Crafts and recycling for summer

This image was taken from www.onegreenplanet.org which has great crafty ideas. Click link to view.

Its coming up to that time of year when kids will be off school and despite their excitement you will soon here "I'm bored." Looking through my Facebook page I came across a page I had 'Liked' called greenme.ie which had some crafty ideas which incorporated recycling. I saw that they had used jars and decorated them as candle holders that I thought looked really nice and would be perfect for garden parties that roll into summer evenings. In fact you could use a candle to repel insects while you are out there. It is definitely worth taking a peek on their page which lead you to other green websites. Many ideas may not require you to purchase anything but simply use what you already have and no doubt you can adapt things to suit what you do or don't have. Anyway get nosing and liking the Greenme.ie page on Facebook if you have an account. They can give you great ideas such as I've mentioned and help you consider the what might be done in the home to keep the bills and energy usage down. Prepare and be ready to get busy with the kids rather than sticking them in front of the television this summer. Make it one to remember!

P is for ....

Have been wondering for a while about recycling plastic's and have always been confused about those codes that are on plastic products all over the place. I searched the web to try and find a chart of some sort to help me with these codes and I must say that trying to find something that I thought would be useful was quite hard. So in the end I looked onto the Cork county website but no, nothing could I find. Perhaps I wasn't putting in the right words into the search engine but personally I think that information on finding anything that help's the environment appears to be non existent. Of course, it isn't, but I don't think that you should have to trudge through the Internet in vain considering it should be a top priority issue. Information should be easily accessible and easy to find. So I rang up the environment department of the Cork County offices and a spoke to Claire Kelly who I have to say listened carefully to what I was looking for and then went on a hunt to find a "Plastic Identification Chart" for me. Within 15 minutes it was sitting in my email Inbox. Result!

My Local.....

The old library in Cork City.

...library! I have been a member of my county library for some months now and I am always delighted with the help I receive from them every time I visit and call and Lord knows with the college projects I have to complete I need all of the help I can get. Anyway, I was in Patrick's street in Cork last week and popped into the city library as my dad had suggested I join so that I can take out DVDs and Cd's as he often does. So with a few minutes to spare, in I went and boy was it worth it.

The cost of colour...

The cost of colour

The thing about college is there are a lot of assignments throughout the year and of course there are the projects that have deadlines ever before you need to study for the end of year exams. I ran out of colour ink today just when I wanted to start printing out one of those projects and have it completed and ready to go. Well I suppose its better to find out now than the night before which is always a possibility. Ink can be an expensive thing to replace now depending on the printer you have and what it demands. I wonder is it really costing the earth?

Introducing the Vernacular...

Thatched roof & stone walls of a house on the Aran islands.

..the what, I hear you say? Well it all comes from studying heritage I suppose and looking to the lives people who lived before us. I don't mean centuries ago but our parents and grandparents lived in a world where vernacular activity and recycling may have been much more the norm. I hate being a child of the plastic age and would love to get back to the basics but as said before plastic is pushed in our faces and we don't have a huge choice, partly because we have forgotten or were simply not told how to use the natural tools around us. The vernacular. My understanding is;

A greener Christmas...

                                      

Just in the process of writing my Christmas cards. Well, typing actually because this year I am sending e-cards. No I'm not being lazy, there are several reasons for it but one important one is that I have seen where all of the cards go to after Christmas....

It's been a tough couple of weeks feeling under the weather to be honest and I haven't had the strength to put finger to keyboard. Still on the mend and not quite there yet either. So I wondered if there is anything that I can suggest with all these rotten colds around. There are the usual home remedies of course: the honey and lemon, garlic if you can stomach it and of course to help you sleep I would suggest a hot whiskey or brandy providing you will not be driving for 24 hours of course. Still it often happens that we need something stronger and even have to go to the doctor on occasion. If your sick, you shouldn't take it lightly and there comes a point when you have tried everything but must give in and trek off to see the family GP and get the big boys in to fight the infection.

Whether its a bottle of pills or a liquid medicine or a host of things there isn't much you can do here to prevent buying more plastic or whatever it is. Your too sick to really take in much more than the basic information and anything you've been given is received gratefully (even though you have paid a fortune for it probably). So at the end of it all you are feeling back to normal thank goodness! Maybe you have been told to take all of the medicine and maybe not but I'm sure you have put all the pills and bottles out of harms way and maybe after a time have forgotten them altogether. So now it's out of date. DONT throw it out. The chemist will gladly take back any medicine that is out of date, so have a look in the cabinet and get down to the chemist. I'm nearly sure  that they would take the empty bottles too. Well, where do they get them from in the first place! Would it not help them if they could reuse them? I bet it would.

Thats better!

So now, there is a way of being green here too and of course at worst any plastics might be recyclable so check out the type of plastic used on the bottle and if it's glass well then that's easily sorted. So out of the doom and gloom of being ill, your now feeling on top of the world and also getting a little boost because you've managed to avoid the landfill again. Well done you, so now all you have to do is to keep warm and well for the rest of the year!

A warm compromise

In the lead up to Christmas and the following winter months, there is nothing like the warm glow of a natural fire and I must admit that one of the requirements for us buying our house was that we wanted a coal fire which we had become accustomed to growing up. For a year or so we bought our coal bags and enjoyed sitting close to the fire after dinner and were content. Then I began to consider the environment....

Hubble Bubble toil and trouble....

Not one of my better pictures thats for sure but what a great night we had last year for Halloween! I hadn't dressed up in years  before this but I would highly recommend it. I couldn't get the green face paint off for days!!! But its that time again when the little ones are all excited and half terrified but love it at the same time and some of us grown ups are just as bad. So why am I writing about it here in this blog? Well we can do this with the environment in mind too and so I thought I would put a few pointers out for those of you who might be interested.

Back to the Nitty Gritty!

Going back to my recycling post I mentioned getting used to what you throw away and becoming aware of different items that can be recycled. Still there is something else that can be done to reduce the amount of waste that gets thrown in the bin and can be a huge help to you. Composting! "Yuk!" I hear you say? No no, it really is easy so listen up. There are plenty of things that can be composted such as grass, newspaper, egg shells, all vegetable peelings, egg cartons (although I prefer to give mine back to the market for re-use) and citrus peelings (in moderation and these I find help to keep the flies away too). Lets face it I bet there's plenty in this short list that goes into the landfill isn't there? Why not compost it and then when the summer comes you wont need to buy the expensive compost.

"It's too smelly. It encourages rats and vermin. I cant be bothered..."

 ..are some of the usual reasons I hear for not composting. Really, none of these are true as I have found out.....                      

                                                                          

Where you do you start when you decide to go "Eco Friendly"?  Difficult I know. You can start to think that there is so much to be done that, little old (or young) you couldn't possibly change the world and therefore give up before you start. Well I started when I found a book written by Feilim Harty called "Get rid of your Bin" and I was so inspired that that is exactly what I did. I took a long hard look at recycling and gave myself 6 months to try to recycle most of my rubbish (this was also when the next "Bin man" bill was due) and went for it. (As it happened I lost my job at the same time the bin man bill was due so that helped with the decision! ) I'm delighted. Now I recycle approximately 85-90% of my rubbish by taking it to the recycling bank myself.  For €5 every 8-10 weeks I trek off to the recycling centre. Here is how to start: