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This article was written by Zoe at Rekindle, we thought that BeMoreEco readers by learn a thing or two about sustainable gardening. So take note!

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Growing your own veg is undoubtedly better, for you and the planet, than buying them from the supermarket.  However, the way you grow your vegetables also has its own effect on the environment.  The obvious issue is whether to use chemicals (including fertilizers, weedkillers and pesticides) or whether to go organic.  But beyond that, there are still ways you can reduce any negative impact from your vegetable plot.  These sustainable and thrifty tips will help you save money and reduce waste.

Plant Pots

We all know that we should try to avoid using plastic bags – but what about plastic pots?  Plastic plant pots are actually very difficult to recycle because of the variety of different types of plastic that they are made from, not to mention the number of different colours that are available.  This is where the three R’s come into play.  Firstly, instead of trying to recycle pots, simply reuse them, as many times as you can.  Plastic is quite tough and long-lasting, which is one of the reasons why it is such a problem when it ends up in landfill, but when it comes to reusing, this makes it ideal.

You can also reduce the number of plastic pots you use by buying biodegradable pots, or even making your own.  For example, this year I am using loo roll tubes as seedling pots.  They are an ideal size, you can write what you have planted straight onto the pot (instead of using plastic labels) and you can just plant them straight into the ground, as the cardboard will rot away, which will minimise root disturbance for the plant.  Plus, you will already have a free supply of them, and if you need lots you can always ask your friends to save theirs for you.  It’s a win-win situation for you and your plants!  Just make sure you press the compost in well so that it doesn’t all fall out the bottom when you pick it up!  Alternatively, you can use a loo roll tube and some newspaper to make your own Newspaper Plant Pots, which do have a bottom.

In addition you can also reuse any type of tray packaging as seed trays.  In the picture shows I have used a tray from a ready meal and the lid from a punnet of fruit.

Composting

If you are growing anything in your garden, you will need compost at some point, either to fill containers and raised beds, or to use as a soil improver.  Making your own compost is a great way of turning your garden and food waste into a valuable resource.  It also requires minimal effort and it all happens a bit like magic!  I chuck all my fruit, veg and garden waste into my compost bin, along with crushed eggshells, teabags and a bit of shredded paper (take that identity thieves!).

I have a two bin system which I have just set up.  I have one bin to fill up and one bin to use up.  Once the second bin is empty, I will empty the contents of the first bin into it, as a way of turning the compost.  The only downside is that it does take a long time to get anything useable, but if you can be patient it is well worth it.

I though that this ‘Dustbot’ robot was an April Fool gag, but then I realised that we are in May and therefore it must be real. Check out this video by BBC report Duncan Kennedy.

However, to summaries, the Dustbot, form Tuscany, Italy, is believed to be the world’s first robot that comes to take away rubbish from your house when you want it. The Dustbot can be summoned to your address through a mobile phone any time of the day. The robot works with a combination of GPS navigation and with a gyroscope to keep it upright. There are also a number of sensors on the machine so it does not bump into anything.

Dustbot’s inventors say they hope it will put an end to fixed times for rubbish collection and they say it is designed to work in tightly packed urban areas where large refuse trucks find it difficult to operate. A number of local authorities from around the world have already expressed an interest in it.

Every home in the UK must be fitted with an “energy smart meter” by 2020 to reduce energy use and eliminate estimated bills, under plans revealed by the government this week.

The new energy smart meters track real-time energy usage and send data about consumption in households and small businesses direct to utility companies. They could save suppliers and customers £2.5-£3.6bn over the next 20 years, according to the government, but will cost more than double this to install.

Launching a new consultation today on how the energy smart meters should be introduced, the Department for Energy and Climate Change (Decc) claimed the compulsory scheme will be the biggest electricity and gas smart metering project in the world.

Ed Miliband, the energy and climate change secretary, said: “The energy smart meters most of us have in our homes were designed for a different age, before climate change. Now we need to get smarter with our energy. This is a big project affecting 26 million homes, and several million businesses, so it’s important we design a system that brings best value to everyone involved.”

Source & Full Article; The Guardian

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We all have them, lots of them. Before you send them straight to the recycling bin, why not give them new life, new purpose, new hope beyond being the container that once held the cottage cheese? Even plastic containers can have dreams.

• Clean plastic food containers make great toys for your toddlers or preschoolers. Give them a few plastic containers and lids, a big box or two turned upside down for a kitchen “counter,” and a couple of sturdy utensils and let them cook away. Kid-sized aprons will add to the fun. Set up the play kitchen near your real kitchen, if you can, and let them cook while you do.

• Use plastic food containers to store leftovers in the freezer. The smaller sizes are perfect for freezing an individual serving of whatever you happen to have leftover. If you don’t have time to prepare your lunch, just grab a container out of the freezer and let it thaw during the morning. A quick reheat in the oven or microwave will give you a warm lunch, and you can wash out the container and take it home to use for the same thing again.

• Plastic food containers make great lunch containers. You don’t have to go the freezer route; just scoop in enough of whatever you made for dinner into a container, refrigerate, and take it with you. They could be used for messier items in kids’ school lunches, as well.

• Plastic food containers work well as drawer organizers. They can round up jewelry, extra buttons, bobby pins, safety pins, business cards, whatever you’ve got. You can keep the lid and close things up if you want, or just slide the lid underneath the container and keep it open.

• Plastic food containers can be helpful gift wrap organisers Use the smaller containers for pieces of ribbon, small bows, or small decorative objects you might use in wrapping a gift. Use the larger containers for pretty fabric bags, paper gift bags, and scraps you want to reuse.

• Plastic food containers can be modified to makepots for starting seedlings. They are a better size than the tiny little things you often end up with, especially if you want to get your plants to a really good start before transplanting outdoors. Just punch a few holes in the bottom for drainage, and maybe put down a layer of pebbles before you fill it with your soil.

• Bigger plastic food containers work well to hold food scraps you accumulate through the day and then dump in your compost. You could even keep a separate one for your coffee grounds, since there are so many other uses for them.

• Small and medium sized plastic containers are great for travel containers for your homemade baby food and toddler snacks. Use the ones with good, tight-fitting lids and fill as needed. Older toddlers can often manage opening and holding the containers, so they are great for snacks on a longer trip.

While in London on Wednesday the Team at BeMoreEco decided to make a quick visit to Grand Designs Live at Excell in London. Are main aim was to have a look at the Eco buildings which were being showcased at the event.

We visited the future-build theatre by ECO2H2OUSE.  This eco house demonstrated the techologies being used in the building of a low/zero carbon home. In the UK today, an average new house which uses the technology involved will consume 77% less energy for space heating when compared with one built to standard building regulations.

The Eco House uses innovative low-energy technology that has been designed to meet the passive house energy standards and levels of air tightness. The Passive house standard is as follow;

    * Compact form & good insulation

    * Southern orientation & shade considerations

    * Energy-efficient window glazing & frames

    * Highly efficient heat recovery form exhaust air using and air to air heat exchanger

    * Energy-saving household appliances

    * Total energy demand for space heating and cooling of less than 15kWh/m2/yr

The second eco house we toured was the ‘EcoHub’. This cute mini dome-shaped eco pod offers the last word in super energy efficiency. Clad in sustainable wooden or recycled tyre tiles, this two-bedroom, double pod home uses mirco-renewable technology to achives a zero carbon rating. The people at EcoHub are committed to dramatically reduce our carbon footprint. We got on well with them as this is the same aim at we have at MoreEco.

The third eco house we were inspired by, was the landARK. If you have a scrap of land, maybe a back garden, a hillside, a coppice clearing, or maybe eveen a corner of somebody’s car park (plus a few weeks holiday) then this i agreat fun eco house to have. All you need is a rubber mallet, a tape measure, screwdrives, a powerdrive drill and enough peace to read the manual. Checlkout the pictures we have taken.

Finally, the last house we visited was the Cloud 9 stand. These timber eco homes are again made with sustainable timber and come with solar panels, heat recovery ventilation, large windows and open space plan. energy bills for these house are less than £400 per year.

We have uploaded pictures of the Grand Designs Live event taken from the trustworthy BeMoreEco iPhone to MoreEco Flickr account. The slide show is below.

An ‘eco-pod’ home, which promises to be more energy efficient than standard houses, has been shown at this year’s Grand Designs show at London’s ExCel Centre.

From the guys who brought you the CoolPeopleCare.org site that makes sustainability easy, comes their first book “New Day Revolution, How to Save the World in 24 Hours.” It’s a fun, quick read. What we like most about it are the 100+ easy tips to living a greener, more stress free life.  Do one thing a day and you can make a big difference over time.

These are Blogger Park Howell’s Top 10 Favorite Tips:

1. Wake up earlier: Since I wake up at 4:59 a.m. practically every day, this one resonates with me. I get more meaningful things done between 5:23 and 7:19 a.m. than practically any other time during the day. They point out that getting up a few minutes earlier every day buys you as many as 50 extra hours per year. Just think of what you can do with 50 extra hours.
2. What’s that lever for? Personal pet peeve: Use your friggin’ blinker and relieve some stress in those drivers around you. Your blinker is the only human element on your car. It’s kind, considerate, and courteous, and it says, “Excuse me, pardon me, I’d love to get over, thank you very much.”
3. Trick your plate: The next time you renew your license plate, sign-up for a plate that supports a cause. You’ll be a rolling brand evangelist and your cause will raise some money.
4. Digital donations: We spend one-third of our lives at the office, so naturally it’s an environment where we can make a big impact. Start by donating those old computers, printers, cells phones and other electronics to schools and charities.
5. Personalize the mug: More than 44 billion paper cups are used each year for hot drinks. So pal around with your own coffee or tea mug and use and reuse it.
6. Just click it: *Sam and Stephen prove in their book that that you don’t have to do much to end up doing a lot. For example, they point to the Animal Rescue Site that enables you to provide a half a bowl of food to a needy pet with a simple click of your mouse.
7. Get fresh: Frozen food requires 10-times more energy to produce than fresh food. Chew on that for a bit.
8. Take the bag back: 500 billion plastic grocery bags are consumed worldwide annually. So either use canvas (some prefer hemp) shopping bags, or re-use your existing paper and plastic.
9. Change the bulb: If every American household changed their five most-used light fixtures to energy-saving incandescent bulbs, it’d be like taking 8,000,000 cars off the road saving $6,000,000,000 in energy costs. That’s a lot of 0’s!
10. An email a day helps keep global warming away: Ok, so I wrote that one. You can’t blame Sam and Stephen.  Fact is, though, I subscribe to their daily email on the handful of simple things that I can do, and the cool events happening on and offline around the country to help me save the planet five minutes at a time.

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

The Zero Carbon House returns to Ecobuild, a year after its hugely successful launch at the event in 2008. With updates to the original ruralZED design and a detailed case study on the performance of the very house on display at Ecobuild last February – since reassembled in Dunkirk – it’s an unmissable opportunity to gain an insight into the realities of zero carbon design and construction.

Combining modern methods of construction with a traditional heavy weight timber frame structure to ensure fast build times and low embodied carbon, the house meets the highest levels of the Code for Sustainable Homes.

It has 20 solar photovoltaic panels (3.6kW) and an optional roof-mounted 1kw wind turbine, and requires minimal heating and cooling due to the super-insulated building fabric, passive heat recovery ventilation, passive solar gain and use of thermal mass.  A biomass boiler provides top-up heating if required and supplements the supply of hot water provided by 2 evacuated-tube solar thermal collectors.

A passive heat recovery ventilation system provides whole house ventilation with 70% heat recovery and rainwater recovery systems provide water for toilet flushing and irrigation.

Source; EcoBuild