bemoreeco

The team at BeMoreEco love twitter so as part of our Eco Holiday Series we have carried out an eco holiday search on Twitter and came up with these great Twitters.

• Eco Hotels of The World - @ehotw
• TIES - The International Ecotourism Society @ecotravel
• EcoEscape - @ecoescape
• Traveling the Green Way- @travelinggreen
• Eco Travel Guide - @EcoTravelTV
• Marriott Green - @marriottgreen
• Green Travel News - @greentravel
• Green Travel Blog - @greentravel1
• Eco Costa Rica - @EcoRica
• Eco Green Hotels - @EcoGreenHotel
• EcoArts Tours - @traveltree
• Environmentally Friendly Hotels - @GreenHotels

Twitter Search Terms

• Searched Twitter for eco holidays
• Searched Twitter for ecotravel

Click Here to check out the BeMoreEco Summer Eco Holiday Travel & Buying Guide.

Over the last few weeks the team at BeMoreEco have been blogging about great place to go this summer for your eco holiday. Also, in co-operation, EcoTrendSpotter have also reviewed what essential eco items you made need to take with you on you eco summer holiday. Below we have detailed all the post that have been submitted.

Travel Guides by BeMoreEco

• Eco holidays for Singles
• Eco holidays for Couples
• Eco holidays for Families

Buying Guides by EcoTrendSpotter

• Essential Holiday Gadgets
• Essential items fro you Eco Washbag
• Items for your Eco Beach Trip
• Eco Health Care

Other Travel BeMoreEco Articles

Two more days to end till the end of recycle week. It has been great weather today and I have been outside all day.

Recycle Week Reading

The two recycling week article which took my interest today were;-

Green think tank for kids held at recycling plant - In the first-ever green think tank for children in the UK, manufacturers and retailers have been urged to do away with unnecessary packaging on games and toys. The message came the youngsters attending the summit sponsored by British Gas, called Our Planet, Our Say. The event saw the launch of a new schoolchildren’s eco-group that represents more than 9,500 schools. (click here for full article).

Party goers can go environ-mental at this year’s festivals - Festival goers at Glastonbury festival, which falls on Recycle week, will be offered the chance to recycle their old electrical items as the organisers are encouraging revellers to be more environmentally friendly.

Workers at the event, as well as festival-goers, are being asked to recycle their old items at special collection points being set up in conjunction with waste management company and Recycle Week. All materials collected will be transported to a recycling plant after the festival and processed according to Environment Agency requirements.

Lunch (Recycle Week Pledge)

After being taken out for lunch yesterday I thought that today I should try and make something special with the left overs in my fridge and recycle them in to something interesting. So, I decided to make a home made organic pizza. With some tomatoes, chicken, spinach, sweetcorn, mushrooms and cheese i managed to use most of the left overs in my fridge and provide a healthy and wholesome meal for my kids.

Recycle week picture of the day

I came across the picture below from a site called  ’Eco Pic Of The Day‘. Titled Field Art - The Street Mike Skinner’s Crop Circles, I thought Mike Skinner’s Crop Circle could be classified as recyclable art because it can be recycled in to a normal  normal field again.

This may seems a bit week fro a recycle week news item, but it is a cool picture which i want to share with you all.

The crop circle image of The Streets musician Mike Skinner was created in a field in Somerset near the Glastonbury Festival site. Skinner, who is playing on the Jazz World stage at the event on Friday night, said he made the huge work of art because he wants his face “to be seen from space”

Recycle Week Daily Video

Following on the recycled art theme, i found this video which shows you how to make a plastic flower out of recycled plastic bottles.

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’.

Campaigns have done little to reduce the dirt and litter on our streets. So Flemmich Webb of the Guardian ask’s what will it take for people put their rubbish in a bin?

It has happened to most of us at one time or another. You’re strolling along the pavement, when suddenly one shoe gets stuck to the ground. With a sinking feeling, you realise you’ve stepped in chewing gum - or worse.

Walking through British towns and cities, it’s often hard to avoid the litter strewn across the pavements, roads and green spaces - anything from food wrappers, cigarette butts and dog mess to bottles, cans and plastic bags. A staggering 30m tonnes of litter are removed from our streets every day.

Despite numerous anti-litter campaigns over the last decade, the amount of litter being dropped is not decreasing. The latest data, from the Encams (Keep Britain Tidy) local environmental quality survey of England for 2007/08, shows that while there has been a modest reduction of 3% in the amount of litter compared to the previous year, levels have risen since 2004/05.

Since the 1960s, littering has increased by 500%, according to Litterbugs, a recent Policy Exchange and Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) report. It is an unwelcome consequence of the increasingly throwaway society we now live in.

The problem is not just an aesthetic one. Litter is expensive - it costs local authorities in the UK about pounds 500m a year to clean up our rubbish, money that could be better spent on more critical services.

Applying the law can be a problem, too. Councils don’t have the resources to fine everyone who commits an offence. And dishing out fixed penalty notices can backfire, with local people seeing it as yet another ruse by officious councils to squeeze more money out of them.

“Enforcement is important as it helps people understand that littering is illegal but it could never in a million years solve the problem on its own,” says Peter Ramage, the royal borough of Kensington and Chelsea’s director for waste management, culture and leisure.

 

Source & Full Article - The Guardian 

Greenfest 2009 taking place on Sunday 14 June by the river in Hammersmith. 

Greenfest 2009 will be both a lovely way to spend an afternoon beside the river, and a chance to discover some stuff about the environment, cycling and the local community.

There will be a lot of environment and community groups for you to meet. Over 30 groups have already signed up to come. We will list these soon as soon as we have more information.

The Greenfest team encourages the groups to be involving, and many have things for kids to do. Also there are attractions like Kite Studios encouraging the creativity of kids. They have some selected stalls where for example you can buy herbs, sustainable outdoor furniture and hard to find things. Also a few delicious food stalls.

Greenfest organisers encourage you to come by bike. For those who do not ride regularly, you will be able to see if you can still ride, and you can try out child trailers and child seats courtesy Go Pedal and DutchBaby.

The music line up includes Havana Good Time, Sean Taylor, Rocket Number 9, Taxi Pata Pata.

Sunday 14th June 2009 1 - 5pm in Furnivall Gardens by the river in Hammersmith W6 9DJ

A website recently delineated a simple list of 10 ways that you can reduce your environmental footprint through changes in your food choices.

The list is fairly straightforward and involves changes that any person in any country can make to reduce their carbon footprint.  Substantive facts for each item are also laid out and explained along with a brief description of how the change can affect the environment in a positive manner.

Here the list of changes you can make to your food choices to reduce your environmental footprint:

    * Eat less beef, pork, and lamb

    * Eat out at restaurants less often

    * Eat fewer dairy products

    * Drink fewer soft drinks

    * Eat seasonal and local fruits and vegetables

    * Eat fewer packaged snacks and junk food

    * Upgrade to an energy efficient refrigerator

    * Eat wild fish that are not endangered

    * Drink less bottled water

    * Walk to your local farmers market or grocery store

 

Source; Eat Drink Better

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.