Hippyshopper has some interesting comebacks to say to people who say things like “We’ll all be dead before global warming becomes a problem” (one of my personal most-hated phrases to hear. The comebacks aren’t perfect and the challenges aren’t all-encompassing but when dealing with eco-sceptics it’s a good start.
Well I’ll let the experts explain about why organic really is better,(article from the Times Online), but here’s the rundown:
There are additional, non-tangible benefits of eating organic food, too:
Give organic a try!
Why Organic? (consumer site from the Soil Association - see their Healthy Eating page)
Organic Trade Association (North America)
I’ve been checking this out lately, and there are a few things you can try to get rid of the smell of Birkenstocks that you wear every day (like I’ve been doing):
I think one trick you might need to do is to put your sandals in a cloth bag (or wrap them in a T-shirt) after inserting any smell-absorbing stuff. This would help the baking powder, herbs, wood, whatever, absorb the odor from your Birks, and simulates the effect of sticking those same ingredients in a shoe, which is of course enclosed. In the morning, just unwrap and go. Works a treat.
I try to deodorize my sandals about every couple of weeks, maybe once a week in the summer.
Hopefully this helps you avoid that ’stinky hippy’ moniker that still seems to get spread around sometimes 
Modern cleaning products are so wasteful and overpriced, it’s easy to forget that just a couple of generations ago, our grandmothers were making their own cleaning products out of naturally produced ingredients like water, vinegar and baking soda. With borax, made with boron, a naturally-occuring element, more powerful cleaning products became plentiful. Borax is still used in all sorts of modern products and is just as useful as it was when first used.
So get yourself these handy ingredients, available at nearly all shops or grocery stores:
Vinegar is an acid, cuts through grease and is also anti-bacterial. Lemon juice (or lime juice) also cuts through grease, and makes a room smell nice. Baking soda is a mild abrasive. Borax kills mildew. What more do you need?
So here are some proven suggestions for using these items for environmentally-friendly cleaning products.
Why haven’t I listed bleach? For one, it smells nasty. It’s dangerous to keep around kids and pets, also. When stored and used properly it can definitely get rid of mildew very quickly, though. However, just be wary of claims that it will ‘clean’ tea & coffee stains from cups, or that it ‘cleans’ toilets. It doesn’t actually remove dirt, it just bleaches the color out of the stains. It’s also not the greatest thing to be flushing, untreated, into lakes and rivers. Something to think about.
Hopefully this will help you think about trying out these natural and environmentally friendly cleaning ideas. 
No Impact Man is a great blog about a guy living in a big city (New York City, no less) that has taken his wife and kid on a journey of living a no impact life. The guy has even gone so far as to take away the family fridge so the food supply is only good for a day or two. The lights go out when the sun goes down so everyone goes to bed early and gets a full night’s sleep. There is no TV so the family actually talk about their day.
Recently, he posted about what has happened during the year so far, as he’s been going along.
Basically, everything’s been fine. What a model of how life can be, even in a modern, busy city.
I don’t do enough about the ‘low stress’ part of this site, but I intend to correct that, starting now.
One of the things I’ve started doing in the past couple of weeks is exercising regularly. What’s the benefits of regular exercise? Lower stress, for one thing. Several more reasons are outlined in this helpful post, such as more physical endurance, clearer thinking, strong immune system and other reasons.
What I’ve started, essentially, is this:
I might even start attending kung fu or kickboxing classes once a week - if so, I’ll not run on the day I do that. Because I live in a pretty tight space compard to when I lived in the US, dumbbells instead of barbells are the better option for me - they take up far less room and I just need a chair instead of a large weight bench.
Apart from helping to lose weight and eat better, the idea of all this is to burn off frustrations and have ‘me time’ to think about things while I’m doing this stuff. More importantly, the exercise allows me to think of nothing at all except what I’m doing right at that moment. Dodging uneven pavement and curbs while I’m running or pausing correctly while I’m on the dumbbells occupies everything I’m doing at that moment, for that half hour or hour. It’s just like meditation, which I’ve tried before but could never concentrate fully on
I love reading about these countries that enact wide, sweeping changes quickly. Well, as long as they’re wise changes. Like Ireland being the first country to ban smoking in bars and restaurants. I think Ireland banned smoking in 2005, then Scotland followed in 2006, Northern Ireland, Wales and England in 2007. Australia is also one of a few countries that will ban incandescent light bulbs very soon.
Well, New Zealand has put in a ban of all coal- and gas-fired power plants as a way to reach a goal of 90% renewable energy by 2025. They are already create 70% of their energy through renewable resources like wind, water and geothermal sources, so they’re well on their way to a renewable future.
I know countries like the United States are huge, with a large infrastructure, plus a large and bloated government, are slow to change, but stuff like this proves that an entire government, when properly motivated, can do good things.
Now this is the type of blog post I really like: a huge list of ways to ‘do your part’, most of which take little or no extra money, and once they become habit just become part of your life. Just like turning off the lights when you leave a room, these very simple things add up to save energy, money and effort.
Because I don’t own the house I live in, I can’t enact all of these, but I can claim well over half of the things on this list, which helps me do my part.
My birthday was last week, so I took a few days off for a holiday, which is why there haven’t been posts. Sorry I didn’t warn you guys!
Anyway, today is worldwide Blog Action Day, where bloggers have been asked to write about the environment. All I can really say about this is might sound pithy and sappy, but maybe it’s worth considering.
Don’t take the world for granted, and don’t think nicer weather now means that climate change is a myth (that’s my preferred phrase, it’s less Hollywood-sounding) . I don’t fully subscribe to either extreme theory of global warming: that humans are the sole cause for it, or that humans have had no change on the world climate. Scientific theories are always being argued back and forth but there’s plenty of evidence to support both extremes.
In the end, your feelings on climate change just comes down to how much you believe either theory, and ultimately your feelings about the environment comes down to taking responsibility for your effect on your surroundings, whether it’s picking up rubbish on your street, asking the local civil works to fix storm drains, voting in elections or doing something to campaign about environmentalism.
As a fan of the outdoors, a frequent walker and sometimes trekker, I have loads of waterproof clothes and other clothes that are made for the outdoors. These are made from all sorts of plastics (The North Face has a popular series of bags made from PVC, which is basically poisonous, for example) and although merino wool has become popular recently because of its renewable and natural qualities, it’s pretty hard to find modern outdoorsy clothes that are ‘green’, which is pretty ironic.
Treehugger.com has a post about a UK company called Finisterre that has come up with ‘beeswax impregnated poly-cotton fabrics, garments of traceable merino wool, and embraced recycled polyester fabrics, whilst simultaneously dropping laminated waterproofs’. How very cool. Treehugger has a nice question-and-answer piece with the folks from Finisterre, which answers a lot of comparisons with modern outdoor clothing materials and techniques.
It’s a UK company, so hikers in the US will feel the pinch of the low-value dollar, but maybe it’ll be something to consider when it comes time to replace any clothes that wear out in the future.