turn that thermostat down a couple of degrees.  Put on a fleece or a jumper and be toasty warm.

3. Shower, and keep it short

Showering saves lots of water (and also energy used to heat the water), but only if you keep it short.  Keep showers under 5 minutes, and take a navy shower.

4. Make do and mend

Before you buy something new because the old one is outdated, think about it.  What values are you supporting by buying into mindless consumerism based not on what you need but what you desire?  If something breaks, see if you can fix it, rather than buy a new one.  And if something is no longer suitable for one job, perhaps it can be repurposed to save you money somewhere else.

5.  Stay organic by growing your own

It’s not the best time of the year to start doing this, but there is still time to plant winter and spring crops like cabbages, broad beans, garlic, lettuce, rocket, spinach and potatoes.  When you grow your own, you can afford to stay organic.  For the price of some compost and a few seeds, you can have fresh, local, season produce all year round.  And you don’t even have to pay for the compost if you make your own.

Photo credit: René Ehrhardt

The  eco.kid range of haircare products for kids from Australia is everything a eco-parent could want, and more.  It’s biodegradable, wild harvested, waterway friendly and organically certified.  And while it’s not a head-lice shampoo, eco.kid products do help to prevent head lice because as with many things in life, prevention is better than cure.  They do this by creating an environment that is very unpleasant to head-lice.

eco.kid Prevent Shampoo gently cleanses the hair without damaging the sensitive balance of natural oils on the scalp. It contains 100% botanical essential oils, releasing pure fumes from the hair and scalp which assist to repel insects. It also contains natural terpenes and hydrocarbons that will attack the outer protective lipase coating of head-lice, delivering phyto-chemicals which attack the insect’s nervous system.

eco.kid Nourish Conditioner carries on where the Prevent Shampoo stops, using the same natural technique of discouraging head-lice.  It also feeds growing hair.  Nourish conditioner contains plant-derived moisturisers that naturally bind and sustain moisture and nourish away knots and tangles. Gentle anti-inflammatory peptides soothe sensitive scalps and re-balance the natural protective mantle of the skin. It is an effective detangler and promotes healthy shiny hair.

eco.kid Daily Leave-in Tonic contains plant-derived moisturisers that naturally bind and sustain moisture to nourish away knots and tangles.  The natural phyto-chemicals contained in the essential oils that make up 3% of the product discourage head-lice and attack their central nervous system.

There are two eco.kid styling products for really cool hair a matte styling clay, and a shaping paste.  Again both of these contain natural bug discouraging ingredients.

And for when and if the beasties do strike, there’s the eco.kid Lice Bomb.  This product is 100% essential oils which delivers an aggressive attack on head lice and their eggs. The natural terpenes and hydrocarbons contained in essential oils are safe and completely non-toxic to humans, but instantly dissolve away any protective lipase coating on the exoskeleton of lice or lice eggs enabling the full potential of the essential oils to attack the insect.  Lice Bomb needs to be used in conjunction with a nit comb.

You see so many advertisements on television for air fresheners of one kind or another.  There’s the plug-in type (whoever invented that was obviously not thinking about energy saving) that lets off an artificial smell into the room, the battery operated sort that lets off puffs of aroma at set intervals, the one that hangs off the rear-view mirror of your car and then there’s the traditional aerosol air freshener, also known as toilet spray.  There seem to be an endless supply of these “smell improvers” on the market, including some that say that they eradicate the odour rather than mask it.  Sound good?  If you said yes to that question, you couldn’t be more wrong.  Because air fresheners are not good for your health.

Researchers at Brunel University found that the daily use of air fresheners could be linked with a significant rise in the incidence of maternal depression.  And it doesn’t stop there.  They also found an increase in headaches in women who were frequent users of both aerosols and air fresheners.  And in children, researchers found increases in diarrhoea and vomiting.

Enough to make you think twice about buying air freshener again?  Then have a look at these other options to chemically “clean” air.

1. Open the window - the most natural way to get rid of unpleasant odours.

2. Use oranges, lemons or fresh herbs to pleasantly fragrance a room.

3. Use essential oils in an oil diffuser.

4. Mix a few drops of your favourite essential oil with water in a spray bottle, then shake and spray into the room.

5.  Try Eco Mist natural air freshener in a pump spray bottle.  It comes in Zangy Citrus, Relaxing Lavender and Exotic Summer Fruits.

[via The Independent]

Photo credit: Paull Young

Staying on the subject of bringing light into our lives during the Autumn months, I’m just mad about these cute little low-energy night lights for children.  The Candeloo is a bedside sentinel, warding off the dark and perfectly portable, so very handy for when your child needs a friend on a dark walk.  They are rechargeable LED lit child-safe lanterns that comes in sets of two so that they can be shared by two children, or so that one can be left behind by the bed (keeping the home fires burning, as it were) while the other accompanies the brave child on creepy night-time trips to the toilet.

Great for playtimes too.  They will light tents made of dining room chairs and a big blanket, and accompany children on trips out into the garden on dark evenings.  It can even be taken “trick or treating” at Halloween to keeps the ghosts and ghouls at bay.

Each Candeloo lamp has a long-life LED bulb and battery with an 8 hour charge, and remains cool to the touch at all times with no exposed electrical contacts.  To recharge, simply pop the Candeloo back on its base, and it will be charged and ready to go when it’s needed. £49.95 from John Lewis.

September is the time for the Chinese festival of Zhongqiu Jie, or Lantern Festival.  Next to Chinese New Year it’s the most important dates on the Chinese calendar.  It celebrates the harvest season and Chinese families traditionally gather together to admire the harvest moon, eat mooncakes and pomelos, and carry brightly lit lanterns.  That got me thinking.   Because Autumn is when we need a little extra light in our lives to counteract the shorter day, why not use eco-friendly lights and lanterns to brighten up our evenings instead of heading for the light switch.  One such eco-friendly light source is the Firewinder.

The Firewinder Wind-Powered Outdoor Light harnesses the wind to create a beautiful upward spiralling light.  When the wind blows at night the Firewinder  creates a silent mesmerising wind-powered firework show, illuminating an amazing ‘never-ending’ twirl of light.

Tom Lawton developed the Firewinder to bring to attention the power and endless resource of the alternative energies that encircle us,  and hopes that it will become an international symbol of sustainability throughout the world.

A Buddhist teacher who took interest in the Firewinder’s creation suggested that the Firewinder be made to turn clockwise ‘to evoke the good spirits’.  Tomo Tom re-engineered the mechanical design so that every Firewinder now spins in a clockwise direction to call forth good spirits every time the wind blows.

The Fairtrade Foundation Annual Review reveals that Fairtrade is definitely becoming more popular in the UK.  This is great news for third world producers, because as we learn about how we can benefit them by making the right shopping choices, their lives are improving.  They are able to send their children to school and afford health care for their families.  Here are some fascinating Fairtrade facts from the review:

1 in 4 bananas sold in the UK is Fairtrade

Almost £500m was spend on Fairtrade products in the UK in 2007

6000 sugar farmers in Belize benefitted from Tate & Lyle’s switch to Fairtrade sugar

90% of the farmers in the Windward Islands grow Fairtrade bananas

Farmers and workers in 54 countries supply Fairtrade goods to the UK

Over 700 cotton products were licenced Fairtrade in 2007

There was a 72% growth in Fairtrade sales in 2007

300 UK companies are now licenced to use the Fairtrade mark

Over 83 million Fairtrade flowers were sold in 2007

Play your part in changing our world into one where trade is fair by choosing Fairtrade whenever you can.  You can access hundreds of Fairtrade products right here on Pricegrabber, have a look.

Photo credit: thingermejig

Last Tuesday, a group of MPs including British MP Lembit Opik flouted the law by travelling from the Houses of Parliament to the Department of Transport on Segways.  They would like Segways to be allowed in UK cycle lanes to help ease congestion in cities.

Segways aren’t allowed on UK streets because there is some concern about the safety of their braking system, but they are legal in the US where they are used on military bases, industrial sites and by police patrols.  They are allowed on US pavements, and are used by commuters and for tours.

There are around 500,000 Segways in use today, not all that many, the reason for that probably being their relatively high cost of about £4,300.  But Lembit Opik thinks that the Segway can take the place of the car for short distance travel (now this man is not thinking family friendly here, but I can see what he’s getting at with regards commuters and singletons), and is hoping that they’ll be legal on UK streets by Christmas this year.

If you’re keen on Segways but don’t want to risk arrest for riding one before they’re made legal here, you can still enjoy a Segway Rally Race for Two for £99.50.  Segways are extremely eco-friendly and have zero emissions - they run for 24 miles on 0.7p of electricity!

Photo credit: FaceMePLS

Vegetarians and vegans have been telling us this for ages, and it looks like they’ve been spot on all along.  Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the world’s leading authority on global warming says that meat-eaters having one vegetarian day a week (as was previously suggested) is just not enough.  We need to be eating far less meat to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, something that avid meat-eaters are not going to want to hear. The truth is not always comfortable, as we discovered back in 2006 when we watched An Inconvenient Truth.

It’s estimated that 1/5th of greenhouse gas emissions are caused by global meat production, and with meat consumption set to double by 2050, that’s a very scary figure.  Forget cars and electricity generation for a minute.  By half way through this century meat production could be generating almost half of greenhouse gas emissions.  That’s a jolly good argument for cutting meat consumption. Compassion in World Farming says that if each UK household cut their mean consumption by half, it would make more difference than if they cut their car use by half.

There’s no harm is starting with just one vegetarian day a week, but don’t leave it there.  Build on your new-found semi-vegetarianism until you’re eating half the amount of meat you were eating before.  And don’t forget that eggs and dairy products have a similar effect on the environment as meat production.  Vegetables, on the other hand, are very eco-friendly.

[via: The Guardian]

Photo credit: VirtualErn