1000 Flowers for the Planet - #180 Use a Metal Peg Container

1000 Flowers for the Planet - #180 Use a Metal Peg Container

Over the past couple of decades I have actually gone through several peg containers which were made of plastic or fabric. The fabric one wore out beyond repair and the plastic ones quickly became brittle in the sunshine and broke into pieces. I now own a metal peg container that is very stylish and sturdy, and it will last me a lifetime. Buying a metal peg container means you avoid using plastic, finite resources and regular financial outlay. It gives the planet a chance to breathe. I recommend always bringing pegs indoors when not in use, as the summer sun will make them brittle and the winter rain will rust the springs. Your metal peg container will give you good service if you look after it, can be repaired if necessary and will remain a useful laundry item for years to come. It’s another step towards a plastic-free life.

1000 Flowers for the Planet - #179 Use a Metal Watering Can

1000 Flowers for the Planet - #179 Use a Metal Watering Can

As various items around my house wear out, break or split, I am replacing them with non-plastic versions. My plastic watering can hasn’t worn out yet, but give it time and the sunshine will make it brittle, then I’ll find myself watering the garden with the water pouring from more holes than usual. A galvanized metal watering can will last a lifetime though. So buy something that will do the job for a very long time, and you’ll save money, as well as avoiding an oil-based product, using finite resources and then adding it to landfill where it will take hundreds of years to break down. Buy one metal watering can that will last you a lifetime, fix it when necessary, enjoy using it in your beautiful garden and be kind to the planet.

1000 Flowers for the Planet - #178 Use Cotton Canvas Floaties

1000 Flowers for the Planet - #178 Use Cotton Canvas Floaties

Living without plastic is not a new idea. Cotton swimming aids have been around for at least 50 years! So when you begin training your child how to swim and want to provide a degree of safety in the water, consider buying plastic-free, cotton floaties. You will be avoiding oil-based plastic products that leach chemicals and use finite resources, and choosing to use something a lot more sustainable.

1000 Flowers for the Planet - #177 Honour the Future

1000 Flowers for the Planet - #177 Honour the Future

Here in Australia (and in New Zealand) we are celebrating Anzac Day. This is a very important date on the Aussie and Kiwi calendars. It commemorates the day Australian and New Zealand troops landed at Gallipoli in 1915 to fight the Turks in World War I. I’m not going to write about that today though, because I will write about that next year when it will be the 100^th anniversary of the landing.

What I want to suggest with today’s Flower is to honour the future by referring to the past. As we remember the fallen from all wars past, let’s think about how these men and women, our ancestors, our loved ones, people we never even knew, fought for their future. They fought to ensure that we would never have to fight again. But we haven’t learned that lesson, despite all the blood that was shed. Let’s learn how to get it right from here on: to learn to live together; to learn to respect each other; to learn to respect the planet; to learn how to help each other; to learn that people are more important than money; to cherish the beauty of this world. Let’s honour the future by learning from our past and putting our shoulders to the wheel to get it right.

1000 Flowers for the Planet - #176 Use a Broom

1000 Flowers for the Planet - #176 Use a Broom

Here’s another good way to benefit both the environment and your health at the same time. When you pick up the hose to clean the patio tiles, the deck or the driveway, you use an extremely valuable resource – water. It certainly makes the job quicker and less strain on the muscles, but the alternative has so many more benefits than that. By using a broom to sweep away leaves and tidy outdoor entertaining areas you give yourself a good physical workout, which improves your fitness and benefits your health. You will save money when you look after your health and even more money on the water you haven’t wasted.

Turning our attention to the inside of the house, using a broom on wet floor areas, rather than the vacuum cleaner saves electricity use, and therefore non-renewable resources such as fossil fuels and oil. Brooms last a long time, do not take any time to set up before use and require a very small amount of maintenance. If you’ve purchased one made of wood and bamboo fibres, you’re looking after the planet even more. Well done.

1000 Flowers for the Planet - # 175 Donate Unused Paint

1000 Flowers for the Planet - # 175 Donate Unused Paint

It’s fairly rare to use up every drop of paint in the tin. Consequently many of us have a few tins lurking in the shed ‘just in case’ we need to touch up a mark on the wall. But paint doesn’t last forever. Eventually it hardens and is of no use to anyone. For those times when you do need to touch up an area, put aside a small quantity of paint in a glass jar and store somewhere cool. As for the rest, consider donating your paint to someone else. There may be a charity that would like to freshen up their premises: the local football clubhouse, the Senior Citizens Centre, a Community Centre, Not for Profit organisation or Child Care centre. Maybe the Salvation Army would like donated paint to freshen the home of someone in need. Maybe a nursing home would like to brighten some rooms, even if it’s just a feature wall to lift the spirits of the elderly living there.

An idea a little more left of centre, and for those in contact with the art world, donate your paint to an artist. Who knows what masterpieces may come of it?

1000 Flowers for the Planet - #174 Use Green Paint

1000 Flowers for the Planet - #174 Use Green Paint

This Flower was so much harder than I expected it to be. In the past I’ve heard of environmentally friendly paint and thought it was a straight-forward exercise to use a ‘green’ paint. However, there are a great many shades of green. So what is the problem with the paints we’ve been using? They can ‘off gas’ fumes for up to twelve months, and these fumes may cause health issues, such as breathing problems, asthma and allergies. These VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds) are the main concern in house paints, but when paints are declared completely VOC free that’s not quite the whole story. Measuring standards for how much VOC is in paint varies from one country to another, where some claims that the paint is completely free of VOC actually means the amount is quite small and well below the set standard. Added into the mix of problems is that the base colour may be low VOC or VOC free, but the pigment that is added to achieve that perfect colour you’re after may contain high levels of VOC. It’s all quite complex. A good site to read more is at www.greenpainters.org.au

Using a paint that contains as few chemicals as possible seems to be the way to go. But we must also consider sustainability. Standard paints are oil based which means they use a non-renewable resource and the production process creates a lot of toxic waste that is not biodegradable. Green paints use plant and mineral bases which are renewable resources, and have low VOC levels. So choosing paint because it’s manufactured from renewable resources may be the best way we can decorate our homes at this time.

Further considerations you may like to make are where the paint was manufactured, how many miles it has travelled to reach the end user (i.e. overseas or local manufacturer), how responsible has the manufacturer been in regards to waste and how will you dispose of unused product.

You will need to do some research before choosing the best paint for your circumstances. At this point in time, that’s the best we can do.

Catching my Breath

I'm a bit burnt out at the moment and hence behind in my posts for 1000 Flowers for the Planet - actually got stuck on green paint, but you'll hear about that eventually. Meanwhile, a friend has sent me some gorgeous wools to use for my Flower project. This friend has an uncanny way of sending me things in the mail at precisely the times I need a show of support - she must be psychic! Thank you to MSW. xx

1000 Flowers for the Planet - #173 Use a Rake

1000 Flowers for the Planet - #173 Use a Rake

Here’s a good way to benefit both the environment and your health at the same time. When you pick up the blower vac to shift the autumn leaves you use energy in the form of petrol/gas or electricity (possibly fossil fuels or uranium). It certainly makes the job quicker and less strain on the muscles, but the alternative has so many more benefits than that. By using a rake to tidy your garden/yard you give yourself a good physical workout, which improves your fitness and benefits your health. You will save money when you look after your health and even more money on the fuel you haven’t had to purchase. The environment will benefit from all the resources you’ve prevented from being used and their associated costs (transportation, fossil fuels, water, air pollution, carbon emissions) and there will be no urban run-off (Flower #35). Your neighbours will also benefit because they won’t be disturbed by noise pollution, meaning better community relations. SO many benefits!

And on a final note, picking up a rake gives you a wonderful opportunity to slow down, take pleasure in your garden, gain some quiet time for reflection or just having your own head space, and conclude with the reward (on so many levels) of a job well done.

1000 Flowers for the Planet - #172 Buy Chlorine-Free Products

1000 Flowers for the Planet - #172 Buy Chlorine-Free Products

Chlorine can be found in bleach, a common cleaning product in many households. It is also used in making solvents for dry cleaning, textiles, pharmaceuticals, insecticides, dyestuffs, processing chicken meat and interestingly, in weapons (mustard gas), which was used with dire effect during World War I. It is a major component of PVC (see Flower suggestion #141) which should most definitely be avoided. Chlorine is also used to treat drinking water because of its effectiveness in killing all types of bacteria, and whilst we don’t want nasty bacteria in our drinking water, we also don’t want all the good bacteria inside our systems to be killed off, causing health issues.

But back to products: I’ve been trying to find answers regarding the safety or otherwise of chlorine and its effects on the environment and, as usual, have found just as many websites claiming it is safe as websites condemning the chemical. How does the average person know what is right and what is wrong? I have learned that Sweden is practically chlorine free. Why would they do that if they didn’t think it was a necessary step to take? Let me simplify the matter by pointing you in the direction of an article that is almost 20 years old that talks about the fight to ban chlorine use. Furthermore, the article tells us that there are alternatives for every instance of chlorine use. Read it at http://www.greens.org/s-r/078/07-53.html

In conclusion, erring on the side of sustainable living practices and caring for our environment, the suggestion to steer clear of products containing chlorine is a viable and sensible one. Give it some thought.

1000 Flowers for the Planet - #171 Install Motion Sensor Light Switches

1000 Flowers for the Planet - #171 Install Motion Sensor Light Switches

Motion sensor lights will turn ‘on’ when movement is detected and ‘off’ after a pre-set period of time. Therefore, inside or outside, they offer solutions for ensuring lighting remains off as often as possible in areas where safety is a consideration. Indoor they can be used in offices, toilets, hallways, pantries, walk-in robes, laundries or open plan areas. Outdoors they can be used in porches, patios, garages, driveways and outdoor living spaces. They are useful in public places such as hospital corridors, arcades, pedestrian tunnels, shopfronts or anywhere security may be an issue. 

They will use power even when they are off, but the idea is they will provide light only for the amount of time absolutely necessary, therefore they will use less electricity in the long-run. This saves the planet's natural resources, reduces carbon emissions and saves money.

1000 Flowers for the Planet - #170 Clean the Dishwasher Filter Weekly

1000 Flowers for the Planet - #170 Clean the Dishwasher Filter Weekly

You simply cannot clean anything with dirty tools and equipment. It doesn’t even make sense to think you can. So take some time to consider what your dishwasher does for you and see if you are doing anything in return. You may give your dishes and cutlery a preliminary rinse before putting them into the dishwasher, maybe there’s the odd time when you don’t even do that. Where do you think all the food waste goes? Not all of it manages to get washed ‘away’ (remember there’s no such place as ‘away’ – it’s always ‘somewhere’ but you just don’t bother to find out ‘where’). The filter will do its best to a certain point, and then it won’t be able to cope any more. You need to clean it.

Here’s how: First read through the manufacturer’s manual and follow the instructions as given therein. If you do not have the manual anymore then follow these steps, with a bit of common sense thrown in: Empty the dishwasher. Remove the filter and mesh cover, remove any large pieces of waste then put into a sink with warm soapy water. Use a toothbrush (one you keep specifically for cleaning – not one from the bathroom!) and gently brush out any stubborn debris. Rinse thoroughly. To completely kill any odours remaining in the filter, fill the sink with warm water and a cup of vinegar, and soak the filter for about ten minutes. Replace in your dishwasher.

The thing about doing this weekly is that it’s always so much easier to clean things regularly than to leave them for months at a time when they eventually need a lot of hard elbow grease to get thoroughly clean. It also ensures that you are eating from crockery and cutlery that actually is clean, and cooking with utensils that actually are clean. Would you want to go to someone’s house for dinner if you knew they never cleaned their dishwasher filter? Probably not. So make it a part of your weekly routine. Your dishwasher will function more efficiently and probably last longer, saving you money and preventing the machine from being put into landfill prematurely.

1000 Flowers for the Planet - #169 Invest in Drapes

1000 Flowers for the Planet - #169 Invest in Drapes

Drapes are heavy curtains which cover the entire width of the window, yet can be pulled back to the sides during the day to let in daylight. What they are particularly good at doing is keeping heat inside the house during cold winter months. Windows are an easy escape route for the heat we produce from our heating systems in our endeavours to be cosy and warm. By covering them with heavy drapes you can ensure a dramatic reduction in heat loss through that avenue, which in turn means you’ll heat your home more easily with less fuel. Conversely, in summer the drapes can keep in the cool air from your air conditioning, allowing you to set the temperature a little higher and save energy. Either way, the planet benefits from the use of less natural resources, less carbon emissions, and your wallet benefits from reduced heating expenses. All this is achievable by using a very attractive addition to your home in the form of drapes.

1000 Flowers for the Plnaet - #168 Get Your Water Heater a Blanket

1000 Flowers for the Plnaet - #168 Get Your Water Heater a Blanket

The first thing you need to do is read your manual to see if a blanket is NOT recommended for your particular model of hot water heater. If you no longer have your manual, contact the manufacturer and ask. Failing both of those steps, a simple check is to put your hand on the outside of the water heater: if it feels hot, you could save money by wrapping it with a water heater blanket. The blankets are inexpensive and could save 25%, or more, of your hot water expenses. There are quite a lot of variables in determining exactly how much you would save, but the idea is that by assisting your hot water service to keep the water hot with less energy, you are doing a lot to help the planet by producing less carbon emission, saving fuel, reducing transportation costs and saving money.

Ensure you install your hot water heater blanket correctly, particularly if you have a gas heater, and follow any manufacturer’s instructions.

1000 Flowers for the Planet - #167 Honour Your Ancestors

1000 Flowers for the Planet - #167 Honour Your Ancestors

Today, 5 April 2014, is Tomb Sweeping Day in Hong Kong, more properly known as the Ching Ming Festival (Qingming Festival). It is a special day put aside to enjoy the greenery of springtime and to tend to the graves of the ancestors. Apart from people enjoying themselves, the tradition involves attending graves of the ancestors. Weeds are cleared away, the tomb is repaired where necessary and everything is made neat and tidy. The person’s favourite food and wine, and paper money are presented then burned to ensure the deceased are not without food and money. This is a somewhat simplified version of the festival. Please read more about this wonderful gesture at http://chineseculture.about.com/od/chinesefestivals/a/Tomb-Sweeping-Day.htm

I think this is a wonderful festival and an honourable one. To remember our ancestors is to show our respect for the past, for all they have done for us. It’s important to know where we come from so we can understand where we are going. Hopefully we will be remembered in our turn.

Furthermore, the planet benefits because the tombs, the graveyards where we have set up our monuments, are tidied, repaired and cleaned. To look after what we have built is the right thing to do, and honourable.

1000 Flowers for the Planet - # 166 Use Natural Air Fresheners

1000 Flowers for the Planet - # 166 Use Natural Air Fresheners

One way to fill your home with a beautiful odour is to boil some natural ingredients from the pantry. Things such as cinnamon sticks, lemon leaves or rinds, orange leaves or rinds, grapefruit rinds, mint, herbs, vanilla pods or cloves can be added to a pot of water and boiled for several hours. Try a mix of a few things and have fun experimenting. Homemade potpourri is another lovely, natural way to make the house smell pleasant, but ensure you don’t buy commercial potpourri as it contains synthetic perfumes, which would defeat our purpose. Make your own with dried citrus or dried rose petals with a touch of essential oil (which you’ve also ensured is the real deal) and put it in pretty bowls at various points around your home. Check the internet for plenty of recipes for making potpourri at home.

One special area that often requires attention is the loo, and this is where a spray is most useful. Make your own using the aforementioned boiling technique and your favourite smells and keep handy in a spray bottle that is well-labelled.

If you love growing herbs, try hanging them to dry and their presence will fill your home with their pleasant aroma – then you can cook with them too.

Oils and extracts – that are the real deal – can be dabbed onto a cotton ball and placed around the home. Try some in a small basket in the bathroom, a vase in the kitchen or lounge room, or hang them in pretty organza bags.

There are many different ideas on the internet – all you need to do is take the time to find a recipe that suits you and your needs. Be careful about essential oils and ensure they are 100% natural, because the aim is to keep chemicals, and therefore toxins, out of your environment. It will be better for the planet and save you some money too.

1000 Flowers for the Planet- #165 Keep Indoor Plants

1000 Flowers for the Planet- #165 Keep Indoor Plants

Apart from looking attractive, indoor plants offer quite a few environmental benefits that we probably overlook. One of the most important is that they improve air quality. This alone leads to lots of other benefits by improving the well-being of people, reducing illness and helping to lower stress levels and negative feelings. In workplaces this will further improve productivity. People will feel less tired from the effects of carbon dioxide (what we breathe out) because the plants will counter-balance the CO2. Higher productivity improves the bottom line for the business and makes the boss happy. Less illness will lead to fewer days off work, further improving the happiness of the boss (so much happiness!!). They also help control humidity to within the optimum range for human health. When humidity is too low we are more likely to develop viral infections. If it is too high we’re vulnerable to other diseases.

All of this from a few pretty plants.

1000 Flowers for the Planet - #164 Insulate Your Roof

1000 Flowers for the Planet - #164 Insulate Your Roof

Most of us are aware that heat rises, so be conscious that a quarter (25%) of your heat is lost through the roof of your home. You can reduce your energy bills quite considerably if you rectify this by installing quality insulation. The knock-on effect is huge – reduced energy use, less fossil fuels being used, less transportation involved in getting the energy to your home, less carbon emissions and more money in your pocket. Good for the environment – good for your finances.

1000 Flowers for the Planet - #163 Service Your Heating System

1000 Flowers for the Planet - #163 Service Your Heating System

Whatever type of heating system you have, it should be serviced regularly to ensure maximum efficiency. Check your manual or contact the manufacturer to learn how often they recommend a professional service call. Ensure ducts are free of air leaks and are well-insulated, and clean air filters, where applicable. Well performing appliances run efficiently, are safer and use less energy, saving you money as well as natural resources. And saving resources reduces energy use, transportation needs and greenhouse emissions, and ultimately that huge knock-on effect helps the planet.