bemoreeco

Move will make Green & Black’s the world’s leading manufacturer of organic Fairtrade chocolate

The company’s Maya Gold chocolate was the first official Fairtrade product to go on sale in Britain 15 years ago. Its extended range of chocolate bar and beverage products in the UK will start to carry the distinctive blue and green Fairtrade logo from late 2010, and it is hoped that full conversion of the entire chocolate bar and beverage range in more than 30 countries will be achieved by the end of 2011.

The Fairtrade market, which now covers products from developing countries ranging from chocolate and coffee to cotton, was worth £22m in 1999, according to a recent survey from the Co-op. Last year, sales of Fairtrade products grew to £635m and the Co-operative is predicting it could break the £1bn barrier in 2010.

The Fairtrade funding, approximately £300,000 a year, received by farmers in the Dominican Republic will be spent on sustainability initiatives which will include improving quality, yields and education, which in turn will increase income for farmers, ensure the cocoa industry becomes more sustainable and secure the supply of high-quality organic cocoa beans to support the brand’s international growth.

Dominic Lowe, managing director of Green & Black’s, said: “We buy quality, organic Trinitario cocoa beans from co-operatives in the Dominican Republic, and have done so for 10 years. Up until now we have committed US $500,000 in local initiatives to improve quality and availability, but we wanted to do more to support farmers.”
The Fairtrade Foundation (UK) executive director, Harriet Lamb, commented: “This newest commitment to Fairtrade will enable producers to benefit themselves, scale up their businesses and invest in their communities, not just now but for the future.”

See the whole article at theguardian.co.uk

Fruit and vegetables help set you up for a healthier lifestyle. Best of all, there is so much variety to choose from, all year long, there’s enough to keep even the fussiest eaters happy.

To get the best health benefits, your 5 A DAY portions should include a combination of a variety of fruit and vegetables. That’s 5 portions altogether, not 5 portions of fruit and 5 portions of veg.

Here are 5 great reasons to eat 5 portions of fruit and vegetables A DAY

• They’re packed with vitamins and minerals.
• They can help you to maintain a healthy weight.
• They’re an excellent source of fibre and antioxidants.
• They help reduce the risk of heart disease, stroke and some cancers.
• They taste delicious and there’s so much variety to choose from.

The story of a man with a gun and a mission – to eliminate all instances of unseasonal vegetable consumption.

Written and directed by the brilliant Michael ‘Watercress’ Wright and starring the magnificent Daniel ‘Legume’ Lapaine with deft editing by Simon ‘Water Celery’ Wilcox and a purringly perfect soundtrack by Michael ‘Mango’ Mertens.

Produced by the kind people at Mustard in association with the equally kind people at Eat Seasonably.

The weather is still holding out which must be great news for al those who are doing outdoor recycling week tasks and pledges.

Recycle Week Reading

I have come across two interesting articles last night while using yahoo search. The first article was about how to get rid of an old computer.  The UK is particularly bad at recycling electronic waste.

A survey, commissioned by the computer manufacturer Dell and published last month, named us as the worst consumers in Europe when it comes to recycling technological waste. Eighty per cent of Germans dispose of their old gadgets in an environmentally responsible way; we manage 50 per cent. For the full story of Terence Blacker Recycling Week pledge a separate post has been created.

The second story I came across came the Recycle For London website which details top tips sent in by readers. My favourite was “Plastic takeaway containers make perfect sandwich boxes for school or work!”. Click here for the rest of the tips.

Lunch (Recycle Week Pledge)

It is going to be hard task to top my lunch yesterday, when I made a great chicken and vegetable soup with left overs. I had very little to go with today. However as part of my Recycle Week pledge I had to create something which was edible.

This is what I had to make lunch with, Pita bread, raw spinach, cooked carrot, two boiled potatoes and 1/4 avocado. I had to rush this morning as I had to take my three boys to school, so I toasted the pitta and then piled everything in and pressed down hard. This may sound strange, and it was. Never mind maybe tomorrow I will have more luck.

Recycling Video

Garbage! The Revolution Starts at Home is a feature documentary about how the family household has become one of the most ferocious environmental predators of our time. Concerned for the future of his new baby boy Sebastian, writer and director Andrew Nisker takes an average urban family, the McDonalds, and asks them to keep every scrap of garbage that they create for three months. He then takes them on a journey to find out where it all goes and what it’s doing to the world.

Recycle Week Reading

Last night I was searching twitter for any interesting recycle stories. The one which caught my eye was as a stunt which those clever marketing men at Coca-Cola have come up with. They have created a 50m artwork made up of 200,000 aluminium cans by Robert Bradford. Click here for pictures, video and BeMoreEco post.

The second story which I found interesting was found at www.which.co.uk. Their stating that Britons waste billions of pounds and are damaging the environment by throwing old clothes in the bin.

A You Gov poll found that 63% of people’s clothing ends up in landfill sites, rather than being recycled or reused. Some of this clothes waste will go on to biodegrade to form methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change. The poll also revealed that British consumers spend £38 billion each year on new clothes, but only 16% of the clothes they throw out are recycled. According to the study, the average UK consumer spends around £600 on clothes a year and discards £400 worth.

Out of nearly 2,000 people questioned, 39% said they did consider what impact throwing away clothes had on the environment.

Lunch (Recycle week pledge)

Day 2 of my recycle week pledge ended up me having another wrap made with organic turkey burgers and green beans (Monday nights kids meal), toasted with some mustard. This may seem like an interesting meal, but surprisingly it tasted OK (with extra ketchup). Tomorrow I am going to have baked potato or soup!

Eco Recycling Bins (Recycle week pledge)

My second pledge for recycling week was to to post and promote recycling bins. I have been trawling through flickr example of recycling bins which can be found through the world. Below is  selection of my favourite ones.

Also as bonus if you sign up to MoreEco during Recycling Week we will give you an extra 100 joining points. Use offer code ‘recyclenow’.

Environmental Defense Fund scientists have evaluated aspects of wild fisheries and fish farming operations and analyzed 200+ types of fish and shellfish common in the U.S. market.

The Eco-Best choices “represent fish whose fishing or farming methods have minor impacts on the environment.” 

In its top 10 Eco-Best Seafood, the Environmental Defense Fund also lists:

1. Char, Arctic (farmed)
2. Mackerel, Atlantic
3. Mussels
4. Oysters (farmed)
5. Sablefish (Alaska, Canada)
6. Salmon, wild (Alaska)
7. Sardines, Pacific (U.S.)
8. Trout, rainbow (farmed)
9. Tuna, albacore (U.S., Canada)

It took me my son’s science project on recycling to realize that we can really do something constructive out of the waste we generate from our kitchen. Before you turn up your noses and crank about the “Rotting Veggie Odors + Recycling”, let me explain the pros of the Terraviva Domestic Composter. This is a device that sits neatly on your counter top, as stylish as any other appliance that you own. It simply makes a mish-mash of all the veggie waste into something palatable for the plants.

Organic stuff like your peels and leftovers added to the composter decomposes with the help of aerobic microorganisms. These organisms just speed up the degradation process via electromechanical processes and make sure there is no stink. You will need to hook it up to a power source for around 20 minutes a day, and once its tanked up, it just keeps doing its thing. It has the capacity to process 12 liters or 7 kgs of waste at a time.
Those with kitchen gardens are really going to like this thing.

Designer: Ravel Casela

All those people who scorn at green ideas, here’s the Mother of Them ALL, and its by biggie Philips, so lets see what you’re gonna do about it! Biosphere Home Farming is a structure that houses fishes, root veggies, grasses, plants and algae all under one roof. It takes all your kitchen-trash as fodder for the farm and manages to generate food, water and cooking gas for the family.

In short you consume your trash in a more refined way! Ok, enough of green bashing hit the jump to see what exactly Philips has to say about this concept.

“Biosphere home farming concept generates food and cooking gas, while filtering water. The concept supplements a families nutritional needs by generating several hundred calories a day in the form of fish, root vegetables, grasses, plants and algae. Unlike conventional hydroponic nurseries this system incorporates a methane digester than produces heat and gas to power lights, similarly algae produces hydrogen and the root plants produces oxygen, which is fed back to fish. CO2 is pumped into the plants. It is a closed loop interdependent system. The system uses waste water and non-consumable household matter and delivers food in return.”

Source – Yanko Design

Healthy soil makes healthy plants makes healthy people. – Old organic maxim.

Put most simply, organic is a method of growing food using only naturally occurring substances. Properly done, it recycles all wastes and improves the soil as it increases crop yields. Its goal is to work with nature’s laws and tendencies, rather than to counteract or defeat them. Practitioners of the method conceive of all life in the system as an interrelated whole to be strengthened, rather than as a group of creatures to be selectively supported, suppressed, or eliminated chemically.

Compost—the rotted remains of what was once living tissue—is both the source and destiny of life, and it is the heart and engine of the organic method. It. What was alive dies and decays to form a nourishing seedbed for new life. The concept is as old as life itself. Go into the woods and look closely at the forest floor. You’ll see the leaves and twigs of past years decaying to form a rich, spongy duff that nourishes the trees and plants currently growing there, which will in turn eventually die, decay, and nourish yet another generation of plants. William Shakespeare articulated it well when the Friar in Romeo and Juliet proclaimed: “The Earth that’s Nature’s mother is her tomb/ What is her burying grave, that is her womb.”

Compost is the perfect fertilizer, containing plant and animal remains, which naturally have the elements needed for the construction of new plants and animals. 

Read full article at ecomii.

So you’re packing your kid’s lunch to avoid the whole Mystery Meat thing. Food from home is better than whatever’s slopped onto the tray by the Lunch Lady, right? But what about what you pack that lunch IN? Many insulated vinyl lunchboxes are chock full of lead, not exactly what you want cozying up to the homemade or organic treats you’ve lovingly prepared. So what to do? Alternatives, baby. And they’re not as hard to come by as you might think.

Laptop Lunches is one-stop shopping for lead-free lunchware. Their Laptop System includes an uber-cool bento set, insulated carrier, and a water bottle. I’d exchange the plastic bottle pictured for a stainless steel version, though; Kleen Kanteen makes several sizes and they’re BPA-free, reusable, incredibly durable (mine have lasted years now), and eco-friendly..

Want just the bento? Ichibankan has a great selection.

Brown-bagging it? Not recommended—kids already toss an astounding 67 pounds of lunch trash per year. Each. That’s a lot of baloney sandwiches and mushy apples. Instead, go reusable with a stainless steel food jar containing last night’s leftovers, tucked into washable canvas lunch bag. Or go one better with the Eco Lunch kit, a cotton bag containing a 2-tier stainless steel lunch container, bamboo utensils, and cloth napkins. No fuss, no waste. Score!

Go retro. Remember when lunch boxes were made of metal? They still are.

Want more ideas? Go here.

Source; Super Eco