Un-Shopping

My sister Lindsey and I went through my wardrobe and yanked out everything that doesn't fit me any more, everything too ratty to wear any more, and other things that needed de-cluttering. We also discovered some things I haven't worn for ages, and things I had forgotten I owned, and Lindsey suggested different ways of combining items into outfits I hadn't thought of before. Then she took some things from the "give to charity" pile that she wanted for herself. It was a lot of fun.

The next day she brought me some things from her own wardrobe that she didn't wear any more and thought would suit me, or would go with outfits I already had. And we hit the local charity shops and found some great bargains. We bought a few items new, too, from a shopping list we devised of "must-haves" (e.g. that brown skirt you have is fabulous but you really need a couple of matching tops and a brown belt to go with it).

So now I have a totally new wardrobe of outfits to wear, but with a minimal budget. And Lindsey and I had a great time together doing sisterly girly stuff, dressing up and trying different looks out. I get the point of retail therapy. I understand why people like to go to the shopping mall for a day as a leisure activity to cheer themselves up. I understand the pleasure of coming home with an armful of trophies from your day of 21st century hunting-and-gathering. But my green instincts rebel at the wastefulness of shopping for the sake of shopping, and treating clothes as if they were disposable. So it's nice to find ways of getting the same retail rush with a clean eco-conscience.

Hen House Cleaning

I thought I was so clever, using shredded waste paper as chicken bedding. But the problem is that shredded paper, when combined with chicken poo and left to dry, becomes a kind of combination of papier mache and adobe. It's almost completely impossible to remove from any surface it adheres to, including hens' ankles. On the other hand, I may have inadvertently invented an exciting new environmentally-friendly building material.

How Bean Sprouts Can Help You Survive the Credit Crunch

So, the Credit Crunch. Funny to think that when Bean Sprouts began its sabbatical at the end of August, the credit crunch was part of the lesser-read financial news. Now it seems like it's on the front page every day. Today, for example, the announcement that Britain has officially entered an economic downturn and in all probability is in recession. So how can the Bean Sprouts archives help?

Well there is a wealth of articles in the archives tagged "frugal" which can help anyone who is tightening their financial belt. By far the most popular is How to Make Greek Yogurt, and if you don't like the Greek stuff you can also find out how to make regular yogurt and how to make Philadelphia-type soft cheese. You might also want to check out the very popular How To Get Started With Chickens - Part 1 , Part 2 and Part 3.

It's also worth looking at the posts tagged "foraging" to find out if you can pick any leaves, fruits, nuts, berries or mushrooms and get food for free. You can also find out how to make them into wine, jam, liqueurs, chutney and so on.

You might also consider signing up to Freecycle or one of the alternatives. You might want to join the Freeconomy community.

For a more general discussion of using your brain to reduce overconsumption without hardship, check out Money-Saving Toothpaste Tip, and if you're feeling blue and deprived then watch The Story of Stuff and console yourself that by saving money, you're also saving the planet. Find out Why You Should Know Your Hourly Pay. And if you're wondering why we're all in this mess in the first place, find out what sustainability means and think about why anybody could seriously expect that the economy can keep on growing forever.

Cartoon from Throbgoblins. Click the panel to read the whole strip.

When is an A-Rated Appliance Not?

When is an A-rated appliance not an A-rated appliance? When it only last 2 years before irreparably breaking down. Five years ago we bought a White Knight A-rated tumble dryer. As far as I know it was and still is the only A-rated dryer available. We really liked it. It has some nifty features like reverse tumble - it changes the direction it tumbles every few minutes, so your clothes don't end up in a tight sausage, bone dry and hot on the outside and wet in the middle. It has a sensor, so it goes until the clothes are dry then it stops automatically. I used this feature to test the tumble dryer balls a couple of years ago. You can set it to full-eco-mode where it takes all day to get your clothes dry but uses very little energy in doing so (this is the A-rated mode), or you can set it to murder-death-kill-mode where it blasts your clothes dry in an hour or so. But even in this mode it seems very gentle and I have stopped being fussy about what I tumble-dry and what I air-dry because nothing has ever shrunk in this dryer.

But just over two-and-a-half years after we bought it the drum ripped clean off the bearing leaving a huge ragged hole in the back of the drum. We inquired about getting a replacement drum but it was totally uneconomical - it cost more to do this than to buy a whole new appliance. So we bought another identical dryer. After all, we liked the model very much. Maybe it was a freak manufacturing fault which made it fail so quickly. But just in case it wasn't, we took out the optional 5-year-warranty.

It is more "green" to replace a part than to replace the whole appliance

We're very glad we did, because 2 years and 1 month after we bought it, the exact same fault happened again. And this time the warranty-people have ordered a replacement drum. I don't know why it is economical for them to do it when it wasn't economical for us, but hey-ho. I feel a bit ambivalent about this. It is more "green" to replace a part than to replace the whole appliance, so that's nice. But if they had just sent me a cheque to buy a new dryer, I would have avoided this model like the plague. I feel sure the new drum will also fail in another two years - or more likely in about 3 years, when the 5-year-warranty has expired.

How much energy have I saved by using an A-rated appliance compared to another appliance? I don't know. it depends on exactly how often I have used it, which varies from season to season. And it depends on how much I have used it on A-rated mode and how often I used it on regular mode, which also varies. I put slow-mode on when Ed is at work all day and I just tune-out the sound of the endless rumbling. But in the evenings and at weekends when Ed and the kids are at home I put it on fast-mode. There is enough noise in the house at those times without adding to it.

the embedded energy of the appliance

But how much energy is there in the extraction and processing of the materials that made the appliance? How much energy was used in its manufacture and transport? This is the embedded energy of the appliance. Think of it like the cost of owning a car - if a car is very cheap to run, then that's nice. But if it is very expensive to buy in the first place then that weighs against the cheapness of running. Maybe it still works out cheaper overall, as long as you keep the car on the road long enough. But if you buy an expensive car that breaks down after two years, then it's always going to be uneconomical compared to a car that lasts a long time. I don't think the White Knight dryer deserves to call itself A-rated if it only lasts two years, because I suspect the embedded energy outweighs the energy savings in use.

it is better to dry clothes on the line, and I do this when I can

P.S. yes, it is better to dry clothes on the line, and I do this when I can. But it has rained in England almost without let-up for the last two years. OK that's not strictly true, but it feels true. We have certainly had an unusually wet period for two years now. So line drying has been difficult, and I find a dryer is an essential emergency back-up when every surface in the house is covered in wet clothes and the kids need clean school uniforms by the morning.

Freecycle Challenge Results

98 people voted in the Bean Sprouts Freecycle challenge. The voting was as follows:

• I've joined Freecycle! 10 votes (10%)
• I was already a member of Freecycle! 84 votes (84%)
• I don't want to join Freecycle! 4 votes (4%)
• I'm a Freecycle moderator! 1 vote (1%)

Wow! Voters were overwhelmingly already members of Freecycle, and a number of people commented to say they were instrumental in setting up their local groups. Ten people voted to say they had joined Freecycle in response to the challenge. And we'll never whether any others joined because of the challenge, but chose not to vote. As ever I'm amazed by your response to these polls. A new challenge for July will be appearing shortly.

Money-Saving Toothpaste Tip

There's a hoary old urban legend about a high-level meeting of toothpaste executives trying to come up with an idea to sell more toothpaste. A lowly cleaning woman overhears the meeting and suggests her own idea - make the hole bigger.

Have you ever actually read the instructions on a tube of toothpaste? They say "Use a pea-sized amount". But the photograph on the box always shows a long "worm" of toothpaste on the brush - that's about four or five times as much as you actually need.

But don't take my word for it. Last night I picked the brains of a friend of mine, Geoff Taylor, retired Dean of Postgraduate Dentistry at the University of Manchester. I asked him whether toothpaste was necessary at all, or whether thorough brushing without paste would suffice. I've tried brushing my teeth without paste sometimes when we ran out. It tastes pretty nasty, as all the bits of stuff you brush loose are released into your mouth. Mint-flavoured toothpaste makes brushing much more pleasant. But once you rinse with water and eat your breakfast, it doesn't really make any difference -your mouth just tastes of coffee and corn flakes by then regardless of what you used to brush your teeth.

Geoff said that toothpaste is worthwhile, especially for children who should use a fluoridated toothpaste. But he pointed out to me that everybody uses far too much toothpaste because of the images used in marketing the stuff. He recommends that you spread your toothpaste across your brush, not along it, to get a pea-sized amount.

He also said that, in his professional opinion, mouthwashes were not necessary for dental health. And he told me that people should floss if advised to by their dentist, but it is not necessary for everyone.

You're not going to save enough money to retire early by using less toothpaste. Nor are you going to reduce your carbon footprint significantly. But it's a lesson in using your brain to reduce overconsumption without hardship. What else are you using too much of because of sneaky marketing? When you wash your hair do you always "rinse and repeat"? Then you're using twice as much shampoo as you need to. It's hard for a company to get twice as many customers, but it's quite easy for them to persuade their existing customers to use twice as much. Read the instructions and think hard - how much do you really need?

One final thought; have you noticed that toothpaste tubes dont stay rolled up nowadays when you get to the end of the tube? It says here that's so you can always see the whole logo.

Freecycle Challenge

June's challenge is to join your local Freecycle group. When you join Freecycle, you join a mailing list. You'll get lots of emails each day but you don't have to read them so don't worry. The subject lines will say things like:
OFFERED: fridge-freezer, Chorlton
If you want a free fridge freezer and you can get to Chorlton, you can reply to the email and ask for the item. If the person offering the fridge freezer gets lots of replies, they will choose who to offer it to (it's up to them how to choose - first-come first-served, pick a reply out of a hat, anything they like). You could end up with a free fridge freezer, or all kinds of other weird and wonderful items.

It's nice to use it the other way as well. If you have a load of old books you want to declutter, a piece of furniture perhaps or an old lawnmower, you can offer it on Freecycle and somebody is sure to come and take it away. Saves you the trouble of going to the dump or the charity shop yourself.

Finally you can post WANTED ads. It's bad form to ask if anyone has a Porsche Cayenne they don't want with at least six months road tax and a full MOT. But if you want an old hose pipe, some paving slabs or a cat carrier - the sort of thing people might have knocking about unwanted - it doesn't hurt to ask. Just today I gave someone two pumpkin plants because hers had been eaten by slugs. I deliberately sowed too many as an insurance policy against that sort of disaster, so I was happy to share.

Here's a random selection of items offered in my local Freecycle group today:

• Bath taps
• Ikea TV Stand & matching Hi-fi stand
• large rectangular dining table & 4 chairs
• 3 Dimplex Radiators
• 120 concrete garden-wall bricks, reconstituted sort
• toddler garden swings &rabbit hutch
• dozens of Bone china tea-plates

It's very easy to find your local Freecycle group. Just visit the Freecycle web site and type your location into the search panel in the middle of the screen. You need to have an email address, and a Yahoo account, but this is free and it's very quick and easy to sign-up. Once you've joined, read the rules of the group (how many times a week you can post WANTED requests, whether it's allowable to offer pets, things like that), and you can get started.

If you don't want to join Freecycle for some reason, or there is no group in your area, there are lots of alternative free recycling groups.

Don't forget to vote in the poll in the right-hand sidebar when you've completed this challenge.

Slow Cooker v Pressure Cooker - Differences

This is the third in a series of articles comparing pressure cookers and slow cookers. The first article compared the nutrient content of food cooked with these methods. The second article looked at similarities between them. This article is about the differences between them. But first, a quick quiz:

• Are you the kind of person who makes a weekly menu and sticks to it?
• Are you very well organised?
• Are you a morning person?
• Do you enjoy casseroles, pot roasts, soups, chilli and curries?

If you answered "yes" then you'll probably love a slow cooker. You can prepare a meal in the morning, leave it cooking all day, and come in from work to a delicious home-cooked meal with no more work to be done.

• Are you rather disorganised?
• Do you wish you could have more home-cooked food but you hate to spend hours in the kitchen after a long day at work?
• Do you enjoy casseroles, pot roasts, soups, chilli and curries?

If you answered "yes" then you'll probably love a pressure cooker. You can fling some ingredients in it and put it on the hob, then enjoy tender meat and thoroughly-cooked vegetables in a fraction of the time. But as you probably spotted, you can cook similar sorts of foods in both of them.

The main difference between them is how they work. A slow cooker uses a low heat for a long time. The food never reaches boiling point, but over several hours this low heat is enough to cook vegetables and meats right through. The slow cooker plugs in to an electrical outlet - you don't need a stove. I wish I'd had one when I was a student in halls of residence. A slow cooker draws very little power because it doesn't boil the food, so it's cheaper than conventional cooking methods. Many types of slow cooker have a removable crock that can be used as a serving dish. The lid on a slow cooker just sits lightly on top of the crock, it isn't sealed.

A pressure cooker lid, by contrast, has a tight seal. The lid contains a valve with a weight on top, so as you heat it on the hob the pressure builds up inside until the pressure is great enough to push the weight up and release a little bit of steam with a loud hiss that scares some people. This makes the pressure drop inside so the weight falls and the pressure starts to build up again. (There's really no reason to be scared of pressure cookers. They make a loud hissing noise, but there's nothing that can hurt you. They're a damn sight safer than a stepladder.) Because it is operating at more than atmospheric pressure, the temperature inside the pressure cooker reaches more than 100°C. A pan of stew or soup on your hob, with or without a lid, will never get hotter than 100°C. At this pressure and temperature, the food cooks much quicker, using less electricity.

Because of this, I use my pressure cooker a lot for cooking dried beans and pulses. Beans take hours to cook on the hob, so the pressure cooker saves a lot of time and money. Some beans (particularly red kidney beans and soya beans) contain toxins that are destroyed by heat. The high temperatures in a pressure cooker are more than enough to destroy these toxins so this is a safe way to cook dried beans. But you should never put soya or kidney beans in a slow cooker without cooking them first to destroy the toxins. The Vegetarian Society recommends pre-boiling all varieties of dried beans before slow cooking. Tinned beans of course are perfectly safe.

This was the third in a series of articles about slow cookers and pressure cookers. The final article in the series will have some recipes for these methods of cooking. Please keep emailing me your favourite recipes for slow cookers and pressure cookers.

Chemical-Free Cleaning Tip

It seems really obvious once someone points it out, but I never thought of it before. To remove a really tough bit of dirt (e.g. dried-on Weetabix) on a table or floor, soak a dishcloth in hot water, wring it out, and place it on the stain for a while. Half an hour should do it. The Weetabix will soften and come off easily with no chemicals.

Thanks, Steph.

Recycled Plant Markers

There's lots of ways to make recycled plant markers. I'm always baffled why you can buy them in the shops. Who would pay money for rectangular bits of plastic?

I've used yogurt pots, plastic milk containers, ice cream tubs, but this time I used an old margarine tub. You'll also need some scissors and a marker pen.




Cut down the sides of the margarine tub to get lots of short plant labels suitable for plant pots. If you want longer labels suitable for the garden or allotment, you could cut down one corner of the tub, then cut horizontally. Or you could use a bigger container to start with.

When you have made lots of vertical cuts, snip all your rectangles off along the bottom.






You can use the bottom of the tub, too. Just cut it into strips.






Trim one end of your label into a point to make it easier to push it into the earth.





Make sure you write with a permanent marker. It's really annoying if the plant names when you water them.

Slow Cooker v Pressure Cooker - Similarities

I recently wrote a comparison of the an article comparing the nutrient content of food cooked in a pressure cooker and a slow cooker, prompted by Clare of Veg Box Recipes blog who was confused because:

Both claim that their method preserves the highest number of nutrients and gives maximum flavour.

Can they both be right?

I found that unfortunately there isn't really any hard data about the nutrients. But what about taste?

I find them to be quite similar in this respect. They're both good for casseroles and soups. Everything you put in the pot ends up tasting the same. Flavours merge; for example, if you put a quartered chicken, a few vegetables, and some stock, red wine and herbs in the pot, the chicken will end up tasting of vegetables, the vegetables will end up tasting of chicken, and everything will be infused with the flavour of red wine and herbs. This is true of both pressure cooking and slow cooking.

Another thing they both have in common is that (depending on the timing) everything becomes very tender. Even cheap, tough cuts of meat become drop-off-the-bone tender, and even woody vegetables like parsnips become about-to-collapse soft.

Finally, they are both cheaper than conventional cooking methods. The slow cooker is cheaper because it draws very little electricity, and even though it is left on for several hours it is comparable to leaving a conventional lightbulb on for several hours, a very different proposition from running an electric oven for several hours. The pressure cooker is cheaper because it only runs for a few minutes, or a few tens of minutes at most, and it runs on the hob. Again this is obviously a lot cheaper than cooking a casserole in your oven for a few hours.

There will be two more articles in this series comparing pressure cookers and slow cookers. The next article will look at differences between the two methods, and the final article will include some of my favourite recipes for them. If you would like to share your favourite recipes, please email them to me. I'd particularly like to hear vegetarian recipes, and recipes that aren't for soups or casseroles.

Eco-Friendly Web Resources

My sister, Stephanie, found a chart of UK seasonal food, showing what food is in season each month. I like it because it not only lists fruit and vegetables but also meat and fish. Steph has printed it out and stuck it up in her kitchen, I think that's a great idea.

I also found a website with PDFs of lots of different kinds of free printable paper, such as graph paper (in about a bazillion different grid sizes), dotted paper, lined paper, handwriting paper, musical manuscript paper, all available for A4, letter size and legal size. It's got to be frugal and more environmentally-friendly to print out just a few pages of Graph Paper with ten lines per inch and heavy index lines on letter-sized paper rather than to buy a whole pad of the stuff. And I use recycled printer paper (and often use both sides) - where are you going to find Dot Paper with four dots per inch on A4-sized paper on recycled paper? (Via rec.crafts.textiles.quilting)

Finally, there's a new blog about growing fruit in pots. I like it because it helps bring a little bit of self-sufficiency to people who don't have a five-acre smallholding. It's quite young, but there is already some super photography there, and good information about pest-control and recycling. I'll be keeping my eye on it.

Slow Cooker v Pressure Cooker - Nutrients

Clare of Veg Box Recipes blog is confused about the advantages of slow cookers compared to pressure cookers. Specifically she is confused because:

... the proponents of both pressure cookers and slow cookers claim their method is the best way of cooking food. Both claim that their method preserves the highest number of nutrients and gives maximum flavour.

Can they both be right?

I dunno, Clare. I see the source of your confusion - one cooks really fast, the other cooks really slow. They seem like opposites, so how can they both be the best?

Some nutrients are destroyed by heat, which suggests that slow cookers (which cook at below boiling point) might preserve more nutrients than pressure cookers (which cook at much higher than boiling point, made possible because of the increased pressure). On the other hand, the slow cool cooking process in a slow cooker can lead to loss of nutrients through enzyme action. These enzymes would normally be denatured by cooking, but because it takes longer for a slow cooker to reach the temperature at which that happens, the enzymes have longer to destroy the nutrients.

So where does that leave us? Nowhere, to be honest. I can't find any data comparing the nutrient content of slow cooked v pressure cooked food. If you know of any reliable data I'd love to hear about it. Otherwise all I can offer is an item of faith - a home-cooked meal from fresh ingredients is likely to contain more nutrients than any ready-meal or fast-food meal, regardless of the cooking method.

I have more to say about slow cookers and pressure cookers, so look out for other articles to come. I'd also love to hear (and maybe try) your favourite pressure and slow cooker recipes. Please email me with recipes or hard facts about nutrients.

Recycled Clock

I was keeping a nice box just because I liked it. Steph suggested we make it into a clock. Good idea - the box was very shallow, with a square top, about the right dimensions for a clock. So how do you make a clock anyway?



We bought a battery-powered (rechargeable batteries, obviously) clock mechanism from a craft and hobby shop. If you want to make a totally recycled clock you could use a working mechanism from another clock.





The instructions on the packet told us how big to make the hole for the hands, so we measured the centre of the box precisely, and using a craft knife we made a hole the correct size.

After that it was mainly a matter of following the instructions. We pushed the mechanism through the hole and fixed it in place with a hot melt glue gun. We assembled the hands on to the stem of the mechanism, making sure they were all aligned at 12 o'clock. A little nut secured the hands in place, then we could insert the rechargeable battery and set the correct time. Hold your breath to see if the second hand begins to move. Hurrah!

We needed to be able to access the clock mechanism to change the time and replace the battery, and we wanted to be able to hang our clock. The bottom of the box fit very snugly on to the top, so we decided to push it back on (but not glue it) and make a hole in the back for hanging. We measured the exact centre of the box, and cut a triangular hole.

That's it! Our clock was finished and we hung it on the wall.

If you don't have a box just the right size for a clock, there are other possibilities. You could make a box out of cardboard and cover it with wrapping paper, wallpaper, fabric, or paint it. Use the cardboard from a Corn Flakes packet, keeping the image from the packaging as the clock decoration for a funky Warhol-esque kitchen clock. Use a chocolate box with a nice image on the lid. I don't have numbers on my clock, but you could draw or paint numbers on yours. If you prefer a more professional look you could get transfers or stencils for numbers from a hobby craft shop. Or print some out in a font you like and glue them on. Alternatively you could just put dots in the location of the numbers - paint or draw the dots, or glue on beads, sequins or glass nuggets. If you make a recycled clock, I'd love to see it. Email me a photo, and let me know if you're willing for the photo to be shown on Bean Sprouts.

What's New in the Sustainable Blogosphere?

For the last two weeks I have been too busy to keep up with my emails and blogging, and now I'm catching up. Here's a few of the things that landed in my mailbox that I thought worth sharing with Bean Sprouts readers.

Earth Day

First of all, this coming Tuesday is Earth Day. Earth Day has been going since 1969, but the time is right for it to really take off. I'd love to see it become bigger than Christmas (which is a religious feast for Christians like me but tends to be just an excuse for an orgy of over-consumption and wastefulness for, well, for Christians like me and everyone else as well). Earth Day is for everyone who lives on Earth. You'd have to be living in a cave not to notice Christmas when it comes around. Earth Day should be the same. Every time you buy a calendar or a diary it should have Earth Day marked on it already. So do something. Spread the word. Send an e-card. Give gifts of LE light bulbs and organic wine. Invite friends around for a meal of local food, obviously. Blog about it. Spread the word.

Swaptree.com Donates to the Sierra Club

In honor of Earth Day this Tuesday, Swaptree.com, the website where you can trade the books, DVDs, CDs, and video games you have, for the ones you want, for free, will be donating $1 dollar for every trade made on Earth Day to The Sierra Club. Swaptree is like Ebay but cash-less. British readers of a certain age will remember Noel Edmonds' Multicoloured Swap Shop which used to be on TV on Saturday mornings. Young viewers would send requests to swap a Bay City Rollers scarf for an Action Man with eagle eyes and so on. Swaptree is much swankier - you type in the bar code of the book, CD, DVD or video game you have and the clever Swaptree software figures out 2-way, 3-way and even 4-way swaps that mean everyone gets the things they want. You don't pay Swaptree for the privilege. It doesn't cost you anything apart from postage, and Swaptree can calculate the shipping cost and print out a mailing label so you don't even have to go to the post office. You give and receive feedback so you can feel confident you won't be ripped off. There's a video tour so you can see how easy it is. But sadly it is only available in the United States at present. As soon as it comes to the UK I'll be the first to sign up.

Penguin Classics Partners with The Nature Conservancy

Staying with the topic of books, I have some news about one of my favourite publishing imprints, Penguin Classics. On April 1st, 2008, Penguin Classics began their support of The Nature Conservancy's ambitious reforestation plan to plant and restore one billion trees in Brazil's Atlantic Forest.

In bookstores everywhere, bookmarks (printed on recycled paper) featuring three of Penguin's favorite environmental classics, Rachel Carson's Under the Sea Wind, John Muir's The Mountains of California and Ralph Waldo Emerson's Nature and Selected Essays, will encourage readers to visit The Nature Conservancy's website, donate a dollar and help plant a billion trees.

There's more information about this partnership here.

Downshifting Week

International Downshifting Week starts today. Yippee! Thanks to Rebecca from Sallygardens for the reminder. Last year it was just National Downshifting Week, so it's growing fast. Visit the website for ideas of how to take part, including:

• Book a half-day off work to spend entirely with someone you love, no DIY allowed


• Cook a meal from scratch, using locally sourced, seasonal ingredients, preferably organic


• Cut up a credit card

I'll have a think about what I'm going to do this year, and I'll let you know later in the week. Please leave a comment and tell me what you'll be doing for IDW.

Take Back the Filter

The indomitable Beth Terry from FakePlasticFish has started a new campaign to urge Clorox (the company that owns Brita in North America) to take responsibility for the millions of plastic Brita water filter cartridges that are disposed of each year. It's called Take Back The Filter and has its own homepage. Here in the UK we can recycle our Brita cartridges. The FAQ page of the Brita UK website says:

All components of the Brita cartridge are recyclable. Cartridges returned to Brita will be returned to our own recycling plant in Germany where the component parts are separated and processed for secondary use. For information on BRITA In-store recycling contact the BRITACare team on 0844 740 4800

And the recyclenow.com Top Tips at Home webpage says:

In line with growing consumer demand for greener living, BRITA has launched a new in store recycling scheme. Recycling bins are now situated in a range of high street stores such as Robert Dyas, Argos and Cargo. Other major retailer collection points will be following soon.

The BRITA branded bins will be located next to the existing water filter category in store. Customers can recycle any BRITA consumer product filter cartridge, including those for the new BRITA water filter taps.

So once again this is more relevant to US readers than to our home grown readers. But the Internet is an international medium and I'm glad to support Beth's campaign.

This Bill's Got No Balls

Here's one specifically for UK readers, though. 'This Bill's Got No Balls' - the new short film from I Count - follows three hilarious scenarios where the protagonist, Bill, confronts three eyewatering situations - on the football pitch, in the office and on the street - that clearly demonstrate that he's lacking a sensitive part of his anatomy. Click here to watch the film.

Viewers are encouraged to visit the I Count website, from where they can put pressure on their local MPs to vote for a Climate Change Bill with balls when the new law is voted on in the summer. The film can also be viewed on myspace and facebook so please feel free to forward it to your friends.

Mathew Horne - of BBC3's 'Gavin and Stacey' who provided the voice over for the film - said:

The Climate Change Bill needs balls if we're ever going to tackle climate change. I will be putting the squeeze on my MP to make sure we have a tough bill. You should too.

The Broke Vacationer

Sally Thompson of TravelHacker has written an article called The Broke Vacationer: 100 Ways to Get Free Stuff When Traveling. I like some of the frugal tips in this article, although I don't really want to encourage people to fly all over the world on their holidays. Have a look at the article and decide for yourself which of the tips fit your own ethical values and which you might prefer to pass.

Home Gardening Tips

Bill Stanley, author of Home Gardening Tips, got in touch to ask if he could add Bean Sprouts to his blogroll. Bill has been a home gardener for over 20 years and enjoys sharing his gardening tips with friends and family as well as the rest of the world. As well as tips on plants and gardening, Bill has recently added articles about saving the environment whilst gardening, buying flowers online and those slimy little buggers, snails. Just for the record, I'm always delighted when anyone adds Bean Sprouts to their blogroll, or links to Bean Sprouts in a blog article. You don't need to ask permission, but if you do I'll check your blog out and maybe write about it, just like this! So email me and say hi.

We Dig for Victory

Rob Burns has built a mini campaign site called We Dig for Victory. He has created a little sticker and his website says:

By using this sticker on my blog or site I'm digging for victory by...
1. Growing some of my food at home or at an allotment - however modest.
2. Eating locally and seasonally where I can and reducing food miles.
3. Buying from small, local shops where I can and supporting my local economy.

There's a bit more about the campaign on the page titled About This Site. Why not add the sticker to your own blog or website and spread the word?

Thats it, I'm all caught up with my emails now. I only wish the same were true of my laundry .

Wild Blackberry Leaf Tea

Spring is springing and new leaves are starting to grow on shrubs and trees. Some of them make tasty herbal tea, so I went out foraging with my 4-year-old niece Rebecca for wild blackberry leaves.

You don't want to accidentally pick the wrong thing, and leaves are a bit trickier to identify than berries, especially when they're young. So this is perhaps a project for experienced foragers. If you already have your favourite blackberrying spots and you are confident you can identify the correct plants then you'll be fine. But if you haven't foraged before, wait until the late summer or autumn and then go looking for blackberries. There's nothing in the UK that looks anything like a blackberry that might do you any harm, so it's a great first foraging project. Remember the locations of the plants. Have a good look at the leaves and the stems and become familiar with them. Then pick wild blackberry leaf tea next spring.

You want to pick the bunches of young leaves as they emerge. You don't need gloves - you're not going to mess around with the thorny stems. Just grasp the leaves and tug them off. Don't strip all the young leaves off a single stem. You don't want to kill the plant, although brambles (wild blackberry plants) are devilishly tough and could probably survive. But it's good foraging etiquette to just take a couple of bunches of leaves from each stem and then move along.

Rebecca and I picked maybe half-a-pint to a pint of bramble leaves before going home. Actually Rebecca only picked one leaf, then ran off and picked some daisies and dandelions for her mum, leaving me to do all the work. I didn't mind, really.

You make wild blackberry leaf tea almost the same way you make ordinary tea - pour boiling water over and steep. There are only two differences. The first difference is that you use more fresh leaves than you could fit in a tea bag. How much leaves for a cup? I'm afraid that's the same sort of question as how long is a piece of string? About yay much. If you use more it will be stronger. Less and it will be weaker. But at any rate, use a lot more than the teaspoon or so you would use of dried leaves. I usually about half fill my tea pot with leaves (not packed, just loosely dropped in) then top it up with boiling water. If you only want to make a single cup, half fill your tea cup with leaves and fill with water.

The second difference is that you steep for longer than you would steep normal tea. I'd steep blackberry leaf tea at least half an hour. I've also steeped it a lot longer than that - even a few hours. This time I steeped a jug full for about an hour or so, drank a cup, left the rest steeping overnight, then strained the cold tea into a smaller jug and put it in my fridge.

It's nice hot or cold. I like it better with honey than without. You wouldn't usually add milk, but hey, if you like it that way it's your cup of tea. If you can collect loads of leaves you can dry them and drink wild blackberry leaf tea all year long. After spring the leaves become darker and tougher and don't make such nice tea. But I enjoy it as a spring treat, a fresh taste of the first new greenness of the year.

Update: A reader has reported developing a rash after using this tea. I know that many commercially available herb teas contain blackberry leaves without bearing any warnings, and I can't find any warnings about allergic reactions to blackberry leaves on the internet or in the foraging books I have. I suppose it's possible to have a reaction to anything - I know someone who is allergic to apples but I don't post allergy warnings with apple recipes. If you've never tried blackberry tea before, don't overdo it the first time, and be on the lookout for allergic reactions. I should reemphasise that you must never eat anything you've foraged unless you are totally 100% positive you have identified it correctly.

Close Curtains at Dusk to Save Energy

This month I've challenged myself (and you) to try to cut my home heating bill with energy saving measures. This is perhaps the most important thing you can do to cut your carbon footprint, as 84% of typical domestic energy use (in Britain) goes for space heating and water heating.

I've already talked about loft insulation, but that's quite expensive (about £200-£500) and time-consuming. It's worth it, as it will only take couple of years before you've saved that much on your energy bills. But there are also simpler and cheaper things you can do to cut your home heating bills.

For example closing all your curtains at dusk will trap heat in your home. Remember to close the curtains in any room that has a radiator (such as bedrooms and spare rooms) at the same time. However you heat your house, closing the curtains after dark prevents heat from escaping through the windows.

For maximum benefit, make sure all your curtains are lined, preferably with thermal lining. Mine aren't, but as I get round to replacing them I'll make sure any new curtains I make or buy have thermal lining. Pelmets also help to stop heat escaping through the window (I really hate the look of pelmets though - ugh). And finally, make sure your curtains don't drape down over the radiators, as this would totally defeat the purpose - all the heat would be trapped behind the curtain and go straight out through the window. You might as well burn money. If any of your curtains fall over the radiators, go and chop them off with scissors straight away - it doesn't take long to sew up the hem with a sewing machine, or get some iron-on bonding to neaten up the cut edge.

If you promise to remember to close all your curtains after dark, you can click "I've done one thing on the list!" in the poll in the right-hand-sidebar. If you want to see the other items on the list, they're on the March Challenge blog post.

Focus on Heating Challenge

Last week I reproduced this pie chart about British household energy consumption. I hadn't realised that 84% of our energy usage is for space heating and water heating. It makes low-energy lightbulbs look like a bit of a waste of time.

They're not, of course. They're an easy thing that everybody can do. And if everybody does it (switch to low-energy lightbulbs) then it makes a big difference.

Reducing your home heating bill isn't quite as straightforward. But it has the potential to make a much bigger impact than changing lightbulbs - both on your own fuel bills and on your carbon footprint.

I made a list of ways you can reduce your home heating bill, and none of them involve turning the heating off and shivering:

• Add to your loft insulation
• Make sure you have cavity wall insulation
• Install double or even triple glazing
• Exclude draughts
• Close curtains when it gets dark.
• Make sure the curtains have thermal lining
• Put foil behind radiators
• Turn off radiators in unused rooms
• Use timers to make sure the heating is only on when it needs to be
• Wear a jumper
• Turn down your heating thermostat

If you can think of any other things I could add to the list, do let me know. Notice that turning down your thermostat is last on the list. Once you've made your house more insulated and draught-proof you'll want to turn your thermostat down anyway because you'll be far too warm.

I tried to pick one of these things for March's challenge, then I thought - let's do them all. So that's this month's challenge. Every time you do one of the things on the list, vote in the poll. Even if it only makes a 5% difference in your home heating usage, that will swamp any saving you could make in lighting, appliances, leaving gadgets on standby, or any other single part of your domestic energy budget.

Frugal Hot Chocolate

You know when you get to the bottom of a jar of chocolate spread, and there's not enough left for a sandwich? Don't you dread cleaning it out so you can put it in the recycling? Usually I fill the jar with hot soapy water, replace the lid and give it a good shake. But today I filled the jar with hot milk instead, gave it a really good shake, and poured the resulting hot chocolate into a cup for Sam who is off school today with a high temperature and a bad cough. Frugal hot chocolate and a pretty clean jar that just needs a quick rinse in the sink. Nice one.

Domestic Energy Breakdown

I was very interested in this pie chart which I saw in a BBC editorial about domestic energy use. It says that 84% of UK household energy use goes on space heating and hot water.

Lighting, by comparison, accounts for only 3% of UK household energy use. So whilst switching to low energy lightbulbs is an easy way you can reduce your energy use and your carbon foorprint, it's not going to make a big difference overall. Instead you should focus your energy on savings in space heating and water heating.

What can you do to cut space heating and water heating costs?

• Add to your loft insulation
• Make sure you have cavity wall insulation
• Install double or even triple glazing
• Exclude draughts
• Close curtains when it gets dark.
• Make sure the curtains have thermal lining
• Put foil behind radiators
• Turn off radiators in unused rooms
• Use timers to make sure the heating is only on when it needs to be
• Wear a jumper
• Turn down your heating thermostat
• Lag hot water pipes
• Have showers instead of baths
• Share baths
• Have shorter showers
• Install a low-flow shower head
• Don't use hot water when cold will do
• Turn down your water thermostat (if you always have to add cold water to your bath or washing-up water, then your water thermostat is too high)
• If possible, install a solar hot water system

I can see where I can make improvements in my own household. You can bet that one or more of these will be showing up in March's Bean Sprouts Challenge.