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.

Yesterday's News

Steph and I went to my favourite art and craft supplies shop, Fred Aldous in Manchester. And one of the things we bought was a set of coloured pencils made from recycled Chinese newspapers. The newspapers are so tightly wrapped around the coloured lead that it feels like a normal wooden pencil, and can be sharpened with a regular pencil sharpener. But you can read the text on the outside of the pencil (if you can read Chinese). The packaging seems to be made of Chinese newspapers too. Very groovy.

You can also buy them online for £2.99 from Giftmonger.com

Newspaper Mirror

My sister Stephanie and I have been on a real recycled mirror kick recently. Stephanie made this one from newspaper, thread, cardboard, and a piece of mirror tile. She rolled sheets of newspaper into tubes and flattened
them, then she stitched them onto a circle of corrugated cardboard. She cut out the hole in the centre and glued a piece of mirror behind. Then she backed the whole thing with a piece of thin card. Everything was recycled. I think it looks very effective, and it is hanging on my wall close to my computer.

Recycled Mirror

My very talented and arty sister Stephanie made me a beautiful mirror decorated with recycled drinks cans. She cut the cans into small squares then folded the corners of the squares to form smaller squares with safe edges. Each small square was nailed onto an old wooden picture frame with a tack in each corner.

The picture frame used to be white and contained a picture of Elmer the Patchwork Elephant. All our children are too old for Elmer now, so she removed the print and painted the frame with some blue and purple emulsion paint we found in the shed, before nailing the pieces of drinks can onto it.

Then Steph cut an old piece of mirror glass to fit the frame (we saved the mirror from an old wardrobe, it's been in the shed for years). And that was it, a beautiful new recycled mirror.

I was utterly delighted with it - until I found that she had cut up several drinks cans with my best dressmaking scissors.

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.

Sunday Funnies

Penn and Teller want to know just how far people will go to sort their rubbish for recycling, so they invent some new coloured bins and spurious ways to sort trash. OK, they're poking fun at good people who are willing to make an effort to do something for the environment, which isn't cool. But they're right that we should all be wary of "greenwashing" from local government just as much as from retail businesses.

And as I've said before - if you recycle a lot, you should think about consuming less instead. Perhaps the household in your street who never puts out any plastic bottles for recycling aren't buying lots of stuff in plastic bottles in the first place, which would be much better.

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

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.

Recycle Week

Today is the first day of Recycle Week. I learned this yesterday, from an article on the BBC website about a sculpture made of empty coke cans. It's organised by Wrap, who are behind the excellent Recycle Now website. But there doesn't seem to be a webpage for the Recycle Week campaign, and I can't find out anything else about it. What is happening, apart from this sculpture? Are there any events people can go to? What exactly are they doing to encourage people to recycle more? It all seems a bit inept - a depressingly familiar story.

If I find out anything else about it I'll let you know. If you know anything, please drop me a line.

Save the Tree House

I saw this on Allotment Lady's blog. Someone who lives in her village built this tree house out of recycled materials, on his parents land and far away from any other houses. It's not a residence, it's just a project for some students who wanted to "opt out of the drink and drugs culture" and do something worthwhile instead. But now he and his friends are fighting to prevent it being pulled down under planning laws.

Visit the Treehouse website for more information about the project and more videos. If you want to support their fight, please sign the petition.

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.

Make A Little Birdhouse In Your Soul

I've been watching a bluetit carrying nesting materials to the birdhouse in our back garden. Hopefully he'll attract a mate and raise a clutch of chicks like last year. Here are some images I found when searching for "recycled bird house". Each image is a link to the page it comes from. Some of them have instructions how to make the item, some are ready-made items for sale, and some are out-of-date and no longer for sale, but I thought they could be inspiration for your own recycled bird house projects.

If you make a recycled bird house, please email me a photo, and say whether you're happy for your image to be used on the blog.

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 .

The Rubbish Diet

Have you been following the progress of The Rubbish Diet? Regular Bean Sprouts commenter Karen Cannard (aka 21st Century Mummy, aka almost mrs average) has been aiming to slim her bin to a size 0 by Zero Waste Week which started on 10th March, and she has been blogging about her family's quest to do just that.

The latest entry tells how, with a lots of effort and a bit of lateral thinking, she put only one item in her black (landfill) bin during zero-waste week - a used sticking plaster. She also starred on BBC Radio 4 Women's Hour between the 10th and 14th of March, and you can listen to the show on the Women's Hour website.

I loved the way she announced it:

Today is Bin Day and I am going to celebrate by NOT PUTTING THE BIN OUT...because for the first time in my life as a responsible adult...there's no need to.....HOORAY! Indeed, if I keep this up, I won't have to put it out for weeks or months!

We all hate putting the bins out, don't we? Wouldn't it be great if we could all make as little waste as Karen, so we didn't have to put the bins out at all?

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.

Recycle A Book

Friends of the Earth has started selling 2nd hand environmental books in its new Bargain Basement. Starting at just £1.99, there's all sorts, from wildlife and recycling, to organics and kids' books.

You can give your used books a new lease of life by donating them for Friends of the Earth to sell in the Bargain Basement using the Freepost address:

Friends of the Earth Shop
FREEPOST
56-58 Alma St
Luton
LU1 2YZ

It sounds great - cheap books about environmental topics, a way to declutter your shelves, the chance to spread environmental ideas to new people, and support the work of Friends of the Earth, all in one place. Brilliant.

The Rubbish Diet

Regular Bean Sprouts commenter 21st Century Mummy has a new blog - The Rubbish Diet. She's aiming to slim her bin to a size 0 by Zero Waste Week, commencing on 10th March 2008, and the blog is all about her family's quest to do just that.

As well as interesting and funny blog posts about her wheelie bin's weight loss programme, she also has a great collection of links to recycling and zero-waste websites. Check it out!

Alternatives to Freecycle

Freecycle is a worldwide network of local groups who keep useable second-hand goods out of the landfill by connecting people with unwanted stuff and people who want the stuff. It's a brilliant concept. When I first came heard of it someone told me it was "like eBay, but free". However some people have become unhappy with the way Freecycle groups work in practice.

It's OK though. There are lots of other groups where you can advertise your unwanted used stuff and people will come and take it away to use it again.

Realcycle is one example. They operate in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Like Freecycle, they use Yahoo Groups to manage the mailing list, which some people think is a bad thing. My local Freecycle group just switched to Realcycle. That group has over 15,000 members which is a good thing - obviously the more members there are, the more interesting items that get offered, and the more possible takers there are for the used items you want to offer.

Freesharing is another group that uses Yahoo Groups. They have over 825 local groups with over 350,000 members in the USA, Canada and around the world.

Sharing is Giving also uses Yahoo Groups. They have groups in the USA, Canada, and a small number of groups in Australia, Scotland, England and Wales.

Here are some other free recycling groups I have come across. I don't know anything about them, but if you are looking for alternatives to Freecycle, you might find something in this list.

Worldwide Free Share
Freesources Recycling Network
FreeUse.org
FreeGiveAway
Reuses Network
Around Again
Full Circles
Recycle 4 Free
Staga Network
ReUseIt Network
FreeMesa
FreeCycleAmerica.org
Free.LocalDataPlace.com
RealCycle
FreeCycle Earth
Gift of Giving
Don't Dump That
Free2Collect
GiveOrTake.org
FREEuse
Freecycle Australia
Texas Recycle Network
FreedomCycle (Connecticut)
Freecycling.com

Don't forget your local thrift/goodwill/charity shops if you have usable unwanted goods.

If you want to get rid of some books in a fun and environmentally responsible way, Bookcrossing is a really great way to do it. You leave a book in a public place - on a park bench perhaps - then you register the book with the bookcrossing website. An avid bookcrosser will come along shortly to pick up your book, and they may read it and post a review to the bookcrossing website, and maybe even leave it somewhere else for another bookcrosser to find. Or you could sell your unwanted books to your local second-hand bookshop.

If you have unwanted furniture, the Salvation Army might collect it to be reused by needy families. I know of various organisations near me who collect good used furniture for homeless people, victims of domestic abuse, asylum seekers and so on. There is a list of UK projects on the Sort It website.

If you don't want to give your used goods away but you don't want to throw them in the landfill, why not sell them on eBay or Craigslist?

The Sort-It website has more lists of places you can sell or give away unwanted used clothes, computer games, electrical appliances, bicycles and much more. So there's really no excuse to put serviceable stuff in the landfill. There are dozens of options for giving it away or selling it to be reused. What's more, you can probably find good second-hand alternatives to most of the things you might be thinking of buying new. And if you can't imagine why that would be a good idea - you need to go and watch The Story of Stuff.

What's Up With Freecycle?

One of my local Freecycle groups has schismed and become a Realcycle group instead. In case you don't know, Freecycle is a network of local groups where people can offer unwanted but usable items free to anyone who wants to collect them - I use it to get free used items, such as books, fabric, and a freezer, and also to give away things I no longer need but which may be useful to other people such as a piano, furniture, and clothes. It's a brilliant idea, and it works really well. I've been using it for a couple of years now. But some people are unhappy with it.

One problem is to do with The Freecycle Network accepting a sponsorship deal with a waste management firm. I've recently watched all of The Sopranos straight through, but I don't think it's that sort of "waste management firm". Even so, some people are unhappy with this sponsorship deal, and view it as "selling out". Other people are unhappy with what they see as nepotism within The Freecycle Network, whilst still others are unhappy with the way the Network has demanded that other organisations change their names because they think it might infringe their trademark. There are also accusations of heavy-handed behaviour towards groups and moderators who, it is claimed, don't comply with the proper way of doing things.

I must say I don't really understand it all and I have no idea of what is at the bottom of it. Maybe the boss people at Freecycle are power-hungry nepotistic control freaks who have sold out to corporate sponsorship. It happens. Or maybe some of the people who are complaining are paranoid over-sensitive hippies who destroy the good things they helped to build. I've seen that before, too. Honestly, I don't know what the truth is. If you want to dig a bit deeper yourself, you could start by looking at FreeRRRs blog, Tim Oey's blog, or GreenRibbon.

Still, I believe that diversity is good, and the good news is there are now quite a lot of different ways you can freely recycle your unwanted goods. Realcycle is one of them. I'll tell you about some others soon.