Are you"green"?

lollyfin wrote:Mesh you are brilliant
i am going to give you one of my fav smilies
Oh we are going to love picking your brain. I know what you mean about not telling peeps tho I am the same i told one friend about Approved Foods and she thought it was weird buying out of date food like that, another person i knew said she thought it was awful the way people bought reduced items in supermarkets and how she woud never eat anything that had been reduced. My opinion is shes an idiot why pay more for the same thing

Oh i couldnt agree with you more. they have more money than sense. I buy reduced food but I only take what I need and I believe in leaving bargains for others to share. Its the oldies I feel for. I get asked so many times to read labels, reach for items on high shelves (am 6') and work out prices. My maths has certainly improved, oh am I pleased that I have a calculator on my mobile for more complex workings out!

Buying food out of date.. I just ate a tin of oranges dated 2009, it wasnt puffed out and tasted fine. If it looks fine, smells ok then it is ok. I have spent a lot of time in India and learnt so much about recycling (wood, metal, clothing/cow dung etc. etc.) and reusing/remodelling (good word eh?) leftover food which would make you open your eyes (and your mind) to recycling. Thats all for another day/story.

out of date tins last ages i expect everyone on here knows that though.

I looked at the approved foods website but it wouldnt really be worth it with the delivery charge added on.

I try to be green,
I have grown in my garden in raised beds: potatoes, beetroot, carrots, swede, kale, chard, brussels sprouts, runner beans, peas, sweetcorn & courgettes/marrows.
in the borders I have got rhubarb, raspberries, gooseberries, blueberries,
in the lawn I planted an apple tree and a hazelnut tree,
in pots & hanging baskets I have strawberries, tomatoes, herbs, peppers, chillies and a bay tree.
I am a novice gardener and I don't really know what I am doing, I just plant, water & hope for the best. (I have got a lot to learn)

I have 2 water butts, a compost bin, a bokashi bin and a wormary, although somebody knocked the lid ajar on the wormary and I think they all escaped so I may have to start again.
our house is just over a year old and the developers put solar panels on the roof for our hot water which is great and the insulation is really good.
I use a microfiber cloth with just water to wash my windows.
I have a spray bottle with a few drops of washing up liquid & a few drops of bleach then topped up with water, this is my multipurpose cleaner, (very cheap and cleans just about everything).

I have given my car to my son and now mostly walk or cycle, but I do not go out very much except to walk the dogs, we live semi rural, so lots of good long walks on our doorstep.
We have excellent butcher & baker about half a mile away, I use these all the time.

Ikwym Mesh about talking about your life to other people. I say things that I think are totally normal and people look at me as though I'm a crazy person. Just simple things like using a cloth instead of disposable wipes for cleaning the floor or the bathroom. They think I must be dirty for not having a disposable thing I think they're mad for buying something designed to be thrown away (I don't count toilet paper in with this - yes I did read that thread on MSE).

I think it's interesting what different people see as normal and what they think "everyone" does.

I don't think eating what you shoot sounds cruel at all. I have total respect for people who rear their own animals with love and care then butcher them and use as much of the animal as they can. Similarly people who shoot and eat the catch. I wouldn't question it tbh in the same way I wouldn't expect to be questioned over my food choices (which happens a lot!)

Approved Foods is a great idea, it's not for me as we don't eat much in the way of packaged stuff and have no-one really to share the stuff with if I did order but I love the fact it exists and people can take advantage of the bargains.

Jetbag - I can't believe I forgot about microfibre cloths (see what I mean about taking things for granted!) I love them, Dan loves them for the car and bike too, actually I think he loves them more than I do. You've grown so much stuff, that's so great. I know you say you're a novice but I'm sure we'll be picking your brains for info too. Thanks for telling us about your garden *yum yum*

Jetbag your garden sounds amazing we just have some raspberry canes
I love microfiber clothes as well for cleaning but dont like it when they catch on your skin urgh!dont like the feeling of sandpaper either. Tesco are selling packets of 5 microfibre clothes for £1.50 just now and they are really good a bit fluffier than other ones i have tried

Santa was green today. I saw him in our local shopping precint and he said hello I'm in green today and he was in a green suit.

TP wrote:Santa was green today. I saw him in our local shopping precint and he said hello I'm in green today and he was in a green suit.

santa was originally green. it was a cocacola marketing campaign in the 1930s that made him red.

I am green, I like to think. We upcycle where we can, recycle, send off veg waste to either the guineapig or the council for compost making, the heating stays off unless necesary, electricity is saved where we can... he only thing that annoys me is having to run a car for jim's work lol.

I did not know santa was originally green flibs. The reason he was in green in the shopping centre was because they are trying to promote being green.

TP wrote:I did not know santa was originally green flibs. The reason he was in green in the shopping centre was because they are trying to promote being green.

It was Coka a cola that changed Santa to red from green. The power of advertising.

Yes we like to be as envirnomentially friendly as possible even if we do drive cars that consum petrol in vaste quanties but then we both do far less than the national average mileage per year.

We recyle and I have been doing that for the past 38years well before it was the done thing. We used energy saving bulbs when they first became avialable and most people didn't even know they existed.

We compost all our kitchen veggie waste have done since I was a little girl.

We don't dispose of white goods just because they are not the lastest on the market.

DH is not afraid to buy something that's broken to fix/restore in order to either to use, sell on or give away.

We tend to re use most of what we have even old T-shirts that are no good for the charity shop are washed then cut up for oil rags and floor cloths. I even keep one or two of DH all worn out shirts and polo shirts to wear when gardening or working on the cars.

I'll undo knitted items to remake into something new. If I have a lovely skirt, dress, blouse etc that I love and I rip it (I'm forever catching them on door handles ) Then I will wash and add them to my material stash to make into something different or patchworked items.

We don't use plastic bags, instead I make good strong cloth one's from old cloths, curtains etc that last far longer and can be washed and re used over and over

sounds good.

I try to be as green as possible. Rotate 3 compost bins and 3 water butts, this coming spring I will grow some veggies (cabbage, cauli, sprouts and chard), I haven't done so for some years but as these cost so much and I eat a lot of these veggies, it makes sense to grown them. I recycle fabrics into craft projects and buy wool from CS. I decided not to buy a car so use my cycle to get around locally and use the bus to get into major towns, e.g. cambridge, newmarket, saffron walden, etc.

Wear clothese a fair bit more than once before I wash them. use half the recommended amount of washing powder. No throwing food away so using left over food up into some weird dishes (need to think outside the box more when doing this)!! but it saves money by not using food from the freezer. I declined a green bin but if I need to put something in one as my compost bins are overflowing, then I pop it in my neighbours green bin which, also like others, is collected fortnightly. As you all know, my dining room furniture was my mothers so its recycled! Part of my desk in the office, was once part of an wall unit which OH rejigged and made into a desk/extension. Wood is always kept and reused. Shrubs cur down in the garden, I reuse the main stems for stakes in the garden. I could go on but think I will give others a go.....

ohhhh recylced funiture that reminds me most of mine was never bought new in fact one piece was recovered by my FIL. A nice large oak chest of draws from the lab he worked in before retiring. They were going to burn them all. He replaced the top and rebuild one of the draws, restained it and it now proudly holds all my dining room linens.

My table and chairs are all beautiful old victorian pieces. We have a 17century Cupboard an heirloom handed down from my DH aunt.

Some of our items are from when my DH lived in India as a child. His family brought back a number of pieces and they've been passed down to us. I don't believe they were new when they bought them in India either.

We are half way through building our conservatory and the retaining walls have been built with reclaimed bricks which took me an age to clean and prepare for re use. We used reclaimed materials for our patio as well. Along with my 'new' veggie garden gate which is a 92 years old and was our church's old iron wrought gate.

mesh wrote:
use half the recommended amount of washing powder.

I commend your efforts Mesh, but using half the powder is actually really bad for your washer. it can lead to limescale build up (don't use calgon! it's a con!) and can also lead to mould growth. jus' sayin'. don't want you to have to get a new washer at some point lol!!


I grow some veg and a lot of herbs.

oh gosh that calgon stuff is nastie we tried it a couple of time's and found it made the washing powder cake up and it didn't disolve and the washing stayed dirty.

My mother says the best thing to do is buy some washing soda crystals and every so often put them into the machine on the half load programme and it will sort out any limescale build up in the washing machine.

I use vinegar instead of washing soda

I once worked out that in an average household, if you were using calgon in every wash basically if you didn't use it and decided to save the same amount of money in a jar, you'd be able to afford a brand new decent washer every 2 years, or a brand new crap one once a year.

(I'll see if i can do the maths again to back this claim up!)

ok, 45 calgon tabs averages out at about £10.20.
the average low-use household has one load per day (I assume)... so that's 45 days for £10.20, that's £82.73 per year. (365/45=8.11....£10.20x8.11)

here's a fairly decent washer for £99 online.... and I can vouch that this one is an excellent washer

clicky clicky!

IF however you're like me and do 2 loads per day, that's £165.46 per year.


slightly more expensive... oops still a Beko lol!

and on it goes.

Hey fibsey thanks for your concern, as I live in a hard water area, I have a water softener otherwise I wouldnt get a lather off a bar of soap let along washing powder! I remember living in Manchester and the water coming from the Lakes, it was like silk on your skin compared to this stuff in e. anglia!

the forums gone green!