Low Impact

They're cute, but have an appetite for home-grown vegetables!

Since moving into our new house, one of the first orders of the day has been to establish a vegetable garden. The environmental benefits are pretty clear – I know exactly what pesticides have been used (none!), exactly what artificial fertilisers have been used (none!) and how much fuel was needed to transport them from the soil to my kitchen (none!).

Add to that the fact that after a week at work, getting out into the garden feels positively therapeutic and its a win-win story all round!

Unfortunately, it turns out that I’m not the only one with a taste for organically grown… Continue reading

Dispensers like this can reduce the amount of waste from hotels

We recently came back from a short holiday away. The holiday was short, but the distance was long – around 1200 kilometres each way! We drove the Prius, and as you can see from the sidebar tracking my progress against my New Years Resolutions, its made quite a dent in my “allowance” of 10,000km!

We travelled in stages, stopping off for a night along the way. In one of the hotels we stayed at, I noticed the dispensers… Continue reading

Old carpet – how best to reuse it?

So, we’ve had our sustainably harvested, dust free bamboo flooring laid down…but what to do with the old carpet? How on earth do you re-use 90 square metres of carpet?

Given that our main aim with our renovations is to have an environmentally friendly and sustainable home, starting off by dumping 90 square metres of carpet into landfill just felt wrong! A search on the net yielded a few ideas, and asking around gave a few more. Continue reading